比較教育学研究
Online ISSN : 2185-2073
Print ISSN : 0916-6785
ISSN-L : 0916-6785
米国メディアが伝えた幕末・明治初期の教育
日本教育情報普及のプロセスを中心に
橋本 美保
著者情報
ジャーナル フリー

2001 年 2001 巻 27 号 p. 120-138

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抄録

This is a paper attempting to analyze and interpret the process of the formation of American views of Japanese education and the distribution of these views among American citizens from the 1860s through the 1870s.There are a number of publications which have reported research on Americans'observations of Japan's education in the 1860s.Most of them have tried to understand Japanese education through American perspectives, but it is also necessary for Japanese researchers to turn around the focus by inquiring into the meanings of this information about Japan's education for Americans themselves.It should be recognized that information about Japan's education was used not only with regard to Japanese people but also by Americans for their own sake.The underlying assumption of this paper is that information regarding Japanese education was used for inspiring reform of the American public school system.To examine this assumption, I collected and analyzed materials concerning Japanese education which were published and distributed among American educators and administrators in this period.These materials include:
(1) Publications of the United States Bureau of Education: Report of Commissioner of Education, Circulars of Information of the Bureau of Education, and the International Conference on Education (Philadelphia).
(2) Official records of the Addresses and Proceedings of National Education Association (N.E.A.): The Addresses and Journal of Proceedings of the N.E.A.
(3) Educational journals: American Journal of Education, American Educational Monthly, The National Teacher, The Ohio Educational Monthly, The Pennsylvania School Journal, The New York School Journal, New-England Journal of Education.
First of all, I counted the number of publications and characterized the annual tendency of the content area of each article. Through this analysis, I discovered that American educators were interested in Japan's education much more than we had previously thought. The United States Bureau of Education was very active in collecting information on education in Japan.The educational journals were also a major channel for transmitting information on Japan's education to the United States.
Secondly, I searched for information sources with individual articles concerning Japan's education and traced the process of the transmission of information. Consequently, I found two important historical facts:First, there are two major information sources, i.e., official information which originated from the Ministry of Education and information sent by foreigners employed by the Japanese government. Second, the United States Bureau of Education is the major recepient of the information. Third, John Eaton, a Commissioner of the Bureau of Education, played a key role in collecting and distributing information about Japan's education.He built a broad channel for information exchange with Fujimaro Tanaka, Vice Minister of the Department of Education in Japan.This channel facilitated the transformation of information for both countries in two ways. His private letters to David Murray, a Superintendent of the Department of Education, indicates Eaton's unusual concern with education in Japan.It also shows that he had the intention to use information about Japan's education for formulating American educational policies. Those facts provides us with a potential interpretation of Eaton's intention that he had a desire to strengthen federal power in educational policy-making.Information processing was an important strategy for this purpose.

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