Community-Based Learning
The Role of a University
Study at the International University Japan Center
My Experience at TIUJ
Notes
The International University, Japan: A 25-year Experiment in Restructuring University Education
by Motoshi Suzuki
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Founded in 1975, the International University Learning Center in Kyoto, Japan is an attempt to implement at the university level, and to be in a position to promote at all levels, the ecologically oriented concept of community-based learning, as suggested and described in the writings of early 20th century visionary educators, particularly John Dewey, Lewis Mumford, Mahatma Gandhi, and in Japan, Tsunesaburo Makiguchi. Philosophically, the task of the university is perceived as that of helping the members of a society create a future based on democratic ideals and values. Practically, the university serves as a resource center designed to assist individual learners develop and pursue their own learning programs, through individual study and networking with other learners, with the help and guidance of experienced mentors.
I first heard about The International University Center in Japan in 1990, fifteen years after it was established, first in Osaka and later moved to Kyoto. Two years later, I enrolled to complete my university studies. The circumstances which brought me to that point and the influence that decision has had on my life illustrate the values and ideals which underlie the Center. But before relating that story, let me provide some of the background which led to its establishment in 1975.1
TIUJ is the Japan branch of what is known as a holistic or alternative university. The main branch of the University is in Kansas City in the United States. Actually, it is a miracle that the Japan Center is still around after 25 years. When TIUJ was founded by Dayle and Miyoko Bethel and their co-workers, alternative or holistic education was practically unheard of in Japan, except for a few special schools at the kindergarten and early elementary levels, such as Montessori and Waldorf schools. Alternative universities were non-existent. Japan was a gaku-reki shakai (education-dominated society), with all aspects of education firmly under the control of a Ministry of Education appointed by the central government. Japanese society was at that time approaching the peak of its "economic miracle," and its educational system, rather than being criticized, was almost universally lauded both at home and abroad as performing a key role in the creation of that miracle.
And so, there weren't many people interested in the idea that factory-type schools, from elementary to university, which had developed after the industrial revolution, were unhealthy both for individuals and for societies. And particularly, there was very little interest in an "alternative university" during those first years of TIUJ's existence. One student enrolled in the year it was founded and for the first fifteen years there were never more than two or three students in the university program. Many times there was not enough income to cover costs and the whole venture came close to ending, but when things became difficult, the staff kept telling themselves, "Let's try one more year." Fortunately, those early pioneers didn't give up or lose their vision. Today, TIUJ is playing an important role at the cutting edge of educational change and transformation, not only in Japan, but internationally as well.
This new university experiment was founded upon the twin convictions that the world view which has dominated Western civilization for 400 years, and which during the 20th century has come to dominate all the cultures of the earth, has serious flaws and limitations, and that a new vision is needed for human society, its values, and its relationship to the earth. For TIUJ, two major insights have helped to define and articulate the foundations of that vision: one pertains to the role of community in the human learning process, the other the proper role of a university in a society. Community-Based Learning
The initial inspiration for the TIUJ Center's community-based approach to education came from a group of educator-philosophers, contemporaries during the first half of the 20th century, who, roughly at the same time and in widely differing cultures, formed a common vision of what constituted a good human life and a common conviction that the institutions of the industrial system originating in the West, then beginning to overrun their respective cultures, constituted a serious threat to the well-being of people and planet. They were unanimous in predicting that the directions and policies of the industrialized and so-called democratic societies would lead to disaster for human civilization unless they could be redirected and transformed.
