A Study on Community-Based Environmental Education in Japan

<p> This study focuses on the works of Sadahiko Fujioka and Toshio Nakauchi in 1970s and 80s Japan and aims to clarify their ideas as community-based environmental education.  Firstly, the commonality and difference in their conception on education were discussed.  Then, the differences in their ideas on environmental education were demonstrated.  Lastly, I examined how these differences were embodied and how the different ways of “community-based” were realized in several practices.  Both Fujioka and Nakauchi’s ideas include a philosophy that the lives of students be reflected in education by being “community-based”.  And then the reflection of students’ lives link to the reforming of school education.  However, both who should be the subject and what should be the object of school reformation differ between Fujioka and Nakauchi’s ideas.  For Fujioka, community is important both in terms of guaranteeing students’ human-formation and in terms of adult learning, including all who live in this community.  The practice of environmental education is a collaborative effort among various agencies in the community.  And when school education is reconsidered, it is not only about the content of school education, but also about education systems and facilities.  For Nakauchi, on the other hand, the community is a place where students can experience social and natural phenomena through abundant materials, and it is important to examine whether the current educational objectives of school education are effective as conceptual filters.  In this way, both Fujioka’s and Nakauchi’s ideas on environmental education are characterized as a critical perspective on school education.  Therefore, environmental education is more than a type of activity or a single curriculum; it is a principle of rethinking school education.</p>