The purpose of this study is to clarify the characteristics of the Meiji government’s legal approval by analyzing a group of documents related to the government’s lawmaking in 1880s, and to elucidate the process of the government's approval of the revisions of the Education Order of 1879. The results of this study show the following:

1) In the 1880s, the Meiji government attempted to foster “self-government” and achieve “progress” by combining the expansion of “freedom” and the acceptance of “interference”. Government officials regarded the spirit of “freedom” in the Education Order of 1879 as a matter of course, and rather focused on the nature of “interference” because they thought there had to be a sufficient reason for recognizing “interference.”

2) Although there were extremely challenging legal hurdles to revising the Education Order of 1879, the Ministry of Education steadily made preparations for overcoming them. However, government resources did not accompany “interference” authority in the revised Education Order, requiring substantial local resources. While the emphasis was the people’s “progress,” in contrast the impoverishment of the people due to “interference” measures became the real issue. Therefore, the government came to criticize the revision of the Education Order. This led to the affirmation of “progress” through “freedom” over “progress” through “interference,” and relaxed measures of “interference” obtained legal approval in 1885.

3) At the heart of the government’s approval of education affairs was the search for the propagation of low-cost education and sources of revenue within the limits of “interference.” The government's legal environment made it possible to approve the Education Order, its revision and re-revision, and fostered an “economic” principle that emphasizes simplification of educational affairs and cost effectiveness in the Ministry of Education.

In 1912, a “special class” was established at the Elementary School attached to the Nara Women’s Higher Normal School. This paper focuses on the actual condition of the children who were called “slow learners” or “feeble-minded children,” and the criteria for the selection of children assigned to this “special class.”

There were about 50 children who were called “slow learners” or “feeble-minded children” at this elementary school. In actuality, the “special class” consisted of 22 children. This means that the criteria for the selection of children for this class were vague. This paper clarifies and differentiates between the actual condition of the children who were called “slow learners” or “feeble-minded children” at this school and the criteria used to select children for enrollment in this “special class.”

The results of this paper are as follows:

1) The children enrolled in the “special class” were considered to be those upon whom the regular curriculum had no “effect.”

2) The children enrolled in the “special class” were considered to have “abnormalities” in their “mental condition,” “hearing and speech,” “facial features,” or ”motion.” In addition, they had difficulties in mathematics and writing.

3) The children enrolled in the “special class” were the lowest ranked in their regular classroom groups, determined by low scores and teacher evaluations.

This paper concludes that the “special class” was established in order to create a segregated space, and to provide special instruction different from normal curriculum.

This paper examines the process of how senior elementary school student visits to Kyūjō (the Imperial Palace Castle) were permitted in the 1920s, and clarifies the importance of these visits to Japan’s national education.

Until the 1910s, only noblemen and those affiliated with higher education institutions were permitted to visit Kyūjō. After that, elementary school principals were permitted to visit Kyūjō, then elementary school teachers. The Young People’s Association was permitted to visit Kyūjō for their efforts in the construction of Meiji Jingu, a Shinto shrine. A request from two school board members (who also were city council members) of Tokyo City for senior elementary students to be allowed to visit Kyūjō was granted by the Imperial Household Ministry. Their aim was to foster children’s admiration for the Imperial Household as a means to improve national education. In 1923, nationwide permission was given for senior elementary school students to visit Kyūjō. In May 1923 and February 1925, children in Tokyo City visited Kyūjō. The Ministry of Education considered children’s visits to Kyūjō an educationally meaningful practice that would cultivate national spirit. Although the visit merely passed through Kyūjō, educators expected it to have a lasting impact on children. One educator even anticipated an enhanced educational effect by influencing children’s innocent minds.

This paper traces changes experienced by youth in Tsurukawa Village in Minami-Tama County, Tokyo Prefecture, who faced modernization as a result of mass socialization in the 1920s and 1930s. Tsurukawa Village experienced drastic changes from being an isolated farming village to a farming village adjacent to the expanding Tokyo metropolitan area. This paper focuses on how local young men reconstructed the vision of their village through their elementary school alumni magazine as a tool of public opinion formation.

The youth sought for a vision of their village in the alumni magazines that could not be sufficiently covered by state logic, while making efforts to coordinate school education with societal education. Their efforts are worthy of attention because they proposed rational farming to attract urban residents to become loyal customers when Tsurukawa Railway Station was constructed as part of the Odakyu Line which opened in April 1927, and a proposed flexible citizen model (farmer) who attached importance on dialogue, discussion and public opinion. This paper reveals the process of “establishing an official ego” by young farmers in the suburbs of the metropolitan area who wavered between their adoration of the decadent urban modernist culture and the backlash against it.

The final issue of the alumni magazine published in December 1937 following the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War, showed practical farming of shiitake mushrooms cultivation during the agricultural off-season, but also included “Guidelines for National Spiritual Mobilization.” The “Guidelines” clearly urged youth to strengthen their spirit on the “home front.” The alumni magazine’s strong coordination with Tsurukawa Elementary School was initially intended to explore the future vision of the village and support revitalization of the community by positioning the school as a center of the community. In reality, however, during wartime, these efforts ended up becoming a double-edged sword that eventually allowed state logic to subvert their future vision of the village.

