2015 Volume 10 Pages 1-15
The purpose of this paper is to illuminate a few aspects of the CIE's design for early childhood education in postwar Japan. The analysis here particularly focuses on the CIE's attitude towards and role in the "Compilation Committee of Course of Study for Kindergarten", an in-house committee of the Ministry of Education formulated in May, 1951. For this purpose, the essay examines various CIE documents, which are part of the GHQ/SCAP Records. In preparation for the committee's formation. Ambrose and Ewerz at CIE demanded that the prospective course of study be based on both observation and study conducted in the field. They also insisted that the prospective committee members include those who took classes on study of children offered at IFEL. Upon the committee's commencement, these two individuals - as committee members - met several times with officials at the Ministry of Education who also served as committee members and reiterated the significance of fieldwork, with instructions on how such study should be conducted. When the Japanese committee members drafted a framework for a Course of Study, Ambrose and Ewerz proposed amendments and made specific suggestions on the framework, but the actual content and the wording was subsequently left to the discretion of the Japanese committee members. Thus, this paper argues that Ambrose and Ewerz were motivated by their belief in the need to construct a framework within which Japanese people would independently develop an early childhood education concept that would accommodate their unique situations, while also refer to examples of the American equivalent. In other words, the CIE's attitude toward the committee reflected CIE's policies at the time, which was to assist the Japanese in the independent management and development of early childhood education after the U. S. occupation.
