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The contents here are partially modified from a newspaper article issued in February 2002. |
Onuki: |
Since the industrial revolution in the 18th century, the world has shifted to an expanding economy and we live with the mechanisms of mass production, mass consumption, and mass disposal. This society has a characteristic of all-out "competition" based on market principles. To survive as one of the strong, you must defeat or consolidate the weak through competition and have no choice but to grow gigantic. The combination of technologies and market principles intensifies competition and spreads "contest" not only in economic terms but also in all fields of human activity. Many educational problems are attributable to the rat race, which even extends into our children's lives.
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Yamada: |
I see. The weakest ones suffer the most.
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Onuki: |
Life in a society where people try to get ahead of others regardless of cost results in people getting mentally run down and leads to conditions where violence brings about more violence.
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Yamada: |
When we lived off the gifts of the land, we felt secure, as if embraced by the earth. But after we moved away from the land, we no longer had anything real to believe in.
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Onuki: |
Earth gave people abundant crops every season, like a fountain. But people who move to a city and become rootless wanderers have only their wages as a means of life. Their situation is very unstable. Unlike a farm village where land is handed down through generations, people in cities have no fortune that they can leave to their children. So parents who wish happiness for their children are invariably enthusiastic about their education. Although children have a huge variety of skills, they each have only one set of values and incompatible talents are nipped in the bud.
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Yamada: |
A set of values based only on school records will never enable children to realize that they are precious beings. In old farm-based societies, children must have been aware that they were necessary beings because they were counted on as important sources of labor.
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Onuki: |
Mongolians don't distinguish between work and play. When a child is old enough, his parents tell him, for example, to milk the goats. He learns to do this job, feeling proud that the parents finally treated him like a grownup. This also helps satisfy his curiosity. Instead of being reluctant, he works according to his interests. I wish this element were a core element of Japanese education. Computer education may be a modern-day necessity but I hope that educators are also aware that children develop wisdom by more firsthand experiences full of touch and smell in addition to those of cyberspace.
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Yamada: |
What we thought of as progress was merely a history in which people and families moved away from the land. The children suffered the most from this negative side of the development.
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Onuki: |
In Mongolia, all members of a family keep a close eye on the birth of a child. In the desert area, all members of a family watch a dead person depart on the back of a camel. So since infancy, they are familiar with life and death: the fact that man is equally involved in the cycle from birth on the earth to return to the earth. They may not yet grasp the reasoning that a recycling-oriented society is important but they know for sure that their life is incorporated in the cycle and that they cannot leave it. In the documentary film, "Four Seasons of Nomadism: People in Zerger," which we produced, some men who are good friends go hunting deep in the mountains. They talk about their village while sitting around a bonfire, they say matter-of-factly, "That old lady is sixty-something years old, so she is the next to go." They take it for granted. This scene makes me think that it is pointless to compete against each other because man is a creature destined to die.
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