Pragmatic Educational Theory And Practice Of Modern Japan

In modern history, the development course of Japanese education is verynoticeable. Paying attention to education is one of the deep-seated reasons ofJapanese realization of the modernization. It helped Japanese to realize the rise ofnation and become the only country of industrialization and independence in Asianin half a century, but this cost European countries one hundred and fifty years.Pragmatism education thought is one of the mainstream ideas, which is used to guidethe development of education in Japanese modern history. This thesis emphasized onJapanese pragmatism education thought. At first this thesis arranged research at thesource of theory and development courses of Japanese modern pragmatismeducation thought and explored the content thought of the theory from a historicallongitudinal dimension. Secondly, it analyzed the interaction between thoughts andeducation development from the horizontal dimension. It tried to summarizetheoretical features, historical influence and the influence of the Chinese educationdevelopment of Japanese modern pragmatism education thought.Besides the introduction and conclusion, this thesis includes four partssurrounding these questions.Tne first part maily discusses the modern Japanese pragmatism educationthought theory origin. There is three main sources of Japanese pragmatism educationthought theory in the history perspective: the real learning tradition in the Edo period,the Western Learning in the end of Mumo period and the modern pragmatismeducation thought in Europe and America. This paper analyzes the common points ofthe three and deduces the Japanese pragmatism education thought about political andeconomy practicality thought origin. In order to describe the multi-source complexcharacteristics of pragmatism education thought.The second part discusses the froming and basic characteristics of the modern Japanese pragmatism education thought. The former mainly carries on the historicalfacts and illustrates the Japanese illuminative educators had certain misreading andselective acceptance in the beginning, as a result of historical and the reality reason.They did not implement the ideas of pragmatism education to the end andsubjectively selected the good parts which was for Japanese modernization, so thepragmatic educational theory lost humanistic value. The latter takes the thoughts ofFukuzawa yukichi and Sen youli as sample and analyzes them, at the same timesummarizes the characteristics of Japanese pragmatism education thought theory.The third and fourth parts mainly discuss the major performance of the modernpragmatism education thought in educative practice and the influence betweeneducation practice and pragmatism education thoughts. The thesis analyzes therelationship among the pragmatism education thought and the loyalty and patriotismeducation view, militarism education view, technicism education view. It alsoanalyzes relations among the three and discusses the ties--increasinglyinstrumentalized trend of pragmatism education thought in the education practice. Sothat the core idea of this article: the modern Japanese pragmatism education thoughtpromotes the rapid development of Japan, but over-emphasis on practicality andinstrumental of education. So the education loses the independent value pursuit anddoes not form the correct value proposition, posing a huge hazard to Japanese futureeducation.The theory source of Japanese modern pragmatism education thought is comefrom the pragmatism education theory in the Edo era and the modern pragmatismeducation thought in Europe and America. The modern Japanese thinkers createdcharacteristic and local Japanese education thought, basing on European andAmerican modern pragmatism education thought and combing Japanese practicaltradition. However, being limited by Modern domestic and internationalenvironment, Japan made a selective reference on European and American modernpragmatism education thought, taking pragmatism guiding principle and abandoningthe democracy and liberalism values. This leaded to emphasis on effectiveness andpracticality and neglected the pursuit of developing the soul and personality. As a result, Japan’s modern education didn’t assume the proper mission of developing theindependent national character and lost the independent value of education. Itbecome the accessories of political and economic demand. It cannot be denied thatJapanese modern pragmatism education thought played an active role in the rapidrise of Japan, but without value pursuit in education can not afford persistentmotivator for Japanese development. Japan was involved in a state of stagnancy,after completing emulate of West. It still has significant reference for Chineseeducation.