This article analyzes the curriculum of senior high schools in islands and mountainous areas in Japan. The purpose of this article is to discuss local sovereignty and learning society in the perspective of the curriculum, and how the education of senior high schools in the study region contributes to the new cooperation and public relations. With regard to the data analysis, we used the perspective of a students’ spirit of positivity in community and social capital. The background of the research is as follows. In Japan in remote areas, school knowledge was relatively irrelevant to communities and the main purpose of schools was educating students in order to send them to the cities. School knowledge is mainly based on textbooks and oriented to working in the cities. Now that depopulation has become the top issue in remote areas and it has become difficult to maintain communities, schools and communities are required to corporate in the point of changing the curriculum to create local human resources. In the study regions, which are islands and mountainous areas in Shimane Prefecture in Japan, schools try to use the local resources as elements of their curriculum. Their curriculum is thought to be Community Problem Based Learning (CPBL). In the process of CPBL, students learn the values and possibilities of communities by solving community problems caused by depopulation. Most of the students get out of the towns after graduation but are expected to come back and work as local human resources. This article focused on the social capital of seniorhigh school students in rural areas and ways toenrich them considering the relationship betweenself-sufficiency of community and the education ofsenior high schools. This study is based on our survey of 395 secondyearstudents in senior high schools located inmountainous areas and on an isolated island inShimane Prefecture. In this study we focused ontrust, norms of reciprocity, and network of socialcapital. We examined their state and problems, andalso elucidated the effect of senior high school’seducation towards them. The findings are that the students have richsocial capital in general but not enough networkin the community. Therefore, it is important thatschools enrich their network by giving opportunitiesfor having interactions between students andresidents. In addition, students’ positivity in thecommunity which CPBL aims to enrich and eachelement of social capital are highly correlated, butknowledge and social capital are not. Consequently,students need not only the gaining of knowledgefrom textbooks but also the experience of solvingcommunity problems to have positivity in thecommunity. Furthermore, it is revealed that thestudents have rich bonding social capital but poorbridging social capital. From this point of view, itis necessary for students to get opportunities tointeract with people outside their towns and learnknowledge, skills and views from them. To achievethis, the findings have important suggestions. Werevealed that the three elements of social capitalabove have weak correlations and so it is necessary to account for their effects individually. From thediscussion of our study, it is suggested that theeducation of the schools is expected to providethe students with opportunities to acknowledgeexpectations from residents and the potentialsof their effects on their towns to stimulate theircontribution consciousness and sense of pride oftheir towns.

樋田 有一郎(早稲田大学大学院/日本学術振興会特別研究員) Hida Yuichiro(Graduate School of Waseda University/Research Fellow of Japan Society for the Promotion of Science)