This, in essence, was the conclusion reached in the United States by Lewis Mumford and John Dewey, in India by Mahatma Gandhi, and in Japan by Tsunesaburo Makiguchi and other educators. Each of these eminent 20th century educators insisted that education, at all levels, must occur within the context of community and in intimate, direct relationship with the natural and social phenomena of the learner's environment. By the beginning of the 20th century, this relationship between learners and the natural and social environments had been lost as schools developed and students were secluded in school buildings. Makiguchi was especially critical of these developments. He believed that the indirect, second-hand educational system that had developed in his country was the height of folly. Primarily a product of implantation from Western cultures, that system of education, he charged, confined learners to classrooms and forced them to go through a meaningless routine of "memorizing and forgetting, memorizing, forgetting, and on and on."2 Writing in the early decades of the 20th century, Makiguchi described the effects of the development of modern schools as follows: In the days before there were schools, the prevailing method of guiding young people to the proper roles in the general scheme of life was an extended home life, whereby one apprenticed at the family trade throughout one's formative years, with this training supplemented by things learned from the local community. Then came the Meiji period (1868-1912) with its modern education and the spread of schools...Everyone was taken by the hand and dragged off to schools, and soon the other two schemes of learning fell into disuse. This was the age of the school reigning unchallenged and omnipotent. Only in recent years have we seen the grave error of our ways and tried to fill in the gap with various kinds of adjunct education and youth groups for extracurricular activity...From this point on, school education must be aware of its own share of the educational role...It must cooperate with the other two areas of education, the home and the community, each with its own expertise...These three areas of education must link together in an orderly system of mutual complementarity.3 To accomplish this kind of community-based system of education, Makiguchi proposed what he called a "half-day school" system, from elementary schooling to the university, which would cut back on ill-managed education that was wasting valuable work-learning time. If we return to the other two areas of education much of their premodern territory in overall life guidance, he claimed, only the remainder need be taught in schools, and in a half day at that. This, he believed, would at once prove more efficient, and would create an organic bond with the other two areas. In a marvelous statement summing up the fundamental purpose of half-day schooling, Makiguchi wrote that, study is not seen as a preparation for living, but rather study takes place while living, and living takes place in the midst of study. Study and actual living are seen as more than parallels; they inform one another intercontextually, study-in-living and living-in-study, throughout one's whole life. In this sense, it is not the better economic budgeting of school programs but the instilling of joy and appreciation for work that becomes the main focus of the proposed changes.4 Half a century later, Jeremy Rifkin expressed a vision of education very similar to that of Makiguchi and his contemporaries: The Role of a UniversityThe artificial separation between human culture and nature, characteristic of the Newtonian era, will give way to a new reunification of the two in the coming Solar Age. The concept of "man against nature" will be replaced by the concept of "people in nature." The educational process will reflect this basic change. In contrast to the current academic process, which separates students from the outside world for twelve to sixteen years in a hermetically sealed, artificial environment, the educational experience in the entropic era will emphasize learning through day-to-day experiences in the world. Apprenticeship will once again take on the importance it had in previous periods of history. At the same time, the large, centralized learning complexes typical of the last stages of the age of nonrenewables will give way to the notion of "learning environments." In the Solar Age, going to school will mean going into the community to learn.5
The understanding of the role of a university which has influenced the development of the programs and policies of TIUJ has come primarily from two sources. One was Alfred North Whitehead's perception of the university. "The task of a university," Whitehead had written, "is the creation of the future, so far as rational thought and civilized modes of appreciation can affect the issue. The future is big with every possibility of achievement and of tragedy."6
It was obvious in the 1950s and 1960s in America that most universities were not contributing to the creation of a future based on democratic ideals and values. They were rather serving primarily to support and strengthen existing power structures and inequalities. George Barnett and Jack Otis, commenting on the implications of Whitehead's philosophy, concluded that the university had defaulted on its responsibility to help the members of society to envision and to create a positive future. The very disciplines which might be expected to develop the ideas that would help "keep man's corporate head on straight," they charged, had declined this responsibility. "Philosophy has gone analytic, claiming that it is no part of the philosophic office to declare moral ideals or to design the state of culture. Social science, in the name of objectivity, has confined its mission to describing the facts of life in society without evaluating them. Nowhere in the university is there a professional search for the knowledge that is most important to man. The university is no longer concerned in any significant way with ideals."7
As a result of this failure of the university to accept its rightful role in the society, and the intellectual vacuum resulting from it, the creation of the future had fallen to so-called "practical men"--politicians, businessmen, and militarists--who, deprived of the leadership and ideals that the university ought to have provided, were in a situation similar to seaman on the high seas without compass or rudder.
