午夜剧场

Since 2020, new Academic Advisory Board guidelines have been introduced sequentially, and the word "inquiry" has come to be used frequently. However, teachers in the field feel anxious about why inquiry is necessary and how they should put it into practice.

The word meaning inquiry appears frequently in ancient times in Aristotle's "Nicomachean Ethics." Furthermore, pragmatism lies in the background of inquiry within the context of education. "Inquiry-based learning" with such a lineage has spread throughout the world in various forms. This book introduces representative examples of such learning while considering their common structures and differences.

Why do I, who am neither a teacher nor an educational scholar, write something like this? I believe its roots lie in my first year of university. Having entered the Faculty of Letters in 1989 wanting to study archaeology, I went to Pakistan in August of that same year and encountered the nature of Islam and the intense gap between the rich and the poor. In November, the Berlin Wall fell. I transferred departments and began studying in the Department of Political Science, Faculty of Law from my second year.

However, although I remained at Hiyoshi, I did nothing but sleep at the stadium. The only seminar I wanted to join was that of Professor Hiroshi Tanaka, who taught Public Choice—a subject in which I had received a D—which was a tragedy. Naturally, I was rejected at first, but I negotiated directly with the professor and was allowed to join. In the seminar, we read books on the theory of justice, and I wrote my graduation thesis on Plato's "Republic" while half-crying. I went to graduate school at Cornell University, but I faced setbacks there as well. Fifteen years later, I became involved in education through the experience of raising children.

What surprised me there was how close what I am doing now is to what I did during my undergraduate years. While writing my previous book, "Creating 'Inquiry' Learning," about school curricula with fairness as a core concept, Plato's justice kept pressing in on me. This time as well, while thinking about collaboration among teachers, it felt as if Rawls was by my side. How people with various ways of thinking can achieve reconciliation has now become almost a lifelong theme for me.

I have heard that the things one encounters around the age of 20 influence one's entire life, and that is exactly the case. I felt as though I was wandering aimlessly, but I am simply enveloped in the wonder of returning like this.

Sato Fujiwara

Heibonsha

304 pages, 2,860 yen (tax included)

*Affiliations and titles are those at the time of publication.