This paper clarifies the actual state of compulsory education during Chinese collaboration with Japan by analyzing the attributes of students who attended public elementary schools in Qingdao during the period of occupied northern China (1937-1945). The target of analysis includes student records from public elementary schools in the Archives of Qingdao. These materials were used to analyze in concrete detail differences in the attributes between students in industrial areas and fishing villages in the period of occupied northern China. This evaluation reveals a stratified structure involving fishing regions where local private education was subsumed by public education versus industrial regions where children moved between public elementary schools, as well as boys who were expected versus girls who were not expected to attend elementary school until graduation.

This paper is a historical analysis of the conception of the role of school teachers in mid-seventeenth century England. Particularly during the Puritan Revolution, various arguments in favor of educational reform were written and published, since educational reform was considered as one of the best ways to restore social order. John Dury’s Reformed School is now considered to be one of the richest plans for education or school reform of the period. Because his plan contained several advanced ideas on teaching methods, many historical studies consider it, alongside Comenius’s education theory, to be the beginning of modern school curriculum.

While it is true that Reformed School contains novel methods for the time, Dury’s primary emphasis was the reform of school teachers. Samuel Hartlib, the author of the preface to Reformed School, wrote that the best way to reform education was to reform school teachers. Surprisingly, however, Dury rarely referred to “School-masters” or “school teachers.” Instead, he placed the importance of his reforms on the position of “governor.” In the seventeenth century, “governor” referred to either a private tutor or a ruler of society. Philosophers who constructed modern educational discourse, such as John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, admired the effectiveness of private education under the direction of a governor. Dury, instead of using the common meaning of “governor,” used it to mean school teacher in order to advocate for the complete reform of school education.

The governor, as described in Reformed School, was expected to direct every aspect of children’s lives, including inculcating proper behavior as well as intellectual training, like modern school teachers. In other words, Dury’s reform plan and his unusual use of the term, “governor,” all but forgotten until now, established the archetype of the modern school and the modern school teacher.

This paper reveals how discourse on the “Science of Education” evolved from the 1840s to the 1870s through an analysis of “Educational Times” articles issued by the College of Preceptors (COP, founded in 1846 by a group of private schoolmasters and incorporated by royal charter in 1849). In March 1848, the first article entitled, “Science of Education,” appeared, followed by another five articles with the same title later that year. These articles introduced thoughts on education from the great philosophers, I. Kant, R. Descartes, J. Locke, etc. This pattern indicates that in the 1840s, the Science of Education meant philosophical knowledge on education for most schoolmasters, with the exception of Joseph Payne, who translated the German word, “pädagogik,” as “science of education” in 1847. Payne later became the first Professor of Education in Great Britain.

In the 1850s and 1860s, no article on the “Science of Education” was found in “Educational Times.” However, the situation changed abruptly in June 1871 when Payne and C.H. Lake sought to reform COP by transforming the schoolmaster’s examination in the “theory and practice of education,” to one on the “science and art of education.” The new examination included physiology and mental science, revealing a greater emphasis on the natural sciences than the previous examination. Lake advocated that the science of education must be capable of exposition and demonstration and tried to locate that process generally in the sciences. This paper proposes that, by introducing Lake’s lecture (given before COP members and introduced in “Educational Times” in December 1873 and January 1874), seldom used in Richard Aldrich’s research, Lake played a more important role than previously thought in changing the meaning of the science of education in the 1870s.

This study seeks to clarify how the original ideas of the Pädagogische Akademie (hereafter: PA) were realized by analyzing the 1930s reform of PA Kiel teaching practices.

Fifteen new colleges, formally known as PA, were established in Prussia during the Weimar Republic (1918-1933). They were established to train elementary school teachers, instead of Lehrerseminar (normal school at secondary school level). According to C. H. Becker, the Minister of Education and promoter of PA, the ideas of PA were different from that of the university and Lehrerseminar. In previous research, the teaching practices of PA Kiel in the 1920s has been esteemed lightly because teaching practices in PA Kiel were very similar to Lehrerseminar. However, 1930s reform of teaching practices undertaken at PA Kiel brought enormous changes which have not been examined sufficiently in prior research. Clarifying the characteristics of this reform is critical for understanding the identity of PA Kiel.

Through this reform, three activities of teaching practice-Helferdienst (observation practice), Vollpraktikum (school practice), Praktische Versuche (class practices)-were introduced in PA Kiel. In particular, Helferdienst and Vollpraktikum laid weight on activities not only in the classroom, but also throughout school life. These practices were clearly different from both the teaching practices of Lehrerseminar and the educational ideas at university. Moreover, Praktische Versuche along with Fachdidaktische Seminar (didactics seminar) enabled students to explore subject didactics in depth by integrating both theory and practice. Although PA Kiel and the university shared a similar emphasis on research, PA Kiel stressed subject didactics more than subject specialty, which distinguished its ideas from the university. In conclusion, PA Kiel realized the original ideas of PA in their curriculum through the reform of teaching practices in the 1930s.