原田亜紀子・井上環・西本健吾・藤枝聡・植松千喜・古川亮一・中田圭吾・浜田未貴・三浦啓
July,2017
Abstract
In 2015, Japan enacted a law that lowered voting age from 20 to 18 and this legislation triggered the needs of the political education for young people. However, it has not been clear what kind of political education and participation should be expected in this situation. In this paper, we reconsider “participation” in a political education focusing particularly the relationship between schools and the areas outside schools. In the chapter 1, we refer to the practices of political education in Japan by reconsidering a concept of “politics”. It shows that in spite of the political potentiality of the practices in the areas outside schools, the cases are still limited in the school education. In the chapter 2, we discuss three types of practices of political education in the United States that head outside school. We see these three types of cases as being based on the new understanding of democracy. It shows that all of them aim to develop the “meaning makers”. In the chapter 3, we discuss the learning experience of democracy outside schools, called Youth Council that is rooted in Danish tradition. We find out that these experiences of young people in daily lives, such as proposing policies, making decisions, and so on, promote their participations. From the above, we conclude that the cases of the U.S. and Denmark focus on politics in daily lives. On the other hand, from cases in Japan, the practices of political education can be performed as static (intellectual) ones as well as dynamic ones including participation.
