Kyoikuseijigaku wo Hiraku (Toward the New Politics of Education)

In June 2015, the revised Public Offices Election Law was enacted, lowering the voting age to 18 or older, and from the 2016 summer elections, 18-year-olds and older will be able to vote. 18-year-olds' right to vote is an extremely significant shift in postwar history in Japan, and may provide a major opportunity to reexamine the relationship between politics and education, which has been taboo in postwar education. This shift has the potential to become a major opportunity to reexamine the relationship between politics and education, which has been taboo in postwar education. This book was written with the aim of deeply exploring the meaning of the above aspects of today's world in the historical context of the re-politicization of education.
 
The book is divided into three parts. Part I looks back at the process of depoliticization of education in the context of postwar history, where politics had been considered taboo in education, and reveals that it is being re-politicized today. Part II builds the theoretical frameworks for confronting the re-politicization of education from the perspective of creating a new politics of education. Part III, based on the above historical and theoretical considerations, clarifies the possibilities and conditions for school education to deal with politics.
 
In the past, schools had tended to be regarded as neutral sanctuaries, independent of society and politics. Conventional pedagogy had also tended to support such a view. Today, however, such a way of thinking is losing its effectiveness, and there is a need, both theoretically and practically, to think of education and schools as inseparable from politics. This calls for the development of a new field called "politics od education”. This book is an attempt to tackle this issue head-on.
 
Reconsidering the tabooed relationship between education and politics, renewing the theoretical framework of pedagogy, and envisioning an educational politics that bridges pedagogy and politics have been theoretical issues, especially since the 1990s when the Cold War between East and West, based on the ideological conflict between capitalism and socialism, ended. With the enactment of the right to vote for 18-year-olds, the time is finally ripe for this issue to be addressed, which is the reason why I wrote this book. I hope that this book will promote the creation of politics of education that redefine the relationship between education and politics.
 
The adult age will also be reduced to 18 years and older in 2022, and with the arrival of a society in which 18-year-olds can play an active role as independent citizens, high school students will be able to participate in society and politics. I hope that this book will be widely read by teachers, citizens, and researchers who are engaged in such practices.

 

(Written by KODAMA Shigeo, Professor, Graduate School of Education / 2021)