著者

菊地 栄治 永田 佳之

出版者

東洋館

雑誌

教育社会学研究 (ISSN:03873145)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.68, pp.65-84, 2001

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One of the outstanding phenomena of Japanese education in the last few decades has been the increasing number of children with a psychological hatred toward attending school. These "school-refusers" have rapidly increased in number, coming to exceed 130,000 in the 1990s. In order to resolve this newly emerging problem, the government has implemented a number of educational reforms at various levels. However these efforts based on "operationalism" have not brought the problem settled. The present authors believe that it will be impossible to find a solution without regarding the phenomena not as a burden to the existing systems of our society, but rather as a mirror image of modern society. Therefore, our attention should be directed not to discovering the causes of "school-refusing" and to shifting the responsibility onto their mental defects, but to creating "public spheres" in pluralistic educational systems. This paper, which focuses upon various forms of alternative learning for "school-refusers" in Japan, endeavors to depict the whole picture of Japanese alternative education. First, it begins by reviewing the strengths and weaknesses of some thoughts on "publicness" by several thinkers such as H.Arendt, J.Habermas, N.Fraser, R.Sennett. Second, the authors attempt to give a picture of the present situation of alternative education in Japan with quantitative and qualitative analysis from the findings of a questionnaire survey conducted in 1999. Third, in order to take an objective view of the existing educational system, the paper describes some trends in alternative education and supporting systems in countries as the United States, Denmark, Republic of Korea and Thailand. It is indispensable to examine these actual movements in and outside the country and search for possibilities for creating our own "public spheres." In conclusion, the paper attempts to discuss some portions of the "message" we receive from these alternative practices and finally the authors stress the importance of taking a self-reflective attitude towards the creation of "public spheres."