Citation

Yamane K. Stud. Child. Educ. 1999; 18: 12-26.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1999, Kobe Shinwa Women's University)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

We will start the reform in school curriculum from elementary school to high school in 2002, the biggest ever after World War II. In this reform, more effort is been made to introduce the idea of the integrated learning in the curriculum. Nobody can deny the serious problems schools are facing today such as bullying, violence, school refuser, and so on. I think we are becoming aware of such a serious crisis of schooling. In order to conquer this crisis the Ministery of Education decided to arrange the time for the integrated learning in curriculum. Its aim is to help children to develop their ability to survive in this fast changing society. In my view, the integrated learning means the learning of how to think, how to judge, and how to live. The teaching material for the integrated learning is not textbook that students can carry in their bags, but the real world where they live their daily life. Accordingly, we need to abandon the idea of teacher-centered education in which teachers only transmit some specific knowledges to children based on the official curriculum. The roles of teachers should be to encourage children to think, judge and act on their own through learning, to create the atomsphere to facilitate that learning and to keep learning themselves their way of life. As Dewey said, "child and adult alike, in other words, are engaged in growing." What I would like to emphersize here is, first of all, that unless we teachers can regard "the integrated learning" as collaborative, comprehen sive and holistic learning of life, instead of transmission and accumulation of seperated and fixed knowledge, we would fail this reform. Secondly, I would like to stress the point that we must accept the differences of each student in their learning and living. We should be more inclucive enough not to discriminate but to value and even connect the differences (e.g.mainstreaming in US). The same can be said to academic learning. As Clive Beck says, "In developing our way of life, it is important to see ways in which we have to be different from other people." "Integrated learning" is, after all, the learning that teachers and students learn their way of life together.