This analysis of the university made a deep impression on Dayle Bethel who was engaged in graduate work and teaching during those years. He found two aspects of university education especially disturbing. One was the test-focused nature of instruction, which, he was convinced, totally perverted the nature of student learning. Universities, it appeared, had become little more than screening and credentialing agencies for corporations and government agencies. The other was that universities, in their eagerness to attract research funds, were coming increasingly under the influence and control of those very same corporations and government agencies.8 It was these insights and concerns which triggered the vision of a structurally transformed university which he brought with him to Japan.
Thus, a vision of a university in which the quest for ideas and ideals, a university in which learning could be experienced as an exciting adventure in grasping insights and understandings in the company of other adventurers, was one of the key factors which influenced the development of the new university center. A cardinal principle of all learning sponsored within this restructured university system is that it is responsible--responsible to the future and future generations and to its mandate to help create a positive future, and responsible to the community of which the learner is a part. And at the university level, "community" means the immediate community, the surrounding natural bio-region, and the planet of which the bio-region is an integral part.9 Study at The International University Japan Center
I am often asked the question, "TIUJ sounds great, but how does it work in actual practice?" Let me say first that each learner's program is designed individually, in accordance with his or her interests, needs, and situation. Following admittance by the University to pursue a program of study at TIUJ, the successful applicant and a faculty program monitor arrange a meeting to create an initial plan of study, which will evolve and change by agreement of both parties. A typical program of study consists of core courses and elective courses, organized by the TIUJ Center or one of its partnering organizations, and learner designed courses and projects created with the guidance of the monitor. While specific study procedures vary from learner to learner, they generally consist of a combination of the following:
- Personal study, research, writing, and projects--at home, at a TIUJ Center, in libraries, resource centers, museums, and other learning resources available in the community.
- Meetings with one or more other persons--sometimes, but not always, other TIUJ learners--to discuss ideas, insights, and issues being studied, to make presentations and get feedback.
- Participation in study groups and seminars, arranged by the learner and the faculty monitor.
- Learning encounters within the learner's community--as a participant observer, intern, or part-time worker in organizations, offices, shops, or farms; attending lectures, workshops, conferences, etc.
- Regional workshops, short courses and conferences in which learners, mentors, monitors, and other resource persons and specialists in a given geographic area gather to share the outcomes of their individual studies and life journeys, and during which learners have opportunity to make presentations, receive feedback, and try out new ideas.
It should be understood that it is the learner who is responsible for the learning that occurs. In the traditional, factory system of education, teachers are charged with the responsibility of transmitting a specific body of knowledge to students and then testing them to determine what proportion of the content transmitted can be given back on demand. In contrast, in our system, the learner is responsible for his or her own learning, guided and encouraged by mentors who are specialists in the fields or areas in which understanding and skill are being sought.
The primary instrument for evaluating the learner's progress--both by the learner and by others concerned--is a portfolio, the content of which varies depending on each learner's program, interests, and goals. A portfolio may contain research papers, letters and articles to newspapers and magazines, progress reports, works of art or handicrafts related to the learner's studies, albums and notebooks, or a journal describing feelings and analyses of progress or lack of progress, new insights and ideas, problems, failures, successes, new beginnings. At the undergraduate level, a learner may pursue a plan of study in almost any field, except medicine and law. At the graduate level, TIUJ offers programs in holistic and alternative education, institutional transformation and futures studies, community health education, environmental studies, community development, Third World studies, child development, anthropology, and social psychology.
The mentor (or mentors) for a given course or project may be one of TIUJ's six faculty members (three full-time, three part-time) or one of many cooperating mentors throughout the world; for example, a businessman in the United States, a professor in Japan, an organic farmer in Thailand, a community development worker in Nepal, a physicist in England, or a philosopher in India.
