This article is an English translation of the original Japanese article.
The other day, I taught an online class for a small K-8 school in Kyushu.
I’ve been visiting this area since around the time the pandemic ended, and I was asked to provide feedback on inquiry-based learning for schools facing declining enrollment. So yesterday, I taught a class for 7th graders (that is, first-year middle school students)… and online, no less. (I’m also planning to visit the school in person later this month.)
I’m not sure if this is specific to rural areas or true of middle schoolers in general, but children who were very outgoing and talkative in elementary school suddenly become shy once they enter middle school. Well, since it’s adolescence, that might be unavoidable, but I feel that middle school is a period when one’s sensitivity is greatly honed in terms of personal development. That’s because, at this stage, middle schoolers possess more knowledge and a stronger sense of self than elementary schoolers do.It’s such a waste to be shy at this stage. I think how much they interact with different people during this time is crucial, and it’s a shame to miss those opportunities because of shyness or puberty.
However, after yesterday’s class at the middle school (a 40-minute lecture by me), only one student spoke up during the Q&A session. But once the break started, they came up to the camera one after another to ask all sorts of questions.That’s actually pretty nice…
On the other hand, something that’s been on my mind lately is that in various regions, under the banner of “inquiry-based learning,” students are going out into the community, listening to people’s stories, and making proposals.Sometimes, this involves students coming from urban areas to rural ones, spending a few days experiencing local life, then returning to the city to formulate and present proposals. I’ve started to feel a bit uneasy about this. Just a few days of experiencing rural life (as something out of the ordinary) and listening to people’s stories isn’t enough to fully understand the reality of the community, and the resulting proposals inevitably end up being superficial.
This year, a high school from Tokyo expressed interest in visiting the village where I live, so I began discussing the approach with the teacher in charge quite early on. During those discussions, I suggested, “Rather than ‘making proposals for the rural community’ based on their rural experiences, wouldn’t it be more important for them to ‘make proposals for their own lives in the city’?”
Ultimately, whether you treat the proposal as someone else’s problem and leave it at that, or take on the role of implementing it yourself, makes a world of difference in your subsequent understanding.
I believe this is a very important point. In today’s world, too much emphasis is placed on “making proposals,” while little thought is given to the “realism of the proposal” or the “burden of implementation.”I think this tendency is particularly strong in inquiry-based learning and fieldwork courses for college students. It often ends up being, “Once we’ve made the proposal, it’s up to you (the local community) to decide whether or not to act on it.”
However, the actual content of many proposals—such as “post information on social media” or “develop local specialty products”—often doesn’t resonate well with the recipients. Despite this, the recipients are sometimes even labeled negatively, accused of “not implementing the proposal” or “wasting the effort we put into making it.”Instead, it would be far more understandable to the recipients if the proposals were framed as an opportunity to reexamine the lifestyles of young people and urban dwellers (the learners).
In that regard, inquiry-based learning at small local schools asks, “First, can you find something within your own community that you ‘genuinely’ believe is good?”This is also important to prevent people from simply parroting platitudes—such as “the community is wonderful” or “community life is rich”—simply because a “correct answer” is being imposed on them. It’s crucial to keep asking, “Do you really mean that?”