from Jiro Kawakita's Theory of Democracy Jiro Kawakita's Relationship between Education and Democracy
Jiro Kawakita believed that ### the state of education was extremely important to support a democratic society. He had a particularly strong sense of crisis regarding university education, and sensing the limitations of the existing educational system during the rise of the "student movement" at the end of the 1960s, he launched an innovative experiment in 1969 called the "mobile university". This was ### an experiment to create a place of learning directly connected to society beyond the university , and was positioned as an "exploratory activity" that integrated higher education and research.
In ### Mobile University , participants do not have their own campuses, but live together in tents and study together. At the first session (held in August 1969 at Kurohime Kogen in Nagano Prefecture), 108 participants worked in teams of six on assigned tasks in a two-week training camp format. Here, not only university students, but also working adults and people from various backgrounds gathered ### to conduct fieldwork and discussions on real-life issues . The challenges presented at Kurohime were environmental pollution and other issues facing society at the time, and the participants worked together from scratch in nature to creatively find solutions.
Kawakita's goal at the University of the Moving Company was not simply to transmit knowledge through education, but to ### nurture people to become bearers of a democratic society . To this end, he envisioned an education that would simultaneously confront the "Three Pollutions" of modern civilization: material pollution (environmental problems), ### mental pollution (devastation of humanity, such as apathy and alienation), and [* organizational pollution (the evils of bureaucratic and rigid organizations). --We envisioned an education that simultaneously confronts the problems of the environment and the environment's pollution. The mobile university would address specific environmental issues, while at the same time, it would work for the spiritual enrichment of the participants and, through team organization, improve the health of human relations and organizational management. It was an ambitious attempt to restore harmony among the environment, individuals, and social organizations through education, and to foster the foundations of a healthy democratic society.
Kawakita held the belief that ### "It is through the practice of creative acts that human beings can grow holistically and become more human. He believed that people do not learn knowledge only in the classroom, but that they grow through the experience of diving into unknown challenges and accomplishing something through trial and error. This philosophy is also an emphasis on [* experiential learning , which can be traced back to the American thinker [Dewey.
In fact, the emphasis at the mobile university was on participants ### completing a single project from start to finish . Kawakita states that "a task connects people," and asserts that having a ### joint accomplishment task is an absolute prerequisite for creating a sense of group solidarity. He also emphasized the critical importance of each person having "the experience of accomplishing a meaningful task for the first time on his or her own," and that such ### creative success experiences would bring out the vitality of the individual and lead to personal growth. Kawakita's approach was a precursor to today's ### project-based learning (PBL) and active learning, and he positioned it not as a mere educational method, but as a way to develop human resources that would support democracy.
Furthermore, Kawakita's view of education spills over into ### civic education . In order to realize the "participatory society" he advocated, it is necessary to foster a culture of mutual learning not only in school education, but in society as a whole. The Mobile University was open to the general public and local residents beyond the boundaries of the university, and thus served as a bridge between school education and social education. The "attitude to think and act on one's own" and "ability to collaborate through dialogue" fostered in the program were directly applied to self-governance activities in the local community and organizational management in the workplace, and had the effect of strengthening the foundation of democracy.
Kawakita's proposals on education were unique at the time, but have since been reevaluated in the context of educational reform and lifelong learning trends. Today, "inquiry-based learning that tackles problems with no right answers" and "education in collaboration with the community" are being promoted, but Kawakita anticipated these very ideas decades ago. His philosophy of the mobile university is to "transform the university from a closed place into a place of open public learning," which is the very idea of democratizing education. In terms of the relationship between education and democracy, it can be said that Jiro Kawakita regarded education as the epitome of democracy and proposed to build a mature democratic society through ### education of participation and creativity .
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