A sense of responsibility for one's community and the earth has been a central feature of the programs of students who enroll in TIUJ, as can be seen by a glance at the nature of their academic programs of study. Here I can mention only a few of them. The first student to receive the B.A. degree from The International University's Japan Center, in December 1985, was Ms. Yoshiko Wakabayashi, whose graduation paper, "Warning from the Plants: Deforestation by the Production of Waribashi" (disposable wooden chop sticks), was one of the first research-based analyses in Japan of the role of waribashi, and the throw-away mentality which it symbolizes, in the deforestation of Third World countries by Japanese companies. Another student, Kosuke Nishimura, is currently studying about and working with some of the alternative schools and organizations in his community. This includes helping to edit a book about alternative education. A second emphasis that has evolved in the course of his studies is the struggles of indigenous groups to preserve their languages and cultures, with special emphasis on the Sami people of Scandinavia and the Basque of Southern Europe.
Two students, currently pursuing doctoral programs in TIUJ's distance learning division, Michael Reber in Japan and Namrata Sharma in India, are extending and implementing concepts of community based learning in their studies. Michael Reber is exploring means of supporting individualized student learning programs through the development of community learning centers (CLCs), particularly with reference to utilizing new developments in electronic media. He has become recognized internationally for his work and research in this area and is currently chair of an international ad hoc committee composed of educational theorists and practitioners who are researching possibilities for human learning offered by CLCs. Namrata Sharma is engaged in a comparative study of the community-based learning ideas, proposals, and practical experimental projects of Mahatma Gandhi, John Dewey, and Tsunesaburo Makiguchi.
The opportunity to study and work at the TIUJ Learning Center has opened up new worlds of experience and opportunity for me and for many of the other persons who have participated in it during the past 25 years. Rajanyagam Sekaran, an Indian professor who spent a year at the Center in the mid-1980s, summed it up well: "The International University Japan Center is exceptional in its approach to learning: 'traditional' in imparting skills in orthodox disciplines, but 'non-traditional' in its ability to create a learning environment where learning is pursued for the joy and challenge involved in expanding intellectual frontiers rather than for passing tests. Perhaps the most important thing I can say about the TIUJ Center is that it is a learning institution which produces not only 'scholars' but also 'persons.'"
As the Center prepares to enter its second quarter century, the vision of its mission that I have outlined continues to inform and shape its policies and programs, but it is today being enriched and expanded by another source of insight and inspiration. In the year 2000, TIUJ will begin a new chapter in its history with the formation of a partnership with the Center for Communities of the Future in Gastonia, North Carolina in the United States. COTF is a virtual center which has developed an innovative approach to working with local communities to create experiments in various aspects of 21st century community building. In so far as we are aware, this will be the first time anywhere that two different types of "virtual organizations," our virtual university and COTF's virtual center, will be working in practical and symbolic collaboration utilizing 21st century technology. In a key feature of the partnership, The International University will join forces with a team of specialists and "learning leaders" in each of the several "nodes" making up the COTF Center who are working to evolve a new framework of thinking for community transformation based on chaos/complexity theory. Through these cooperative efforts, a structured but flexible curriculum is being developed which will offer a unique approach for linking real time learning with this new and evolving theory of community transformation. My experience at TIUJ
As I indicated earlier, I transferred to TIUJ from a traditional university in Japan. I was born in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka Prefecture, and grew up there, attending public schools from kindergarten through high school. In those years the competitive, factory-like system of compulsory schooling was accepted by almost everyone without question and most students, including me, had to follow it obediently. But, as many educational critics are now pointing out, this kind of education didn't allow me to have time to even think about what kind of learning was best for me or for human beings generally. We were treated just like empty buckets to be filled up. Learning was a matter of memorizing many facts transmitted to us by teachers. We were too busy memorizing a lot of meaningless, irrelevant facts to stop to ask ourselves what is really important or what the facts really meant. There was no place in that huge educational system for curiosity or a sense of wonder about the marvelous world we live in. No one cared about us as persons and about our individual interests and needs. Under these conditions, I was just like a robot. I didn't have to think about who I am or what is the purpose of my life. All I had to do was obediently accept what somebody had decided should be transmitted to me.
I failed to pass any of the university entrance examinations, so I went to live with my uncle in Nagoya in order to go to a preparatory school. It was the first time for me to go away from my hometown which was all the world I knew. My uncle was really an aware person and we discussed many things every day. At that time, I tended to take everything for granted, and he severely criticized this attitude on my part. He encouraged me to think deeply about myself and about who I really am. Slowly, I began to discover myself. I began to see the world with new eyes. Even so, I was under heavy pressure from my parents to study to pass the university entrance examination. Luckily, or perhaps unluckily, I was accepted by a university in Tokyo in 1990.
