三重県阿山高等公民学校の発足

抄録

This research analyzes the establishment and management of Vocational Supplementary School in Ayama County, Mie Prefecture, which was founded in 1928 by a school cooperative of Ota Village and nine other villages.
In the wake of local demand for educating candidates for middle-ranking managers who could be future leaders in the farm villages, the school was established as a daytime and year-round agricultural supplementary school for students who graduated from higher elementary schools.
The school had its independent buildings, farm land, and athletic field, rare for a vocational supplementary school. It placed emphasis on vocational training based on the concept of “learning through doing.”
Ota Village played a central role in establishing the school, and Mie Prefecture’s agricultural experiment station was involved in its management. However, the school was unable to gather as many students as it expected because there were many post-elementary institutions nearby, including Ueno Middle School.
For this reason, there was a disconnect between the initial intention of school founders and what local students wanted to pursue. Not only that, an imbalance in student numbers within the village cooperative eventually created problems in managing the school cooperative.