This study aims to clarify the process and historical significance of the reorganization of kogai kyoiku (educational on industrial pollution) by the Minatama Ashikita Kogai Study Circle, focusing on the practices of the teachers in the group from the late 1970s through the 1980s.

 Kogai kyoiku (KK) grew prominent between the early 1960s and the mid-1970s. It was a unique educational movement in Japan that began with resistance on the part of teachers and educational researchers to the environmental destruction occurring in their communities (Ando, 2019). In recent years, criticism of the depoliticization of environmental education in Japan (Takata et al., 2012) and the rise of environmental justice theory (Okura, 2020), following the Great East Japan Earthquake and accompanying Fukushima No. 1 Reactor nuclear disaster (Ando, 2013) and the COVID-19 pandemic (Furusato, 2021), have brought the contemporary significance of KK back into the spotlight.

 While most KK research has analyzed the movement in its early years (the early 1960s through the mid-1970s), the period after the mid-1970s, when KK was replaced by environmental education, has been less studied. Therefore, this study focuses on the Minatama Ashikita Kogai Study Circle, which continued to explore KK after the mid-1970s. One notable characteristic of the Circle's teachers was that they reorganized existing KK through a common narrative focused on “ways to live.”

 Kogai to kyoiku (Industrial Pollution and Education), published in 1972, was located in the segment of the contemporary KK movement that denounced the false KK led by the government and the corporations responsible for industrial pollution. The educational practices described in the book emphasized the effective use of media, such as photographs and scientific materials, to hold the guilty companies accountable. The Circle's teachers also began to implement similar practices.

 An incident of discrimination against patients in 1975 prompted the Circle's teachers to reflect critically on their earlier practices. They began to question the purpose of KK and education through the “ways to live” narrative. They also questioned how they themselves lived their lives, aiming to explore industrial pollution on an equal footing between teachers and students through this narrative. Instead of simply accusing the perpetrators of wrongdoing, they began to think in the context of their own relationships with these bad actors. Finally, Minamata disease patients came to be seen not so much as victims, but as survivors who were considering “how to live,” as the Circle's teachers portrayed them.

 In short, the process of reorganizing KK through the “ways to life” approach adopted by the Circle's teachers suggested the need to change the relationship between the teachers and industrial pollution, between the teachers and the companies that perpetrated the pollution, between teachers and students, and between teachers and Minamata disease patients during the transition from KK to environmental education.

 The purpose of this paper is to analyze the awareness of issues brought to bear by those involved in private education on positioning the administrative entity and designing the administrative organization system during discussions on the conception of the private education administrative system under the postwar occupation of Japan, with a focus on the institutional guarantee of the autonomy of private education.

 First, the issues involved with private school administration were raised by the Ministry of Education. The distinctive feature of the private education commission concept was that a Private Education Commission would be newly established to present advice and opinions to the administrative authorities, thereby guaranteeing procedural fairness in the approval administration.

 Second, it was the private school associations that took the initiative in discussing the concept; under instructions from the CIE, they worked to bring about the concept of establishing a new voluntary educational administration body. This concept's view of the guarantee of the autonomy of private education meant minimizing administrative supervision and regulation and institutionally guaranteeing autonomy in decision-making.

 Subsequently, the National Federation of Private School Associations sought to realize the concept of establishing new prefectural boards of private education and making them the competent authorities under the School Education Act. This was characterized by the granting of authority similar to that of prefectural boards of education and by the fact that those involved in private education constituted the majority of the board members. For the private school organizations, securing the autonomy of private education meant guaranteeing their independence from public school administration.

 Third, the establishment of prefectural boards of education brought to light the issue of jurisdiction over private school administration. The private education side consistently opposed the view of the Ministry of Education that prefectural boards of education would be the competent authorities over private education after the enactment of the law. This argument was supported by the private education side's unique understanding of the philosophy and operation of the board of education system. (329 words)

 The purpose of this study is to examine the core curriculum reform of secondary education in Virginia during the 1930s and 1940s, and to identify the characteristics of the acceptance of this reform by communities and schools.

