Background: Yogo teacher is a unique educational occupation in Japanese schools that supports students with their everyday health problems. In 1941, during World War II, the Japan National School Order established the position of Yogo-Kundo (teacher), which was renamed Yogo teacher in 1947. According to a historical study by Sugiura (1985), while under occupation, GHQ called for institutional reform to replace a teacher with a school nurse for supporting students’health, which led to a conflict as the Japanese side wanted a teacher to maintain the position. At that time, Chiba Tatsu, a Yogo teacher, argued that we should support students with their health problems as a teacher not a nurse in Japanese schools. In preexisting research, she is known as a key person in establishing the Yogo teacher position. However, why she chose Yogo teacher over a school nurse is unknown.
Objective: The purpose of this article is to clarify Chiba Tatsu’s theory on the Yogo teacher position and to consider why the Yogo teacher was established as a teacher rather than as a school nurse.
Methods: To approach this question, I mainly used the magazine of “School Health Education” and the practical records of Takanawadai Elementary School. To analyze this question, I took three analytic views; (1) the relationship between postwar education reform and Chiba, (2) the health problems Chiba found in Japanese schools and why she chose Yogo teacher to address those problems, (3) what Chiba thought the role of the Yogo teacher should be.
Results: Chiba was the only Yogo teacher to contribute not only to the postwar educational reform, but also to the practice of education. She identified a need for the Yogo teacher to be established as an educational position, compared to American school health, rather than maintaining continuity from Yogo-Kundo. She pointed out that “hygiene knowledge” and “hygiene ideas” were severely lacking in Japan, and believed that a Yogo teacher should take the lead on school health while maintaining the status of a teacher. Chiba thought that Yogo teacher’s work were to help other staff to understand and cooperate with school health initiatives and to prepare classroom teachers to provide health education. In addition, Chiba thought that Yogo teacher’s work were to use their expert knowledge and to identify the state of each child’s health and educational needs.
Conclusion: Although the existing research indicates that the Yogo teacher’s status as teacher has historically been given passively, our results demonstrate that Yogo teacher actively requested the status of teacher in the postwar educational reform.
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