Toshirō Kanamori

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Toshirō Kanamori ( Japanese 金森 俊朗 Kanamori Toshirō ; * 1946 in Nanao , Ishikawa Prefecture ; † March 2, 2020 ) was a Japanese educator , elementary school teacher and professor at Hokuriku Gakuin University . He was best known for the film Children Full of Life .

Life

Kanamori grew up on a farm in Nanao (formerly Nakajima ) in Ishikawa Prefecture . He studied philosophy and education at the Faculty of Education at Kanazawa University , where he graduated.

After graduating, he taught at various Japanese schools as a primary school teacher for 38 years. From the 1980s onwards he dealt with the educational philosophy “empathize with your friends in order to be happy” and tried different practices that directly touch people and nature to educate students about life: in 1989 he started a lesson about sex life by inviting a pregnant woman. A year later he gave a lesson on dying with a seriously ill person.

In his 2003 by the Japan Broadcasting Corporation produced (NHK) documentary Children Full of Life ( children full of life, happy class of tears and laughter ), he showed how he prepares in one of his classes the students on life. For him, happiness comes from relationships between people.

The documentary was very successful, received several awards and met with a worldwide response. This has brought his educational philosophy and practice the attention of the educational community and other areas such as health and social care.

In March 2007, Kanamori retired as a primary school teacher and became a professor in the Early Childhood Education Department at Hokuriku Gakuin University in Kanazawa. In January 2017, he gave his final lesson at Hokuriku Gakuin University to prospective elementary school teachers. For around 20 years until 2019, he gave guest lectures every year at the Jōetsu College of Education ( Niigata Prefecture ) to young people and working teachers.

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After the First World War, Japan had a uniform educational system. In the elementary school every student had the same teaching materials and the same lessons. Some "free teachers" tried to reform the teaching according to the Western model ( Taishō period ), they were all arrested during the Second World War.

After the Second World War, Japanese culture became even stricter ( Shōwa period ). Kanamori was one of the few who continued the tradition of "free teachers" after World War II in order to develop new teaching and training approaches. He was inspired by the European tradition of educational reformers, of which Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi most impressed him. Even Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Janusz Korczak belonged to this source of inspiration.

As a primary school teacher, Kanamori set himself the goal of teaching his children not only to read, write and arithmetic, but also to prepare them comprehensively for life. You should be happy in your life and be able to cope with difficult situations. The lessons for life are Kanamori's response to pressure to perform , isolation ( hikikomori ), hiding feelings ( tatemae ) and suicide ( seppuku ) in traditional Japanese culture and its orientation towards the western world.

For Kanamori, the most important thing in education was that teachers transform their classroom and school into a cohesive community, where respect for the rights of children, their strengths and potential prevails, and children are seen as full members of the community fulfill their role. The teacher must prepare students for life and draw their attention to the individual, the other and the community: if a child is not happy, no one is happy . The core of Kanamori's approach is “creating connectedness”. He wants the children to feel emotionally connected to themselves, to each other and to him as a teacher. The feeling of connectedness should not only make them happy in life, but give them the confidence that they can count on their friends even in difficult life situations.

Kanamori used all possible means to stimulate this emotional connection: for example, he worked with a class register in which all children can anonymously write about things that they notice, that bother them or that they are afraid of. Every day of class he started reading the class register and letting the children talk about it. By openly telling their friends what is on their mind, the children not only feel connected, but also gain strength to stand on their own two feet. His recipe for happiness is that children learn to see their own strengths and those of their friends.

In his book , which has been translated into Dutch, he writes: I do everything I can to leave a landscape of spring experiences in the hearts of small children. Experiences that you will not forget throughout your life and that will give you strength. I put them in touch with as many people as possible. I hope that there will be a place in their hearts for these people's amazing stories. Learning doesn't just take place in class. Kanamori goes out as often as possible because the outside world also contains unlimited learning opportunities.

School performance was just as important to Kanamori. Children who feel comfortable in the classroom are more capable of learning. The pace of work is therefore high. He emphasized that his way of working does not contradict achieving good performance: I have cultivated my speaking and thinking skills with a direct connection to life skills. That leads to a high school level.

