2024 Volume 91 Issue 4 Pages 475-487
The transformation of the public education system has been discussed from various angles since 2016 or so, when the Act on Securing Educational Opportunities Equivalent to Ordinary Education at the Stage of Compulsory Education was enacted. Evening junior high schools, legally underpinned by this law, have been increasing in recent years, taking on more diverse forms as well.
This paper focuses on school theory around 1970 as the starting point for the transformation of the modern public education system. An English-language edition of the works of Ivan Illich and Paulo Freire was published in 1970, leading to discussions around the world about “deschooling” and “conscientization.” In addition, practices such as free schools, alternative schools, and homeschooling began to spread in Western countries. These theories and practices spilled over into Japan, where education scholars discussed the need to make the public education system more flexible, to change discriminatory school cultures, and to create centers for transformative learning inside and outside schools.
Around 1970, evening junior high schools changed their institutional positioning to become places of study for those who had not completed compulsory education. This paper focuses on two representative teachers of the 1970s and 1980s, IWAI Yoshiko and MATSUZAKI Michinosuke. Both teachers organized civic movements to establish evening junior high schools, and both formed active connections with learning communities outside of school, such as literacy classes in buraku areas (traditionally targets of status discrimination) and so-called ibasho or spaces for children unable to attend compulsory schooling. The educational practices of evening junior high schools during this period had a cross-border character that went beyond the framework of the typical “school”: they flexibly changed the content of classes according to their studentsʼ needs and worked to resolve the social discrimination issues faced by the students.
Reevaluation of the above educational practices, conducted in the intersection of deschooling and school transformation orientation, is significant in the context of the ongoing transformation of the public education system and the incorporation of diverse learning opportunities within the system.
