高度成長期以降における大都市部成人学校の変容 : 川崎市、名古屋市、大阪市の事例を中心に

Adult schools, social education projects that spread to urban areas throughout Japan in the early post-war period, provided relatively long courses with more systematic and advanced content compared to courses offered in Kominkans (community learning centers). I have already presented some brief studies on the development of adult schools in the early post-war period. However, systematic, datadriven historical research on adult schools during the high-growth period has not been conducted so far. This article presents a historical overview of adult schools in large cities from the late 1950s to the end of the 1980s, using the cases of Kawasaki, Nagoya and Osaka. This article examines three cases mainly from the perspectives of (i) the overview history of project forms, (ii) content of programs and number of participants, (iii) the demographics of participants (gender, age, occupations and educational background) and (iv) the positioning in municipal adult education projects. The results of the material analysis revealed the following two points; Firstly, the programs in adult schools became to place significantly more emphasis on hobby and liberal arts, while at the same time the participants became older and more female. However, there were cases such as the adult schools in Nagoya, which did not necessarily follow such a path, and it is necessary to examine this peculiarity in more detail. Secondly, various adult education projects provided by municipalities were coexisting with adult schools, and adult schools could no longer clearly claim their own position; from the 1970s onwards, various adult education projects with specialized aims started in response to the diverse learning needs of citizens. In this context, adult schools came to be positioned as the projects offering programs about hobbies and liberal arts that were not as specialized as citizens' universities. Such a positioning was not clear and unique enough to claim a coherent role as a stand-alone social education project . The above summary only illustrates partial aspects of adult schools since the high-growth period by examining several representative cases in large urban municipalities. In future studies, it will be necessary to expand the range of cases covered, and to examine these cases also from the view of relationship and group formation of participants.