...............http://www.kinokuni.net

and

http://www.cypress.ne.jp/kinokuni/eindex.html

KINOKUNI CHILDREN'S VILLAGE SCHOOL

 

TEL 0736-33-3370 FAX 0736-33-3043

E-Mail kinokuni@cypress.ne.jp

 

( See also http://www.cypress.ne.jp/kinokuni/index.html, where it says,

 

Kinokuni Children's Village

 

The name is long, but it's a tiny free school in the mountain area in Wakayama. Roughly two hundred boys and girls, from six to eighteen, are living happy lives in the school. Three-quarters of them are boarders, because they come from all over Japan. The school puts strong stress on child initiative, individuality, and "learning by doing". Due to its unique policies like mixed-age classes and project-centred curriculum, it has attracted more than one thousand visitors every year.

 

A.S. Neill writes, "Possibly Summerhill is the happiest school in the world." We know that Kinokuni is the happiest school, in Japan at least.

........................................

 

See also "Kinokuni Children's Village: a Child's View" -

three interviews by John Potter of his son Akira,

a boarding student at the school)

 

And here is my account of Hori Shinichiro's wonderful, happy school on the mountaintop!

Love, Mary Leue

 

John Potter, who first made me aware of Kinokuni, is a member of the Faculty of Social Welfare at Kogakkan University in Nabari, in Mie Prefecture in Japan where (among other things) he teachesJapanese students to think innovatively about the philosophy, mores and implications of learning as a tool for cultural identity. Before he moved to the new university campus in Nabari, he had taught in Kobe, where he also had worked with Japanese students to open their minds to new ways of learning. And before that, he taught at the City University in Osaka, where Hori was also teaching.

 

In the past, John had taught for several years at Summerhill School in England before moving to Japan, and is still a committed believer in the work and educational philosophy of A. S. Neill, founder and head of Summerhill throughout his lifetime. He has written many critiques of the nature of traditional Japanese education, including reference to incidents involving particularly violent treatment of students by their teachers. John is married to Midori, who is Japanese, and Akira is their son.

I visited the Potters in 1998, and spent a full day at Kinokuni, where Akira was enrolled as a student, and received a very favorable impression of the school. Like my English friend David Gribble, whose school Sands I had also visited on the same trip, I draw much of my sense of the authenticity (or its lack) of a school from the students. Judged on this basis, Kinokuni was a real school! - the children were active, curious, friendly, totally wrapped up in what they were doing, and clearly self-motivated! Of their lessons, what I can say is that every classroom I passed was filled to the brim with busy, laughing, fully engaged children hard at their work of learning their school lessons, and clearly enjoying themselves to the max! Their teachers seemed equally involved, and still took out a moment to bow and smile at me as I passed their doors.

 

I know that some of this friendly response must have come right out of ordinary Japanese social good manners - but by no means all! Hori's intuitive mix of Neill and Dewey seemed to me tailor-made for Japanese culture at its best! I found this insight so moving that I could have stayed right on and become a full-time member of the school myself. We Americans have much to learn from this happy mix, I believe.

 

I spent time in class with Hori's language students, a group of boys and girls clustered around ten years of age, and was impressed by those same qualities of attention as they listened to my narrative about my own school, then asked questions of me - sometimes in simple English, sometimes translated by Hori into Japanese. The questions they asked were pertinent and sometimes searching, indicating the quality of their attention to what I was saying.

 

I was particularly delighted by my experience of eating in the lunchroom, which was a wonderful experience, socially, gastronomically, aesthetically. The children, left entirely to their own choices of food and of companionship, were sociable, relaxed and clearly enjoying their lunch! And the food was gourmet in quality, having been freshly prepared by a local chef!

 

I watched a soccer game toward the end of the school day and was equally impressed. Children of all ages played the game together, yet there was no hazing or criticism of the younger by the older students. The game was intense, well-played and keenly competitive, yet had the same qualities as the lunchroom atmosphere - spontaneous enthusiasm, self-motivation and enjoyment.

