E-Journal of Philosophy of Education:
International Yearbook of the Philosophy of Education Society of Japan, Vol. 4, 2019

Teaching for the possibility of Ignorant Citizen in the Contextof Education in Japan

Shigeo KODAMAThe University of Tokyo
Abstract
Inspired by Gert Biesta’s insightful category of ignorant citizen and pedagogy of interruption, I will
discuss about the possibility of introducing these categories to citizenship education in Japan. The
Structure of my paper consists of 4 parts. First, I will discuss about the social structure of education inpost -WW2 Japan. Second, I would like to examine the transformation of post-WW2 system in Japanand refer to the shift to the political and refer to the significance of the category of Biesta’s ignorantcitizen. Third, based in the context mentioned above I would like to make it clarify how Biesta poses
the rediscovery of teaching. Fourth, I would like to make some comments to Biesta’s presentation(Biesta 2018).

1. Social structure of education in post -WW2 Japan
In the first part of this paper I will discuss about the social structure of education inpost -WW2 Japan.
Enrollment in upper secondary schools (high school for fifteen- to eighteen-yearolds in Japan) has risen from 50 percent in 1960 to over 80 percent in 1970, and to over
95 percent after the 1990s. Thus as Japan prospered economically, public upper
secondary schools accommodated nearly all potential students in Japan. In the post–Cold
War era, the social structure of education in Japan attained maturity. I believe the time is
now ripe for citizenship education.
As for the structural changes in school curriculums, there are four epochs in postWWII Japan.
First, the era of progressivism (1945–1958) saw the predominance of problem-

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S. KODAMA

solving curriculums and waning of government regulation. Second, from 1958 to 1992,
systematic principles and discipline-centered curriculums were dominant, andgovernment regulation was enforced. Third, during the “pressure-free education” (yutori)
period (1992–2008), the Japanese government reintroduced a problem-solving
curriculum, and government regulation was partly relaxed. And fourth, the “postpressure-free education” period, from 2009 to the present, is of particular interest, because
citizenship education through curriculum innovation is required to overcome thedichotomy between the discipline-centered curriculums of the development era and theproblem-solving curriculums of the current pressure-free education era.
So I think citizenship education in Japan is introduced in the very political context
after the cold war era.

2. Shift to the political
So the question is that what is the specific structural change in the Post-Cold Warera .In the second part of my presentation I will answer to this question.
In 2015 the voting age for national and local government elections was lowered to18 from 20, starting with the upper house election in the summer of 2016. This meansthat eighteen years old high school students can cast their own vote for government
election. It is a historical change in Japan.
In Japan, students had been sheltered from broader social and political movements
and circumstances and, therefore, had not had sufficient opportunity to be active
participants in the experiment of democracy. However, followed by the lowering ofvoting age to 18, Japanese government began to introduce a new type of politicaleducation, and many public schools are now trying to implement the education ofpolitical literacy focusing on the controversial issues, and mock election. This is aparadigm shift of political education from the sheltered system to the early exposuresystem.
Gert Biesta emphasizes this early exposure system by introducing the category ofignorant citizen. “The ignorant citizen is the one who is ignorant of a particular definitionof what he or she is supposed to be as a “good citizen.” The ignorant citizen is the one
who, in a sense, refuses this knowledge and, through this, refuses to be domesticated,refuses to be pinned down in a predetermined civic identity. This does not mean that theignorant citizen is completely “out of order””.(Biesta 2011:97)
Biesta challenges the traditional idea that it is possible to have a model for a good
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citizen. Rather citizenship education must draw from various sources, especially practicalexperience, to effectively influence young individuals in becoming active citizens.
According to Biesta, the ignorant citizen is a key category to break through the traditional
idea of citizenship. “Learning here is not about the acquisition of knowledge, skills,
competencies or dispositions but has to do with an ‘exposure’ to and engagement withthe experiment of democracy. It is this very engagement that is subjectifying.”(Biesta
2011:97) It seems that Biesta’s “ignorant citizen” is like citizen as cocreator, which HarryBoyte(Boyte 2004:92), citizenship theorist in US, or Hannah Arendt’s natality, thatmeans a beginning that conserves the world as new, and prevents it from beingruined.(Arendt 1958, Kodama 2006)