 There have been many studies in Japan and the United States of the core curriculum reform in Virginia, known in Japan as the "Virginia Plan." However, previous studies have focused on the theoretical characteristics and general policy outlines of the Virginia Plan, without examining its acceptance in local communities and schools. Therefore, this study selected two communities, Richmond and Charlottesville, as the main target areas for consideration, with a focus on the secondary education curriculum.

 This study analyzed and clarified the following three points.

 First, when the State Board of Education described its core curriculum, there were always two different policies. One was to create core curriculum areas that fully integrated the subjects, and the other was to relate the subjects while maintaining the subject framework. In addition, the operating manuals on implementation included both subject-separated and subject-integrated implementation.

 Second, to look at the curriculum situation at the community and school level, the study focused on the cities of Richmond and Charlottesville. While Richmond's curriculum-related documents did not reveal acceptance of the secondary-school core curriculum at the subject structure level, discussions hinting at the core curriculum philosophy were found in annual reports. In Charlottesville, on the other hand, a subject-connected unit on "health and safety" was developed, while retaining the framework of English, social studies, science, and mathematics subjects. Thus, the influence of the core curriculum was in reality exerted indirectly within the subject areas while maintaining the subject frameworks.

 Third, the characteristics observed in Richmond and Charlottesville were found to be shared upon reviewing information from other communities and educational journals. The core curriculum practices in secondary education were not oriented toward subject integration, but rather toward subject-related practices.

 Based on the above, it can be concluded that the State Board of Education's core curriculum reform was accepted as an attempt at a curriculum that was subject-based and subject-collaborative, when relying on the documents handled in this study. As such, the reform was implemented as a way to encourage subject collaboration, rather than as a complete integration of multiple subjects around social issues, as indicated by the Secondary Education Virginia Plan circa 1938-1941.

 This paper examines Immanuel Kant's concept of ‘Enlightenment,’ a staple of modern pedagogy, not from the definition at the beginning of Kant's essay “What is Enlightenment?” (1784), but from the latter part of this essay and the concept of ‘coercion’ in various related essays. At the beginning of the essay, Kant defines Enlightenment as ‘man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity.’ Based on this definition, Kantian Enlightenment, which aims at the state of not being subordinated to the guidance of others, has been understood as a release from coercion, using a dichotomy peculiar to modern educational theory, namely the opposition between coercion in the form of institutions, forms and educational guidance and individual thinking, autonomy and Enlightenment. However, in the latter part of the essay, which thematizes the hitherto overlooked relationship between Enlightenment and ‘institutions,’ Kant does not portray Enlightenment as a concept opposed to coercion. Rather, he depicts Enlightenment as ‘steps toward maturity’, as ‘entering a relationship’ with coercion. This paper, therefore, interprets Kantian Enlightenment from the whole of “What is Enlightenment?,” with critical reference to the works of Wolfgang Bartuschat, Reinhard Brandt and Takuya Saito, who focus on the latter part of Kant's Enlightenment essay, and Andreas Dörpinghaus, who focuses on the historical and social aspects of Kantian Enlightenment. The paper thus highlights the relationship between coercion and Kantian Enlightenment, which cannot be fully captured by the traditional dichotomy. It also thereby examines one way of ‘Bildung’ beyond the oppositions of coercion and freedom, leading and letting grow, inherent in modern educational theory.

 To this end, this paper first reviews prior pedagogical research on the concept of Kantian Enlightenment, which has so far focused on the definition of Enlightenment in the opening sentence of “What is Enlightenment?.” The paper then confirms the risk that this emphasis on the beginning of the essay overlooks the institutional dimension of Kantian Enlightenment. After that, it clarifies how ‘coercion’ can be interpreted in this institutional perspective from Kant's writings. In particular, the paper focuses on the latter part of “What is Enlightenment,” as well as “On the common saying: That may be correct in theory, but it is of no use in practice” (1793), in which Kant discusses the relationship between Enlightenment and institutions. This will suggest the interpretation of ‘steps toward maturity’ as a process that aims to ‘be with coercion,’ in other words, a process of entering a conscious and critical relationship with the coercion which is imposed on the self with an open attitude toward others. Finally, the paper examines whether the Kantian Enlightenment described above can serve as a critical mirror toward constructing an educational theory that goes beyond the traditional educational conflicts, precisely at a time when a ‘new Enlightenment’ is being sought.