Moral Education in Japan The Coming of a New Dawn, Abe s New Moral Education

Abstract

This thesis studies the current debate surrounding moral education in Japan, choosing to focus on the criticism of the Abe administration s proposed educational reform. Moral education has received criticism for being overly nationalistic, being too similar to its pre-war iteration, and for supposedly brainwashing children. A majority of this criticism has been centered on the new textbook, Watashitachi no Doutoku. Its predecessor, Kokoro no Nooto, raised similar concerns and critics fear a worsening of the situation. The Abe administration has also proposed that moral education should be elevated from an area study to official curriculum , meaning that teachers will have less autonomy in the running of the class and be legally obligated to use the Ministry of Education s textbook, Watashitachi no Doutoku. This thesis investigates the legitimacy of this criticism in light of moral education s history, an analysis of the former and current moral education textbooks, and a possible disparity between the Ministry of Education s curricular guidelines and the actual pedagogical classroom practices. This is accomplished by combining an analysis of Ministry of Education s curricular guidelines, criticism of the former textbook Kokoro no Nooto and observations made over the course of five months at an elementary school in Tokyo.