“Kurashiki Mirai K-juku” is a seminar held once a month at “Ohara House Katalyzer,” a nationally designated Important Cultural Property in the Bikan Historical Area.
In fiscal 2020, it was also held as the “Takahashi River Basin Future Career Education Seminar,” commissioned by Kurashiki City.
The 17th session featured Tetsuo Goda of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology as the lecturer, and was held on the theme “How to Make Use of the Courses of Study in a Society with COVID-19 and Post-COVID-19.”
I attended the “17th Kurashiki Mirai K-juku,” held on Saturday, September 26, 2020, and will share some of the things I felt “people outside the education field should know about.”
The information presented is as of the article’s publication in October 2020. Please note that it may differ from current information.
What is the “Takahashi River Basin Future Career Education Seminar”?
In fiscal 2020, “Kurashiki Mirai K-juku” was also held as the “Takahashi River Basin Future Career Education Seminar.”
The “Takahashi River Basin Future Career Education Seminar” is a monthly seminar held in collaboration with Kurashiki City projects, supporting the creation of connections among teachers, businesses, and local communities.
This is a five-session seminar, and this was the third session.
Until the second session, online participation was the default due to measures against COVID-19. For the third session, attendance was limited, and it was held as a hybrid seminar with both in-person and online participation.
For reports on the first and second sessions, see the articles below.
Overview of the 17th Kurashiki Mirai K-juku: “How to Make Use of the Courses of Study in a Society with COVID-19 and Post-COVID-19”
This session focused on the “Courses of Study” and was held in the following format:
- Lecture by Tetsuo Goda of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology
- Workshop
- Question-and-answer session
Tetsuo Goda of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology is one of the bureaucrats involved in revising the “2017 and 2018 Courses of Study.”
There were “about 30 participants” in total, both in person and online.
Participants came from a wide range of backgrounds, mainly in education, including business owners and local assembly members.
Tetsuo Goda’s lecture
The “Courses of Study” are probably familiar to people in education, but many employees of private companies and freelancers may feel they have little to do with them.
I was one of them.
However, as a father of two, I have never felt the importance of elementary schools and other educational institutions more keenly than during the COVID-19 crisis in 2020.
That was because of the “nationwide school closures that began in March 2020.”
Tetsuo Goda’s lecture began with an account of what happened behind the scenes when the nationwide school closures were announced.
At the time (February 2020), there was so much we did not know about measures against COVID-19 that the shift to telework and online classes was unavoidable.
What was reconsidered as a result was “the value of schools themselves.”
Schools are “places of welfare,” not just places for education in the broad sense
Quoting a participant’s remarks at the Central Council for Education on April 27, 2020, Goda said that with schools closed and “everyday life as we knew it” lost, “it became clear what schools had been responsible for, what they had protected, and what they had nurtured.”
During the question-and-answer session that followed, a university student said something along the lines of, “You can learn online, but relationships with other people have become weaker.” This is one example of how schools functioned as a “place to belong.”
Goda’s daughter, who attends university, apparently once cried because she “couldn’t do experiments” due to the school closures.
There are many other examples, but that does not mean that “traditional school education” was better.
As online classes increased, there were also cases of students who wanted to learn but could not attend classes (due to illness, school refusal, etc.) being able to participate.
- Whole-class lessons or individual learning
- Course-based or mastery-based learning
- Digital or analog
- Remote/online or in-person/offline
Rather than treating these as either-or choices, it is important to “combine the two” in a hybrid approach.
The same could be said of general businesses, not just schools.
“School Ver. 3.0” for Society 5.0
There is a policy called “Society 5.0.”
Society 5.0 is a human-centered society that balances economic development with the resolution of social issues through a system that highly integrates cyberspace (virtual space) and physical space (real space).
Source: Cabinet Office, “Society 5.0”
As IoT (Internet of Things) connects all people and things and creates a society where knowledge and information are shared, the role of schools will also change.
- School Ver. 1.0 is the “era of studying”
- School Ver. 2.0 is the “era of learning”
- School Ver. 3.0 is the “era of learning”
Schools are trying to change.
However, the passive mindset that “the future society will be like this, so children need this kind of education” can make life difficult for children.
Children who distance themselves from the beliefs shared by their class or school about “what is normal” may be ostracized or excluded.
Smartphones now follow children home and are with them 24 hours a day, so we need to understand that the “strong pressure to conform” children face is greater than adults imagine.
That is why we need a proactive commitment to “nurture these qualities and abilities in today’s children in order to create this kind of society.”
“Making full use” of the Courses of Study
From here, I’ll discuss the main topic, the “Courses of Study.” But first, do you know what they are?
The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology website describes them as follows:
The “Courses of Study” are standards for the curriculum set by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology to ensure that a certain level of education is maintained at schools throughout the country. They are revised approximately once every 10 years.
Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology: Basic Information about the Courses of Study
Children’s textbooks and timetables are based on these standards.
The most recent revisions were made in 2017 and 2018, and will be implemented on the following schedule:
- Elementary schools: from fiscal 2020
- Junior high schools: from fiscal 2021
- High schools: from fiscal 2022
I thought of them as something like a “manual for what schools should do as part of education.”
I also assumed they were written in great detail, but they set only the “standards”; the details of how to implement them are left to schools and teachers.
One thing that surprised me in Goda’s lecture was the example of a school that had abolished midterm and final exams in junior high school.
I had thought midterm and final exams were “rules of junior high school.”
However, the fact that they can be abolished means that they are not “rules” stipulated by the Courses of Study.
This also shows that it is important to consider “the value of the school itself,” take an active stance, and decide how the school is run.
From the Writer
The idea of the “Courses of Study,” a national guideline, had always felt like something from a distant world.
But when you hear from someone who was actually involved in creating them, they somehow feel much closer to home.
Of course, the “Courses of Study” are also something made by people.
During the school closures from around March to May 2020, as a parent of an elementary school child, I also felt how important “teachers as people” are.
For example, I can work out the answers to elementary school-level math and Japanese questions.
But I don’t know “how to teach”. I realized how grateful we are for “teachers” who explain things from a child’s perspective.
If the goal is simply to convey what is written in textbooks, online classes can do that to some extent.
Perhaps that is what education will look like for most people in the future. But that does not mean that “in-person education” will no longer be needed.
That is how I felt “as a parent.”
I found it very reassuring to hear Goda, who was involved in creating the Courses of Study as a bureaucrat, say that what matters is not setting the two approaches against each other, but combining them through “hybridization.”
Articles about Ohara House Katalyzer
17th Kurashiki Mirai K-juku / 3rd Takahashi River Basin Future Career Education Seminar Information
| Name | 17th Kurashiki Mirai K-juku / 3rd Takahashi River Basin Future Career Education Seminar |
|---|---|
| Date | September 26, 2020 (Sat), 1:00–4:00 p.m. |
| Location | 1-2-1 Chuo, Kurashiki City, Okayama Prefecture |
| Participation fee (tax included) | Free |
| Website | Takahashi River Basin Future Career Education Seminar |
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