3. The condition of teaching beyond traditional idea of citizenship
Then I’d like to make it clear that in Biesta’s theoretical framework what is theunique characteristics of rediscovery of teaching different from other two models.
According to Biesta there is a kind of binary constructions of options, the first is theauthoritarian and traditional forms of teaching, and second is the abolition of teaching
and a turn towards learning. Then Biesta tries to pose the third option that focuses on thereconstruction of teaching along progressive line. In this section I will overview theBiesta’s formulation on these three options.(Biesta 2018)
At the first option, the authoritarian and traditional forms of teaching, teacher speaks
and control students, then students are supposed to listen and absorb information.
At the second option, teacher only exists as a facilitator of autonomous learningprocesses. Such a learner-centered approach could be explained as the image of the robot
vacuum cleaner. Like robot vacuum cleaner learners adapt to their environment in an
intelligent way without any intervention from the outside, without any direct intervention
from a teacher. Signification of the world by learner is, as Levinas criticizes, assumed to
be an act of accomplishment by pre-existence of the ego-logical self.
A third option focuses on the reconstruction of teaching along progressive lines
which is missing in both the first and second option. By introducing Levinas, Biesta
redefines the role of the teacher as interlocutor. From this point of view, Signification is
not an ego-logical accomplishment, but it derives its sense from the event or an encounter
with another being, and Other does not appear as object of signification, but asinterlocutor. Here the account of teaching is not aimed at control, at the exercise of power
and the establishment of an order in which student can only exist as object, but rather
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calls for the subject-ness of student by interrupting its egocentrism.
For example, in September 2018, 6th grade elementary school students from Kijima
Daira elementary school in Nagano prefecture came to the University of Tokyo and madepresentation of their results of comprehensive learning to University of Tokyo students.
This scene could be regarded as a typical example of learner-centered model which is
popular among active learning boom. But different from TED, the role of lecturer andlistener is not fixed, and every participant was talking, explaining, and questioning witheach other, and different from robot vacuum cleaner, students were not existing as an egological self. They are interrupted from the outside of their own community, and exposed
to other community and other public world. I think it is this point that Biesta’s model ofcitizenship education as focusing on ignorant citizen encounters his rediscovery ofteaching.

4. Some comments
At the last section I will pose some comments to Biesta’s presentation.
My first comment is who takes an initiative of interruption. According to Levinas
in the moment of interruption consciousness is challenged by the face. So subject-ness as
an ignorant citizen is challenged and decentered in response to Other, so initiative is nottaken by subject, but by other person. On the other hand as Biesta wrote in other article(Biesta 2015), Hannah Arendt says that initiative is a key category for the beginning andrenewing of the public world. So in the Arendtian view point only under the condition ofplurality where action is to be understood as a combination of initiatives it is possible foreveryone to act as citizens. So there is an issue of who takes an initiative at the pedagogyof interruption.
Inspired by Jacques Rancière, Biesta poses the category of teaching as dissensus.
According to Biesta the idea of teaching as dissensus can be said to interrupt a logic ofchild’s development or student growth. If so, teaching as dissensus can be understood as
an example of a breakthrough of pedagogy of interruption which has a kind of problemof the subject of taking initiative. In teaching as dissensus, who takes an initiative is nolonger a major problem. Rather, the problem is the heterogeneity inherent in eachbeginning.
Levinas tends to privilege the precedent nature of others. In contrast, Arendt tends
to privilege the precedent nature of subject with initiatives. The criticism of "imperialism"of the self, brought up by Biesta, and its decentralization are going to get over these
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Teaching for the possibility of Ignorant Citizen in the context of Education in Japan69

privileges, and it is at this point that teaching as dissensus and the idea of ignorant citizen
encounter with each other.

References
Hannah Arendt, 1958 The Human Condition, Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Gert J.J. Biesta, 2006 Beyond Learning, Paradigm
Gert J.J. Biesta, 2010 Good Education in an Age of Measurement, ParadigmGert J.J. Biesta, 2011 Learning Democracy in School and Society, Sense Publishers
Gert J.J. Biesta, 2013 The Beautiful Risk of Education, Paradigm
Gert J.J. Biesta, 2015 “Democracy in the kindergarten：Helping young children to beat home in the world”, in Demokratiske praksiser i barnehagen, Fagbokforlaget
Gert J.J. Biesta, 2017 The Rediscovery of Teaching, Routledge
Gert J.J. Biesta, 2018 “Teaching for the Possibility of Being Taught: World-Centered
Education in an Age of Learning” A paper prepared for presentation at theInternational Symposium, “Rethinking Teaching: Toward the Reconstruction of(Philosophy of) Education” at The ６１st Annual Conference of Philosophy ofEducation Society of Japan, Yamanashi Gakuin Junior College,2018.10.7.
Harry Boyte, 2004, Every day Politics, University of Pennsylvania Press
Shigeo Kodama, 2006 “Rethinking Hannah Arendt in the Context of Politics in 1990’s
Japan: Focusing on Arendt’s Critique of Karl Marx,” in Research Monograph:
Studies of Human Development from Birth to Death, Ochanomizu University 21st
COE Program
Shigeo Kodama, 2010, “Book Review: CITIZENSHIP: A VERY SHORTINTRODUCTION, RICHARD BELLAMY (2008)”, in Citizenship Teaching andLearning, Volume 6 Number 1
Shigeo Kodama, 2014 “Higher Education and Political Citizenship: The Japanese Case”,
in Harry Boyte(ed.), Democracy's Education: Public Work, Citizenship, and theFuture of Colleges and Universities, Vanderbilt Univ Press, 2014.12., pp.221-225

E-Journal of Philosophy of Education: International Yearbook of the Philosophy of Education Society of Japan, Vol. 4, 2019