Before I began my university study I had thought, "Now I will really be able to study something important. Now I will have a chance to learn about the many new things I am seeing in the world around me." But I soon discovered that I was wrong. The university turned out to be little different from high school, and I found myself becoming apathetic, bored, and lazy like all the other students around me.
During my second year, I thought about transferring to another university, so I visited several of the prestigious universities in the Tokyo area which I hoped might be better for me. However, I concluded finally that all the universities were about the same. My uncle had told me about TIUJ when I was living with him in Nagoya, but my parents would not consider anything but a regular university at that time, so I didn't follow up on that possibility. Now, after two years of wasted time, I knew I did not want to spend two more years in a traditional university so, after inquiring about TIUJ I transferred at the beginning of my third year.
Actually, my first term at TIUJ was very difficult for me. In all my previous school experience, somebody had always told me what to study, when to study, and where to study it. But at TIUJ no one told me to do anything. Since I was not forced to study, I found I could not do anything. For a while I was lost, but slowly I began to find things that I really wanted to learn more about. With the encouragement and guidance of concerned mentors, I began to experience the inner joy of gaining new insights and in finding answers to questions that had puzzled me. I began to study, not to satisfy somebody else or to gain external rewards such as credits, grades, status, or prestige, but because I had become hungry for knowledge which I didn't have. It took me a long time, but slowly I made the shift from simply being a passive learner to being self-directed. Today, I believe this has been the most important discovery of my life. It has brought me a deep-down sense of joy and excitement and hope that I did not know was possible.
My studies at TIUJ have led to many interesting and exciting learning opportunities. The most recent is a youth exploration group which I am helping organize. We call it the "Life Discovery Project" or LDP for short. The LDP's purpose is to encourage young people to become aware of the world around them and some of the realities of that world. Especially, we are concerned about the fact that our future is being decided by a handful of business, financial, and government bureaucrats. One reason we want to learn deeply about our society is that we want to recover our right, as ordinary citizens, to participate in the decision-making process. We want to be able to affect the decisions which impact our future. The LDP is only a small group, but we hope that we can not only grow and learn ourselves, but also encourage and assist other young people to learn as well.
1. The contents of this chapter are based on my experience as a TIUJ student and staff member and on interviews with Dayle and Miyoko Bethel, co-founders of TIUJ, with excerpts from articles and books written by Dr. Bethel in the fields of education and institutional transformation.
2. This observation about the effectiveness of student learning in Japanese schools was contained in Makiguchi's first major work, Jinsei Chirigaku, (A Geography of Human Life), (Seikyo Shimbunsha, Tokyo), Vol. 1, 39, first published in 1903. The passage is from a not-yet published English translation of the work by a team of translators working under Bethel's direction.
3. Dayle Bethel, (ed.), Education for Creative Living, (Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University Press, 1989), 21, 168.
4. Ibid., 156.
5. Jeremy Rifkin, Entropy: A New World View, (New York: Bantam Books, 1981), 229.
6. George Barnett and Jack Otis, Corporate Society and Education, (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1961), 259-260.
7. Ibid.
8. The extent to which universities have come under corporate control can be seen in the Bayh-Dole and related amendments in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Even Admiral Hyman Rickover, who set up the nuclear navy, called it the biggest give-away in American history. See "An Interview with David Noble," Wild Duck Review, Vol. IV, No. 2, 1998, 8. See also "What Corporate Welfare Costs You" in Time Magazine, issues for November 9, 16, and 23, 1998.
9. The influence of this community-based, future-oriented vision of education and society is today helping to challenge traditional, factory-style education in Vietnam, Italy, France, Brazil, and other countries, as a result of the translation into various languages of articles and books written and edited by TIUJ's staff and students.
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© Copyright 2000. Motoshi Suzuki - All Rights Reserved.
motoshi@mbox.kyoto-inet.or.jp