Truth and Value in Makiguchi Tsunesaburō's Value-Creating Pedagogy: A New Current in Curriculum Studies

• In Event: Peace and Nonviolence Into Curriculum Studies: Conversations on Truth-Seeking and Troubling Truths at the Crossroads

Abstract

Purpose
Truth and value are central concepts in Japanese educator Makiguchi Tsunesaburō’s Sōka kyōikugaku taikei (The System of Value-Creating Pedagogy, 1930-34; Makiguchi, 1981-1996), and thus are central not only to Ikeda Daisaku’s influential philosophy and practice of “value-creating human education,” which Division B recognized in 2021 with its Ella Baker/Septima Clark Human Rights Award, but also to the internationally expanding field of value-creating education for global citizenship (Goulah, 2020, 2021a, 2021b; Ikeda, 2021). However, misunderstanding of what Makiguchi means by these terms persists in the Anglophone academy. This misunderstanding stems from unavailable or incomplete translations of Makiguchi’s writings and conflation with how these terms are understood and defined in the Western cannon, including for example in the work of influential pragmatic American philosopher John Dewey (Bethel, 1973, 1989; Dewey, 1916).

Framed by a new and comprehensive translation of The System of Value-Creating Pedagogy undertaken by the author and colleagues, this presentation explicates truth and value in Makiguchi’s Eastern philosophy and considers how these differ from perspectives in the work of Dewey and other pragmatists and what this means for Curriculum Studies in a politicized and post-truth world (McIntyre, 2018). For if a proper understanding of truth and value is fundamental for fully comprehending Makiguchi’s philosophy and the heritage it begat, as it certainly is, it also essential for empirically researching and applying this philosophy to effective and “worthwhile” ends in contemporary contexts (Ikeda, 2021; Schubert, 2009). This is particularly so as the theme of the 2023 AERA meeting—Interrogating Consequential Education Research in Pursuit of Truth—calls on us to reckon with questions of truth and to reconcile how truth and value shape theory, research, policy, and practice in education today. Addressing this theme, AERA president Rich Milner asks “What is truth, who decides, and from what evidence, if any, do people construct their positions about truth as they make decisions concerning education.” This presentation engages with such questions relative to Makiguchi’s expansive pedagogy and philosophies of truth and value. It seeks to properly situate this endogenous Asian approach to education in a transnational context.

Methods
Bilingual-bicultural, critical, and comparative discourse analyses (Rogers, 2004), conceptual inquiry (Nagourney, 1979), and Asia as method (Takeuchi, 1981; also Chen, 2010).

Findings
Drawing on his own classroom practice, Makiguchi distinguished truth from value, seeking to clarify the often-confused psychological processes of cognition (understanding something as it objectively is) and evaluation (determining its relevance to life). Facticity alone does not make truth meaningful to our lives, he argued. Rather, the significance of truth in our lives comes from the subjective and contingent value or meaning we create from it. Therefore, Makiguchi advocated for a pedagogical practice that helps learners create value of gain, good, and beauty—that is, aesthetically pleasing and utilitarian value that serves oneself and others. He asserted such value creation demonstrates agency and cultivates genuine, almost existential happiness, which he sees as the goal of human life and thus of education. This provides a new current and possibility in Curriculum Studies.

Author

• Jason Goulah, DePaul University
  Presenting Author