Thinking About Love, Justice, and Education Through Dialogue and Harmonious Community: Makiguchi, Toda, and Ikeda in the Evolution of Soka Educational Alternatives in Japan and Internationally

• In Event: Separation of School and (Corporate) State? Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Love, Justice, and Education

Abstract

Jason Goulah will portray a protest movement in Japan spurred by Tsunesaburo Makiguchi (1981-1988), a progressive teacher, curriculum developer, and principal, who was imprisoned by the militaristic regime leading to World War II and died of starvation in prison. Makiguchi’s student, Josei Toda, and Toda’s student Daisaku Ikeda (1995, 2001, 2006, 2010, & 2011) have continued and diversified the trajectories of Makiguchi, and have developed a host of publications and practical projects that advocate educational transformation through dialogue on love, peace, and human rights. Clearly, the loving relationship, in this work, is implicit if not explicit in the ideal of a dialogic civilization (Tu Weiming and Ikeda, 2011). Connections among central ideas of Makiguchi, Toda, Ikeda, Dewey, Francis Parker, Mikhail Bakhtin, Lev Vygotsky, and others will be explored in addressing and moving toward this ideal (see Goulah, 2009a, 2009b, 2010, and Goulah & Gebert, 2009). Soka Schools and Soka Universities can be studied as instances of multicultural curricula and global humaninsm that transcend or evade boundaries of the corporate state; similarly, Ikeda’s advocacy for peace and global cooperation over the years through many non-governmental organizations (NGOs), the United Nations and myriad peace organizations, and through more than seventy published book-length dialogues with noted scholars and leaders around the world. Such work illustrates the power of dialogue as a fluid educational and curricular venue that can occur in many settings without reliance on authoritarian education fostered by most corporate states. Moreover, it even may hold promise to re-educate those who support corporate states through curricula of value creation and humanitarianism.

Author

• Jason Goulah, DePaul University