1998 Volume 65 Issue 3 Pages 232-241,289
Why has there been so little concern about the revocation of the District(Gun)Code in 1921(effective from 1923)and the elimination of the District Office in 1926? Generally speaking, it's because the District system wasn't able to work successfully, and only a few people took issue about this problem at that time. However, this can be seen differently from the view point of educational administration. Until 1926, town and village elementary schools were directly under the jurisdiction of Districts. The District had strong contrl over elementary schools, for better or worse. It completely controlled elementary schools through the District Chief's right to make a Confidential Report on principals and teachers to the prefectural governor(Naishin-ken), while it protected the autonomy of schools from the local influence. Therefore, the elimination of the District Office affected elementary school management in various ways. First, it broadened the power of principals, who gained control over Naishin-ken. This added the new role of administrator to principals. Second, the elimination of the medium administrative level brought about the standardization of administration. This freed elementary schools from the influence of local political circumstances to some extent(This process had previously been completed by the Law for Defraying the Obligatory Educational Expenses from the National Treasury), and helped to standardize school management. In many prefectures All-Prefectural Principal Societies were organized. Through these, governors were able to directlyu convey the guiding principles of each prefecture to the principals, and thus made them reflected in each school. A good example of the negative results caused by standardized government can be found in Chiba prefecture where elementary school had gained some freedom in educational practice before 1926. We can conclude that reexamination of local administration in 1926 was the turning point in the relationship between the administration and elementary school management in Japan.
