At a number of the discussions at CIES, the question of the history of juku came up (both the term, as well as the teaching\/school format).<\/p>\n
Victor Kobayashi (emeritus, Univ of Hawai’i, and our very gracious host for the “Enduring Contexts” discussions paralleling the 2011 AAS meetings) was particularly interested and insightful on this.<\/p>\n
He pointed out – quite correctly – that juku had a long pre-Meiji history. In fact, this is one of the important observations about supplementary education in general, i.e. what we see as a process of ‘privatization’ now is really just a ‘re-privatization’ after a century or two of the extraordinary growth of public education systems.<\/p>\n
In the context of pre-modern juku, Kobayashi pointed in particular to the use of the term \u6559\u990a (ky\u00f4y\u00f4<\/em> – erudition, refinement, Bildung<\/em>) as opposed to the Meiji neologism of \u6559\u80b2 (ky\u00f4iku<\/em> – education).<\/p>\n Numerous private educational institutions then came to be known as juku during the Meiji era, most prominently perhaps \u6176\u61c9\u7fa9\u587e (today’s Kei\u00f4 University: English History<\/a> | Japanese History<\/a>) in somewhat of a departure from premodern practice.<\/p>\n The final chapter on historical roots is the use of the term juku in postwar Japan, but that deserves a post of its own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" At a number of the discussions at CIES, the question of the history of juku came up (both the term, as well as the teaching\/school format). Victor Kobayashi (emeritus, Univ of Hawai’i, and our very gracious host for the “Enduring … Continue reading