Kanamori's vision was that children could be children, that every person should be able to work from their own abilities, that one should not place one's fate in the hands of others and that children should be freed from the expectations of their parents.

Awards

  • 1989 Prize of the Educational Research Society
  • 1997 Chunichi Education Award from the Japanese newspaper Chūnichi Shimbun
  • 2010 Toshiro Kanamori was of the renowned Pestalozzi Award Hiroshima University awarded

Fonts (selection)

Japanese (title translated into German):

  • Sun School (Taiyō no gakkō) . History of Educational Publications , 1988, ISBN 978-4876521449 .
  • Detectives jump into town: Explore rice and water (Machi ni tobidase tantei-dan: O kome to mizu o saguru). Yui Shobo 1994
  • Textbook of Life: Basic Ability to Live in School and at Home (Inochi no kyōkasho: Gakkō to katei de sodatetai ikiru kiso-ryoku) . Kadokawa Shoten 2003
  • Textbook of Life: Nourishing Hope in order to Live (Inochi no kyōkasho: Ikiru kibō o sodateru) . Bunko
  • Classroom of Hope: Message from the Kanamori class (Kibō no kyōshitsu: Kanamori gakkyū kara no messēji) . Kadokawa Shoten 2003
  • The strength of the children grows when they learn from one another: 38 years of teaching in the Kanamori class (Kodomo no chikara wa manabi atte koso sodatsu: Kanamori gakkyū 38-nen no oshie) . Kadokawa One Theme 21 2007.
  • Kanamori Toshiro's Theory of Children, Classes, Teachers, and Education (Kanamori toshirō no kodomo jugyō kyōshi kyōiku-ron) . The Future of Children 2009, ISBN 978-4901330862
  • Children become writers: "viability" and "academic ability" beyond adults (Kodomo-tachi wa sakka ni naru: Otona o koeru `ikiruchikara 'to` gakuryoku') . Kadokawa Shoten 2009
  • Is that right for kids? (`Kodomo no tame ni 'wa tadashī no ka) . Gakken Shinsho 2010
  • Co-author with Naoto Tsuji: Classroom for Learning: Kanamori Class and World Heritage Site in Japan (Manabi au kyōshitsu: Kanamori gakkyū to Nihon no sekai kyōiku isan) . Kadokawa Shinsho 2017

Dutch:

literature

  • Marcel van Herpen: If one single person is not happy, nobody is happy . Egoscoop 2008 [1]
  • Hiromi Tanaka-Naji: Japanese Women's Networks and Gender Policy in the Age of Globalization. German Institute for Japanese Studies (Ed.), Volume 44, 2009.
  • Karin van Breugel: Meester Kanamori empties kinderen léven . CVOpen, November 2012 [2]
  • Nickel van der Vorm: Toshiro Kanamori . In: Improving the Quality of Childhood in Europe , Volume 5, 2014

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Notice of death retrieved on March 4, 2020
  2. ^ What Magazine on Critical Reflection: WHAT about: The future by Toshiro Kanamori
  3. ↑ Kantsuu.com March 4, 2017: Toshiro Kanamori retired
  4. ↑ Asahi.com August 19, 2019: The child learns - that is "education of life". Toshiro Kanamori, final lecture at Joetsu University of Education
  5. ^ Toshiko Ito: Pestalozzi in Japanese Teacher Education
  6. ↑ Toshiro Kanamori: Leven van Lessen meester Kanamori. hetkind (ed.), Driebergen NL 2012
  7. ↑ Nickel van der Vorm: Toshiro Kanamori . In: Improving the Quality of Childhood in Europe , Volume 5, 2014
  8. ↑ University of Hiroshima 2010: 19th Prize Winner Toshiro Kanamori Professor, Faculty of Integrated Human Studies, Hokuriku Gakuin University
  9. ^ German Institute for Japanese Studies: Japanese Women's Networks and Gender Policy in the Age of Globalization.
  10. ^ Alliance for Childhood: Improving the Quality of Childhood in Europe
personal data
SURNAME Kanamori, Toshiro
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kanamori, Toshirou; 金森 俊朗 (Japanese)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Japanese educator and author
DATE OF BIRTH 1946
PLACE OF BIRTH Nanao , Ishikawa Prefecture
DATE OF DEATH March 2nd 2020