Mr.Morikoshi.President of JTU,greeting at the Plenary meeting of the 56th NCER.

Mr.C.W.Nicol,giving the memorial lecture

Composition play "the wind from Hijyudai"

Thank you very much for coming here, Beppu City, Oita Prefecture, from all over the country. Also I would like to express my sincere appreciation to the guests of honor, including Mr. Tsuyoshi Takagi, President of Rengo - Japanese Trade Union Confederation, Mr. Akihiro Umeda, Director of the Japan National Council of PTAs, and Mr. Hiroshi Hamada, honorable mayor of Beppu City, for taking time to take part in our meeting.

I would like to talk about a British article about the national test scheme under the National Curriculum in the country. It was translated into Japanese by Mr. Seiji Fukuta, member of the JTU Institute for Education and Culture, which is published on the website of the Institute.

This is an article by the BBC, a British broadcasting corporation, published on 12 October 1998. A mother, Tracey Jervis, says that her seven-year-old daughter, Chloe, would be awake at night, sweating, crying and shouting. "She would shout: 'Mum, my work's no good'... I went in to take her in [school] one day and you could see she didn't want to go to school, couldn't go to school".

The article reports that a preliminary survey commissioned by the BBC revealed alarming levels of stress in seven-year-olds who took national tests, manifested in crying, feeling sick and tired of as well as refusing to work. As many as ten years have passed since the national test scheme was introduced through the Thatcher reform in 1988, and finally we have come to notice its serious impacts on children.

Thereafter the press in the United Kingdom has regularly covered the topic. A primary school head, who had suffered from pressures of governmental league tables and financial problems, was arrested for having changed children's test seats and filled the answers himself (BBC News, 9 April 2003). In another primary school, the head was disciplined for having allowed cheating (BBC News, 25 April 2003).

90% of the school heads feel stressed and anxious while they are at school. 28% fell stressed all the time, and two-thirds have taken time off because of illness. More than 1,200 state schools are operating without a head, who is difficult to recruit, which affects more than 500,000 students. One in four heads say they would consider leaving their jobs if the working conditions would remain the same (The Independent, 29 April 2006).

The results of the national tests have become worse, forcing the Minister of Education to drop the target. Martin Johnson, head of education of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers of the Conservative Party, states: "Too much school time is being devoted to passing tests, leaving children bored and unmotivated. The Government needs to ... stop this over-testing before another generation of children are lost to learning" (The Independent, 25 August 2006).

And the General Secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers reported as follows: "Take Finland for example, a country with the most successful schools in the world, no SATs no league tables, ... and every school trusted to find its own solutions. But we don't have to travel that far - here are no KS2 league tables in Wales, or Northern Ireland, or Scotland - so why have we retained them in England?"

Mr. Fukuta comments as follows: Recent years have witnessed a sharp increase in the opposition from British teachers. Some twenty years after the Thatcher reform, schools are organized in a discriminatory manner, and "difficult schools" or "underclass schools" are disrupted without the possibility of recruiting teachers. Nevertheless, many parents support the scheme. The achievement-oriented national test scheme, which appeared to be coming to the perfection after twenty years, has been throwing into a chaos since the beginning of the year 2007.

What did Prime Minister Abe learn from the British experience? These reports reveal the true picture of what is called "Thatcher reform", which has devastated education with the principles of competition and control at the cost of enormous time and energy. On the other hand, the worldwide reputation of education in Finland is said to be an outcome of drawing on the spirits of Japan's Fundamental Law of Education, promulgated in 1947, which sought for "esteem[ing] individual value" and "cultivating a spontaneous spirit". The situation of education in Finland is outlined in Mr. Fukuta's books, To the Top of the World Even without Competition and To the Top of the World by Giving Up Competition.

The Fundamental Law of Education, which has been an ideal for many countries in the world and formed a basis of Japan's Children Charter as well as the Convention on the Rights of the Child, was a treasure of our country. It was buried under the sod, however, through the forceful adoption of the amendments by the government and the ruling parties. The revised law is likely to be as devastating as the Thatcher reform, making children, parents, teachers and school staff deeply anxious. We would definitely continue our practices toward education on the basis of 'respect for the dignity of the individual', being 'directly responsible to the whole people' instead of being 'subject to improper control', the noble goals of the original Fundamental Law of Education.

Politicians, who are obedient to the United States and the executives of big enterprises and who love neither the country nor the people, are loudly speaking about an "attitude of love toward one's country". Their policies have led to the expansion of discrepancies and the sufferings among vulnerable people, making Japan an "ill-shapen country". Nevertheless, the Prime Minister only repeats the flatulent phrase "a beautiful country" and attempts to play with education, aggravating the devastation of both the country and its education.

At the National Commission on Educational Reform, the centerpiece of the Abe Cabinet, they are involved in casual and hit-or-miss discussions, without facing up to what is happening at school. They demand more teaching hours or a get-tough approach to bullies; but we have no idea what kind of education in which country they have in mind. When we talk about educational reform, it is necessary to undertake extensive review of the relevant materials and practices, so that we can analyze and evaluate the actual situation with a view to identifying problems and their causes. There is no sign that the members of the National Commission are involved in discussions on the basis of the outcomes of such review. They are just doing a gab show, only talking about their own experiences and private views. After all, they will say no more than what the Cabinet wants them to say. If this is to be called "Japan's educational reform", it is virtually equivalent to declaring, to the peoples in and outside the country, that there are neither pedagogy nor educationalists in Japan.

The Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare recently stated, "Women are birth-giving machines". This kind of remark is linked to the awareness that "children are instruments for the state", that "teachers are teaching machines for them" and that workers are "machines that can be scrapped" at the convenience of corporations and employers. They are treating the people not as human beings but as disposable machines. It illustrates the essence of the policies pursued by those in power so far, based on the law of jungle, market principles and competitiveness, as is reflected in the phenomena of bullying, suicide, NEET, irregular employment, wage reduction, employment adjustment, cutbacks on welfare and health services, tax increases targeted on the poorer people and so on.

Our National Conference started at Nikko in November 1951, and this is the 56th meeting. Teachers' unions in other countries had wondered: "It is the responsibility of the educational authorities to undertake studies on teaching. Why does JTU organize your own studies by bothering to use the membership fees?" I had an impression that the mainstream of European and American trade unions simply thought that "labour is a means to earn living", not caring about the quality of work very much.

In December 2006, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) was formed, which is the organization representing the international labour movement, with 168 million members from 154 countries. The underlying principle of the movement is "decent work", work that one can be proud of and is rewarding. The International Labour Organization (ILO), composed of governments, employers and workers, focuses on decent work and work-life balance. These trends warn against the aggravation of the commercialization of labour, through which workers are treated inhumanely and thrown away, which is not in the interests of, not only of workers, but also of employers and the whole society.

We are proud of what we are doing as a form of decent work, and are determined to think, be moved and develop along with children. For this purpose, we should be prepared to learn from our colleagues, teachers, school staff and union members, as well as from parents and local communities. I had met a young member of JTU, who had taken part in the National Conference but said he would never go. When I asked why, he responded that he felt frightened and awful at what had happened there: when practice reports and comments were not in line with the particular ideologies, speakers were not only treated indifferently but also scorched.

Indeed, when I was young, there were speakers who scrambled for microphones or who ignored interventions by the moderators at the National Conferences. While I believe it is not the case nowadays, the mass media sometimes point out that the National Conferences would remain closed to the people if the discussions are oriented to the inner circle. Last year, Mr. Maejima, President of the local steering committee of the National Conference in Mie Prefecture, regretted that he could not make the meeting open to the people. The immediate reason for this is that we have to ensure strict security against rightist groups that rush to the venues, making it necessary to close the doors to the public. Nevertheless, if this leads to an impression that the discussions at the National Conferences are hard to understand for the participants from outside the union or the general public, it will be more likely that JTU is labeled as "a group with sectarian ideologies". Our movement will expand only when we can give out messages that are easy to understand.

We shall cooperate with each other for the success of the 56th National Conference on Educational Research here in Oita Prefecture, so that each participant can feel, "It was good to see many peers", "I'm encouraged to go on with my educational practices" or "I want to come again, next time with my colleagues". This year is the 60th anniversary of the establishment of JTU as well as the entry into force of the Constitution. I would like to share, with all of you, the significance of the fact that we can organize the National Conference here in Oita on this memorable year.

Finally, I would like to express my sincere appreciation to all the people involved: to Oita Prefectural Teachers Union, Oita High School Teachers Union, other prefectural trade unions and relevant organizations, for having been involved in the long preparations and concrete tasks for the organization of the present National Conference and for their sensible attention to all the details; to the Oita Prefectural Office as well as to the Oita Prefectural Board of Education and other educationalists; and to all the other people who care for us in terms of accommodations, logistics, security and other matters. We are committed to contribute to the development of the local economy to the possible extent and to take back best practices to schools and communities all over the country. Thank you for your attention.

We have undertaken educational activities on the basis of the Constitution of Japan and the original Fundamental Law of Education, in different parts of the country, with a view to establishing democratic education conducive to the preservation of peace and the adherence to truth. A total of 12,000 people from all over the country got together in Oita Prefecture to hold the 56th JTU National Conference on Educational Research, bringing their own experiences acquired through these practices.

At the plenary session, local children, teachers and community people performed a chorus play, A Wind from Hijudai, taking up the issue of the largest war-gaming site in Kyushu. The participants reaffirmed the slogan of JTU, "Never Send Our Children Again to Battlefields". Mr. C. W. Nicol gave a memorial lecture under the title of "What Nurtures Forests", encouraging teachers who are involved in daily educational activities in the belief in children's potentials.

Reports from the participants highlighted how teachers and school staff are addressing the situation in which the right of the child to learn in security is violated through bullying, abuse and neglect and other problems, while at the same time wondering how they should face with children. We affirmed that "get-tough" approaches and other haphazard measures do not lead to the fundamental solution of the problems; what is required is the practice of human rights education, telling children that "no one deserves being bullied".

All of the workshops took up the issue of "academic skills" as a common thread at the present National Conference. In contrast to the idea that "academic skills" will improve by increasing teaching hours and by having children compete with each other in terms of the amount of knowledge, we affirmed that "enriching academic skills" that children should be equipped with will develop through "collaborative learning" with peers; such experience is also conducive to the formation of better civil society.

As is illustrated by the enforcement of the revised Fundamental Law of Education as well as the move of the National Commission on Educational Reform, education policies are increasingly oriented to the reinforcement of market principles, competitiveness as well as state control and powers. The move to amend wrongly the Constitution is being accelerated, too.

We shall undertake educational practices on the basis of the principles of peace, human rights and coexistence, with a view to realizing the philosophies of the Constitution and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and pursue bottom-up educational reform with children, parents and communities.

12 February 2007
The 56th National Conference on Educational Research,
Japan Teachers' Union