 

In 1997 John described Kinokuni as follows, in an article he wrote for my journal SKOLE, the Journal of Alternative Education:

 

Kinokuni (known as Kinokuni Kodomo no Mura in Japanese) was founded by Shinichiro Hori and a group of supporters in April 1992 and is a 'modified model' of Summerhill School. It bases its philosophy on a combination of the ideas of A.S. Neill and John Dewey. Consequently, it is a boarding school with voluntary lessons and a form of self-government through weekly General Meetings, as at Summerhill. To this framework has been added a great deal of experiential learning through project work&emdash;the 'learning by doing' advocated by Dewey. It is a private school and the first of its kind to be granted recognition by the Japanese Ministry of Education. Kinokuni began as a primary school, taking children from the ages of six to 12. Since April 1994 it has expanded through the addition of a junior high school section where children may continue for a further three years until the age of 15. In March 1997 there were a total of 140 children at the school, 101 of them in the primary school section. Including part-timers, the teaching staff numbers 18 and there are seven houseparents. The school is situated high in the mountains above the town of Hashimoto and is accessible only by a narrow winding single track road. The majority of the pupils, like Akira, are weekly boarders. This means that they arrive at the school on Monday mornings and go home for the weekends after classes on Friday afternoons. A smaller number of children who live within a reasonable distance of the school are day pupils. Some pupils who live in further flung areas of Japan stay on at the school for the whole term or, perhaps, return only occasionally during the school term.

 

I wrote John in early January, 2003, asking for an update and pictures for inclusion here. He replied:

6th January 2003.

 

Dear Mary,

 

You asked about something on Kinokuni Children's Village for your website, so I'm enclosing an article I wrote for the Japanese monthly magazine Kansai Time Out in 1995. The interview part with Hori was also used by Lib Ed in England in 1997. The basic facts and information about Kinokuni remain the same. What might be added as an afterword is the following paragraph from an article I wrote in 1999 called 'A. S.Neill's Influence on Alternatives in Education':

 

The opening of Kinokuni was reported in the British press, but with some puzzlement as it came at a time when radical ideas in education had reached a particularly low ebb in Britain. Contact with the local people of Leiston by members of the Surnmerhill community is relatively slight and the school has been viewed by some critics as an isolated community. To an extent this is inevitable, given the variety of cultures and backgrounds represented there, its uncompromisingly radical philosophy, and the general climate of hostility towards 'free' education which has existed in Britain over at least the past decade.

 

The situation in Japan for Kinokuni is quite different. This may be partly due to the newness of Kinokuni and its novelty, together with a certain lack of appreciation of the implications for education. It has certainly, however, been welcomed by the little village of Hikotani and its neighbouring population, many of whom continued to attend the school's sports day and festivities as guests of Kinokuni in October 1998. In addition a group of disabled people from a neighbouring institution were also visitors and took part in many of the sports activities. A similar occurrence involving Summerhill and the people of Leiston would be hard to imagine. At the least, this does indicate that in Japan there is currently much more receptivity for new ideas involving freedom in education than there is in Britain. This can be evidenced in the calls by many in Japanese society for a relaxation of the rigid emphasis on rote learning and preparation for examinations,

 

It is not unreasonable to suppose that the Education Ministry's recent plans to allow an element of project work into schools in Japan in the future was prompted partly by the success of Kinokuni. More concretely, Kinokuni itself has expanded to encompass a junior and senior high school. The total number of children at the school in September 1998 was more than double the number at Surnmerhill, and in addition, a second school named Katsuyama Children's Village Primary School (Katsuyama Kodomo no Mura Shogakko) was opened in April 1998 in Katsuyama-shi, Fukui Prefecture and has at present 30 pupils."

 

At the present time (2003) Kinokuni continues along the same path and both the Wakayama school and the second school in Katsuyama are thriving, the Katsuyama school having now added a junior high school section. Kinokuni Children's Village has now celebrated its tenth year of existence and its effect on the mainstream Japanese education system can be seen in the fact that project work was recently introduced into the general curriculum of all schools in Japan. Unfortunately, this has not come without some opposition and the amount of time allocated for it in the rigid curriculum is relatively small.

 

The most recent development at Kinokuni has been that Hori has bought the premises occupied by the late John Aitkenhead's school, Kilquhanity House, in Scotland. The Kinokuni students pay regular trips to Scotland to use the school there.

