2021 Volume 88 Issue 3 Pages 381-393
Ikebukuro Jido-no-mura Elementary School is well known as the school attenmpting the most radical school reforms in the Taisho New Education movement. Elsewhere, the school concept held by the founding body, Kyoiku-no-seikisha, has been evaluated as an “education utopian experiment” that lacked “concrete philosophy and plans” while aiming to innovate old customs. However, previous studies of Jido-no-mura have not adequately examined the process and details of the school concept. Therefore, this study aimes to clarify the issue consciousness of Kyoiku-no-seikisha and its founding philosophy, focusing on the previously overlooked influence of new education information from abroad, and to reevaluate the conception of Jido-no-mura.
The paper first analyzes the activities of the like-minded group which was predecessor of Kyoiku-no-seikisha, showing that the common task of raising teachersʼ motivation to reform. Next it examines this groupʼs research on advanced models of New Education reform. They attentively studied the Yasnaya Polyana School founded by Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy as a school model for Jido-no-mura which might resolve their issues. Eentaro Noguchi, a group member who became the principal of Jido-no-mura, sympathized with the Yasnaya Polyana School because of its character as a “laboratory of education” that supported teachersʼ research by allowing children freedom of activity. Finally, based on the above, the paper analyzes the “Jido-no-mura plan” and shows that Jido-no-mura was designed based on the following philosophy: creation of a new type of education by arranging a school organization and situation that would support and encourage teachersʼ research and study.
Previous studies have overlooked the ideas of the Kyoiku-no-seikisha which emphasized changing the mindset of teachers in order to change education. This is one reason why the concept of Jido-no-mura has been evaluated as “unrealistic” or lacking in planning. Based on the findings of this study, the conception of Jido-no-mura was not established as a strategy to faithfully embodying the ideal image envisioned by the group, as to do so would have deprived teachers of the opportunity to change by confronting problematic situations as well as of the experience of creating their own practices through trial and error. By not specifying a concrete plan, they brought an unstable situation to the school, but they believed that this situation was inevitable in order to stimulate teachers into self-transformation and to create a new kind of school and education through the teachersʼ effort. Their scheme was, so to speak, to set up this meaningful instability. The significance of the Jido-no-mura project can be evaluated in terms of the existences of the stance and idea of this group: experimentally creating circumstances and situations that would support this change in teachersʼ consciousness.
