Makiguchi Tsunesaburo and Language, Value-Creative Composition Instruction, and the Geography of Identity in Community Studies

• In Event: Roundtable Session 13
  In Roundtable Session: Value Creation and Second Language Research: Tsunesaburo Makiguchi’s and Daisaku Ikeda’s Ideas in a Global Context

Abstract

The first panelist examines Makiguchi Tsunesaburo’s (e.g., 1981-1988) philosophy and practice of human geography (jinsei chirigaku), community studies (kyodoka), and composition instruction based on “value-creating pedagogy” (soka kyoikugaku) for thinking through and responding to two competing trends intersecting language, identity, and education in the contemporary U.S.—the politicized imagining of America and increasingly ineffective critical approaches to second language education. As the politicized imagining and language policies Makiguchi faced in wartime Japan are echoed, though in substantively different form, in the contemporary U.S., the presenter draws on Makiguchi’s own words in these areas to think through and suggest ways contemporary educators can “create value” from the two aforementioned trends intersecting language, identity, and education in the U.S.
The panelist explicates Makiguchi’s approach to composition instruction, which took the classroom into the community and the community into the classroom. Thereafter, the panelist examines this approach in the context of second and foreign language instruction in a U.S. context.

Author

• Jason Goulah, DePaul University