What is Kyodogakusha?
Basic princip1e of the organization One of the biggest problems of the Japanese society today is its competitivness.
The purposes of life and value judgements are in many cases based on this principle of competition.
Many people believe that competition is an essential factor for progress.
The goal of education is to train and raise people who will value efficiency,profitablity and formality.
This competitive society naturally separates the losers from the winners.
The losers are treated as useless and unimportant.
The Japanese school education system has helped this tendency to develop. Under such circumstances,slow learners, unusual or handicapped children have hardly been treated with respect,love or care.
These children may havereceived sympathy from other “normal” ones due to their recognized as equal deformities, but they have never been recognized human beings.
Since people only make much of efficiency high results, they have lost the ability to understand and cooperate with others.
The members of Kyodogakusha have been deeply disappointed that today’s educational reality is far from what it should be.
We have also been depressed to think that in education might lead to social disaster someday‐this distortion.
Extreme attacbment to money is the second characteristic of this competitive society.
In this materially affluent socciety where we can satisfy all our needs without with our own hands and body,there are few opportunities for children to develop their creativity.
People have become automations in this contorolled society without their even noticing it.
Furthermore,today’s city life has deprived people of their chances to feel the beauty of nature.
The social welfare system.which is supposed to help people live a more human life.has not functioned well either. It has failed to check the increase of psychological and physical problems which are increasing in direct proportion to the developement of science,medicine and technology.
Moreover, welfare business itself has been controlled by the bereaucray and has made the problems even bigger.
It should not be the human way to discern and segregate the handicapped from the normal children by merely implementing an IQ test. “Welfare” should not mean “safe control”. Rather, those who are handicapped should be sought in the society.
Nobody is perfect. We should accept our incompletenses,or weakness,make full use of the abilities we have and cooperate with each ather in order to improve this society. Even thougu the reality of the Japanese society is far from being ideal, we hope to create a cooperative society through the youngsters, a society in which everybody can fully utilize the power he or she has.
We believe that the Japanese society will not be improved fundamentally unless we change our inner value judgements.
We have to prove that a cooperative society is more human than a competitive society and that the formation of such a coopertive sosiety becomes possible only when we believe that every human being is equal before God. Kyodougakusha is a group founded with these ideals and it functions as an educational society and a farming family aiming to be selfreliant.