 

It was not like that in the beginning. The first year of the school was marked by controversy, reported skeptically - and inaccurately - in The Japan Times.

From THE JAPAN TIMES for 4th May, 1993:

 

IDEALISM SEEN AS CASUALTY

AT FREE SCHOOL

by Cameron Hay

 

First year marked by firings, dissent, clash with traditional approach

 

Hashimoto, Wakayama Prefect:  

 

In a society that offers few second chances for those who slip off the education conveyor belt, parents enrolling children in a new alternative school may feel they are sending them on a bungee jump. Yet before Japan's first officially approved so-called elementary free school opened here last year, founder Shinichiro Hori had 90 children whose parents placed their faith In his philosophy of learning through doing.

 

In the first year of Kinokuni Children's Village, that faith has been severely tested. Six members of staff have resigned or were fired and one attempted suicide on campus. Last month Hori, a professor at Osaka City University of Education, stepped down from his official position of headmaster. But he will continue to teach at Kinokuni.

 

Troubles at the school demonstrate just how entrenched the traditional approach to education is in Japan, and how difficult it will be to formulate a cohesive alternative. Before opening Kinokuni, Hori convinced parents, and the local education board, that students could learn the standard curriculum while doing specially devised projects that would also cultivate their creativity and Individuality.

 

However, as the first semester approached last year, a number of teachers, who had left existing schools to join Kinokuni, wanted to revert partly to traditional teaching methods for the core subjects of math and Japanese. "You can't just rely on projects at a real school. There are some good things in traditional methods. For example, it makes sense to learn easy kanji first and work up to harder ones. We wanted the kids to learn them in this order,' said Akihiro Tsuji, a dormitory master who was fired last August.

 

Hori has declined comment on last year's problems, except to say there were differences of opinion. But he refused to discuss curriculum and methods with other teachers, insisting on strictly applying "free school" theory, according to Tsuji.

 

"Desks at Kinokuni aren't giving kids freedom. When some teachers put them back in rows, Hori criticized them," Tsuji said, "but the kids asked for the desks to be lined up because they said it was easier to concentrate. Now which is real freedom?" Hori argued, however, that these students, who were in the fourth-year level, had already been influenced by time at traditional schools.

 

Teachers and parents who remain at Kinokuni say the school was built to apply free school teaching methods, not to be a watered-down appendage to the existing system. These differences were exacerbated by disputes over pay and conditions. Last August, Tsuji and four teachers were sacked, allegedly for incompetence, in Tsuji's case, and grumpiness on the part of the teachers. According to Tsuji, the real reason was their opposition to Hori. Soon afterward, Tsuji attempted suicide. He declined comment on the incident.

 

Students writing in the school newspaper expressed surprise over the decision, saying the teachers were friendly and popular and noting Hori had made a mistake, said Solchiro Ohata, 12, one of the editors.

Living in the dorm was fun, but, to be honest, the teaching method wasn't that good. I'd like them to increase the kanji and maths lessons," said Ohata, who now studies at home.

 

Ohata's father, Kichiro, said Kinokuni's main attraction was the social development it offered a child. But Hori's imperious approach and refusal to discuss the sackings with parents had led the father to pull his son from the school. "I lost faith in Hori as a person,' he said. Over the year, 18 children left Kinokuni, though not all for reasons connected with problems with the school. Ohata said his son's academic progress had not matched that of a child in a standard school, a point supported by the mother of a girl still at Kinokuni, who asked not to be identified.

 

*We can't expect to see results in just one year,* the mother said. 'Anyway, my reason for choosing Kinokuni was to allow my girl to become a well-rounded, happy individual. And I believe this place can do that better than a traditional school.'

 

4th May, 1993.

John Potter wrote as follows to The Times objecting to the lack of objectivity of the reporter:

To The Japan Times:

Dear Editor,

I am writing in response to an article which appeared in the Japan Times of 4th May entitled "Idealism seen as casualty at free school". The piece, on Kinokuni Children's Village in Wakayama, presented a number of criticisms of the school. These were almost exclusively the complaints of just one ex-member of staff and very little of the positive side of Kinokuni was shown. This has, unfortunately, also been the case in similar reports by the media which have been eager to air the grievances of the disgruntled few. Perhaps understandably, Shinichiro Hori and other members of the current staff at Kinokuni have been reluctant to enter into a public slanging match with their detractors. However, as an interested outsider. I would like to mention one or two things which seem to have been neglected in the reporting of the first year of Kinokuni Children's Village.

