일본의 <도덕> 교과서와 내셔널리즘 - <수신>에서 <도덕>으로, 그리고 현재의 중학교 <도덕> 검정 교과서 -

Abstract

In 2018, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology(MEXT) in Japan specified “Dōtoku (morality)” as a “special subject” in the national curriculum. This process means that moral education must be based on MEXT-approved textbooks and that students must be evaluated and graded in accordance with these textbooks. This move can be viewed as a revival of “Shūshin (= Moral Education)” of prewar Japan as well as an elevation of “Dōtoku (morality)”, which had been an “extracurricular activity” in postwar Japan. The nation-led Shūshin, based on the imperial Rescript on Education, which emphasized “loyalty to the emperor and patriotism”, was abolished after the war by the General Headquarters of the Allied Forces (GHQ), which regarded it as militaristic education. That form of moral education, which had been taboo in postwar Japan, revived as an “extracurricular activity” called Dōtoku, under the second revision of the Course of Study of the MEXT in 1958. This subject, Dōtoku, was nothing but an “extracurricular activity”, and the materials used were not textbooks but supplementary readers. Then, nearly sixty years later, in 2018, Dōtoku, which had been an extracurricular activity, was formally re-specified as a “special subject” that involves classroom instructions and student evaluations. In this paper, I first analyze the historical transition from Shūshin to Dōtoku, and then delve into the content of current junior high school Dōtoku textbooks. This analysis reveals that what underlies the subject Dōtoku in interaction with the structure of these present-day textbooks is the “Course of Study” specified by the MEXT. What is particularly emphasized in the Course of Study is a “consciousness of being Japanese” and “patriotism”. These two elements were also central to the objectives of Japanese education in prewar Shūshin and postwar Dōtoku as an “extracurricular activity”.