May, 2007

In Kiyomizu-dera Temple, its renewed red gate was showing shining contrast against newly blooming green leaves and shoots. Vivid reds and light greens are the typical beauty in May. Every tree has its own smell; every tree has its own story. The Golden Week has come to its end.
The world is rapidly changing; maybe too rapidly changing to keep up with. However, as long as to live on in the world I have no way but to keep up with the change. The main aspect of the change is the individualization of the society. The society has been so much individualized that the society might well be described to be melting down.
Not only the society is melting down, but its sub structures are also melting down; families, schools, and such. How could we cope with their aftermath? Each society has its limited span of its time. More than fifty years is a significant enough number for any. The effort or struggle to make one survive may be not only useless but harmful.
Developing proper school culture is important to have the school prosper. What IHS needs is a super school culture that organize different kinds of sub school cultures. The school has attracted various types of students, or, in other words, has been supported by locals who have sent some elite students in spite of its poor performance.
The system's ending might have different patterns of scenarios. Who will decide which scenario will be chosen? Or does one scenario reveal itself?
I wonder why some teachers do not face the reality. Instead, they see experiences of their own past or of other schools. It is important, though I admit, to learn from the experiences of other schools, but it is also clear that we can hardly free from our own reality. Our thoughts should be based on our realities.
I will have finished reading "The Learning Brain" within a couple of days. On Friday, Prof. Takeuchi from Kandai talked about cognitive power and English learning. The cognitive power the learners are expected to have includes cognitive strategy, cognitive skills, and cognitive emotionality and/or sociality.
The development of the cognitive science has been making it possible to let teachers and/or students enjoy more efficient ways in English teaching and/or learning. How far, however, the development has spread among teachers and/or students is another question.
The shrinkage of cognition is an agenda. The question is whether it is the cognition that shrinks or the perseverance in performing cognitive processes that shrinks. Another agenda is which is more important either to develop students' cognition, or to support their perseverance.
"To pull down building blocks" used to be a popular phrase in Japan once. When a block house is shaken loose, you had better pull it down and build it again from the base. The question is whether anybody has enough energy to do that. Nobody does. The next question is whether all the players have the patience to see things go. I doubt if they does.
To manage the knowledge is to make it explicit; to publicize the information is to make it conspicuous. Then, what is it to organize both the processes?