I am a former member of the teaching staff at A. S. Neill's Summerhill School in England - the part model for Kinokuni - and am presently engaged in the study of alternative education as part of a Master's degree programme. One thing which is well-known in alternative educational circles around the world is that Shinichiro Hori has been a tireless worker and pioneer in the field of "free education" for many years. As a translator of A.S. Neill's books and promoter of Neillian ideas his work has been so successful that Summerhill itself is now almost overrun with Japanese students, who form the largest foreign contingent at the school. His vision for a school such as Kinokuni has been long in the making and is a well-planned and thought-out experiment, not just a rebellion against the rigid system in Japan.

Kinokuni is not simply a copy of Summerhill but bearing in mind the different needs of Japanese people and Hori's own philosophy on learning - is an attempt to integrate Neillian ideas on freedom and self-government with the project or learning-by-doing methods of John Dewey. It is especially interesting in that it aims to blend the ideas of two educationists who were concerned with quite different aspects of education; Neill with emotional freedom, Dewey with intellectual freedom. In creating an entirely new kind of school for Japan it is not surprising that there should be, at least, some teething troubles. For example, children who have been through more than two or three years of traditional state schooling almost inevitably find the change to a much freer system difficult to handle at first (as my own experience at Summerhill testifies) and all experimental schools need a considerable period of settling down time. However, in my own time spent visiting Kinokuni it has been quite apparent that the school has none of the serious problems faced at various times by Surnmerhill and others. Indeed the children I discovered there were generally happy, active and well-cared for. My visits to a number of Japanese schools in the state system have failed to convince me that they can compete with Kinokuni, if anything like happiness, independence, and sincerity are the yardsticks for judgment.

The interviews I have conducted with some of the Kinokuni children as part of my studies have all revealed, contrary to the implication in the Japan Times article, that it is in fact the basic studies of maths and kanji that are the least popular activity for most children -project work being by far the most highly regarded. However, to get into arguments about lessons, academic standards, or even the positioning of chairs in the classroom is really missing the whole point. No one seems to have touched - except in passing - on the fact that it is the aim of Kinokuni to put the emotions at least on a level of equal importance with the intellect. (Indeed Neill went much further by stating categorically that the emotions should always come first). This is surely the reason for Kinokuni's existence. If parents are unduly concerned about their children's academic attainment then perhaps they have not yet understood that the purpose of the school is to provide a radical alternative not just a watered-down version of the state school. I am tempted to ask why did they send their children to Kinokuni in the first place? And grumpy ex-staff members would surely do better to leave the school alone to let it get on with its primary job of allowing children to be happy,

In my visits to Kinokuni I have been treated with courtesy by the current staff and have received nothing but help and assistance from them and from Shinichiro Hori himself. To hear him described as "imperious" would be laughable if it were not so obviously wrong.

Neill, Montessorl and other pioneers all experienced troubles because some people thought they were too radical at the time, because quick "results" were expected, or because a few people just thought they could do the job better. It would be a great shame if Shinichiro Hori, Japan's most important pioneer, was to be hindered in the same way by misunderstanding adults. Kinokuni Children's Village is a brave experiment, not without its difficulties, but is now the first and only recognised alternative boarding school in Japan. It has begun to receive attention in educational circles throughout the world. Now that the Japanese have got this far along the path to a freer education it would be a disaster if they were to try and throw out the baby along with the bathwater.

John Potter

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In the Summer 1997 issue of SKOLE, the Journal of Alternative Education, we published the first half of a two-part interview by John Potter with his son Akira-chan about the latter's experiences as a boarding student at Kinokuni Children's Village. Click here to read what Akira had to say about his school.

 

Akira is now (2003) a student at Summerhill School in Leiston, England., where many Japanese students are also enrolled. It will be interesting to see how he expresses his sense of differences between the two schools.

 

Click here to read the 1995 article in Kansai Time Out by John Potter (mentioned above) about the growing success and influence of Hori's Kinokuni, both as a school AND as a model!