Abstract
Using representative examples of debates and practices occurring in schools in response to the educational policies widely promoted since the second half of the 1990s by the MEXT, which called for an "education that values what we cannot see," this paper aims at clarifying the limitations of this state-made spiritual education. As it will be shown through the experiments of five public primary schools located in Kyoto prefecture and which are considered to be model schools for the "education of the mind" and "death education," the visualization of this vaguely defined state-made spirituality has become a challenge in the educational scene. The experiments of these primary schools can be referred to as a local spiritual education which contrasts with the state-made one. However, there exist limitations to this local spiritual education too, and this paper explores the possibilities of this type of education by looking at how it can be developed in connection with local communities, religious resources, school education and the research on spirituality.