The concept of “democracy” which was inherent in the republicanism of Thonas Jefferson (1743-1826) at the time of independence and most of all in his educational thought, had at its basis a strong belief in “reason” and “morality” of man who possesses the right of “self-government” as a natural right, and it included originally some kind of moral meaning.
According to Jefferson the function of public education was to cultivate “reason” and “moral sense”, universal faculties and endowments peculiar to man, and thus to improve the capability of man for self-government. It consisted on the one hand of elementary ebucation with the purpose of making autonomous personalities out of the people by fostering their autonomous judgment through spreading widely knowledge and the art of reading and writing ; on the other hand it consisted of secondary and higher education with the purpose of training trustworthy leaders ; students with a high degree of morality and intellectual capacity were to be chosen for this level and educated at public expense. The creative element in this educational theory of Jefferson consists in the fact that that he visualized education in connection with political and social problems, developing the human right of self-government and laying the foundations for it by creating the corresponding capacity.

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There are theories attempting to interpret Kant's “Pedagogy” as a product of his enlightenment philosophy trying to separate it from his critical philosophy (e. g. Sukeichi Shinohara, “Oshu Kyoiku Tetsugakushi” (History of Western Educational Thought)). The contention of this paper sustained by an examination of the principle of the twofold division which Kant adopted in his “Pedagogy” is that this is not different from the 'critical' method. In this process of examination the author considers as the methodological principles of 'criticism' the following three points :
1. The articulation structure of the dialectic pure reason- “Pure Reason”
2. The analysis and synthesis in the judgment- “Pure Reason”
3. The method of an analytical twofold division and the method of a threefold synthetic division- “Critique of Judgment”
In addition, as a prerequistite condition for the possibility of such an examination, we shall refer to the maxims of Kant's use of words and to his circumspection in the application of educational terminology.
The method of a twofold partition of the positive and the negative, the condition of a twofold analytical division into the natural and the practical and the method of the threefold division in moral education are discussed and we finally arrive at what may be called a fourfold division. When it comes to this point, no formal possibility can brought out, no matter how well Kant's morality is explained and an educational principle in the world of experience cannot be deduced thence, rather the foundation must be sought in common sense, -that is what we maintain.
The main theme of this paper is an attempt to discover a 'critical' aspect in “Pedagogy” through a negative approach to this morality.

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This paper discusses the fundamental pedagogical theory (i. e. the cultural pedagogical thought) of Spranger in the twenties. The theory of cultural pedagogy combines through its copncet of culture the individual viewpoint with the social viewpoint and while contrasting the peculiar nature of education with cultural creativity, determines education as an act of cultural production, as such distinct from mere cultural transmission. In the central theme of the theory of cultural pedagogy formally fixed as mutual interaction of the subjective spirit and the objective spirit, building on the formation theory of neo-humanism, the theory of cultural pedagogy contains the characteristics of the formation theory. The theory of cultural pedagogy which amounts to a revival of the formation theory of neohumanism, while making much of the classical formation theory, carries, above all, at its centre the theme of the self-formation of modern man staying in close contact to the German classical school of thought. The theory of cultural pedagogy with these characteristic features took a critical stand against the debates concerning school reform which stood out clearly in contemporary Germany at that time, and at the same time it was critical also of the generation gap, yet at the same time this theory was occasioned by an attempt to mediate between these two opposites.

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