Human Development Sciences I

Course Aims

With the great changes in the social structure of Japan, the ideas we share of what society should be, including employment, are also beginning to change dramatically. In this situation, people seem to be getting lost, while searching for a way to live their own lives. It also brings developments in how we learn: the shift from a system where education had the major responsibility of cultivating human resources and forming citizens, to a society that requires life-long education, which enables us to keep developing our own potential and is leading to great developments in the way people learn. In this course, you will socially and historically analyze the principles which have constituted the education system up until now, and the general view on human beings, and contemplate how people think of themselves in this current situation.

Key Features

University courses do not give you certain predetermined knowledge but allow each of you to train your own point of view, showing you various ways of looking at things. In particular, areas of study such as education, which deal with human beings and attempts interfering and one-way approaches towards them, never provide definite answers to show clear cause and effect. In that sense, in this introductory course, I as a lecturer will give you one of the points of view and will always ask you for your own thoughts on the subject. Asking you to consider your own point of view, I hope to interest you in the contents of this course.

Course Requirements and Recommended Courses

This class is aimed at those who are willing to learn about the relationship between education and society, and those who are trying to consider their own way of living.

Contents

This course consists of two parts: one is to socially and historically analyze the school education system, especially the concept of schools as the modern system of national education, which you have already experienced, and its way of viewing human beings; the other is to consider the idea, constructed through this system, of human character, and the collapse of that same idea. Besides this, you will consider the present problems of personality disorder, while contemplating how people think of themselves in this new society.

Textbooks

• Makino Atsushi, “Lifelong Learning and the Reconstruction of “I”” (Daigaku Kyouiku Shuppansha (University Education) Publishing, 2005)

Reference Books

Suitable materials will be introduced during the lessons.

Note

Students are expected to make it a habit to take the questions posed in class and think about them by themselves.

Course Schedule

Session	Contents
1	Principles of the modern schooling system (1) Society with schools and the birth of schools
2	Principles of the modern schooling system (2) Formation of labor division and the modern personality
3	Principles of the modern schooling system (3) School-record society and elitism
4	Principles of the modern schooling system (4) Panopticon and socialization
5	Principles of the modern schooling system (5) Fantasy of equal competition
6	Principles of the modern schooling system (6) What schools have selected
7	Think from children's point of view (1) The birth of “Children”
8	Think from children's point of view (2) Formation of Children's ego and inter-human relations
9	Think from children's point of view (3) The mechanism of truancy
10	Think from children's point of view (4) Co-dependency
11	Think from children's point of view (5) The self as relativity
12	Think from children's point of view (6) Deterioration of playing, and sickness
13	New ways of being: “dissociated” (1) “Dissociation” – Personality disorder and changes in society
14	New ways of being: “dissociated” (2) Data-base ego and controlled society
15	New ways of being: “dissociated” (3) “Words” and the raison d'être of self.

Lecture Handouts

Note: All files are in Japanese.

Human Development Sciences 1 (Lecture Notes)

Grading

Grading will be based on the reports assigned during class.

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