Ippei Nango: Steering the Reconstruction of Fukushima through School Education

Okuma Town in Futaba District, Fukushima Prefecture, is the town where the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant is located. Evacuation orders have been lifted in stages since 2019, and school education finally resumed within the town in the 2023 academic year. Okuma Town Manabiya Yumeno Mori (hereafter, Yumeno Mori) is a facility that serves as a hub for education, integrating a certified center for early childhood education and care with a compulsory education school.

While it is difficult to draw a perfect blueprint for reconstruction, we want children to acquire the strength to overcome difficult challenges. Therefore, at Yumeno Mori, we have incorporated project-based inquiry learning and drama education.

Before the nuclear accident, Okuma Town had eight educational facilities, including nurseries, kindergartens, elementary schools, and junior high schools. Since it was difficult to reopen these individually, we are pursuing the benefits of providing education in an integrated manner.

The Fukushima Prefecture Futaba District Education Reconstruction Vision, formulated immediately after the earthquake, advocates for developing education based on a consistent philosophy across kindergarten, elementary, junior high, high school, and university. I was involved in its formulation as a representative of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, and held repeated discussions with local residents, the national government, and the prefecture. In practice, seamless learning makes a lot of sense.

Even before the earthquake, Okuma Town was committed to education that emphasized reading. This is reflected in the library located in the central atrium of the new school building.

Having books in the middle of the school building is also the key to project-based learning where students tackle problems without clear answers. As children go through trial and error, they need to access the wisdom of their predecessors when a solution is difficult to find on their own. Having books nearby at that moment carries great significance.

Young children also gain inspiration from the world of picture books. For a child, a picture book is an immersive world, but it is also something that jumps out into the real world. As the boundary between fantasy and reality melts, various images are cultivated, allowing them to understand the world deeply and construct a world within themselves.

Creating an environment where one can move back and forth between "knowledge" and "activity/play" is the core of education. I personally felt this during my time at Keio University at the Shonan Fujisawa Campus (SFC). SFC has a Media Center (library) at its center; even on a campus that emphasizes practice, there was a hub of knowledge in the middle.

Using the home economics room only during home economics class is merely a matter of scheduling. If children have something they want to express, they want to go to the art room, and if they harvest vegetables in the field, they want to go to the home economics room. We intended to make it possible for them to develop various interests during their activities.

Normally, experimental equipment and musical instruments are things you aren't supposed to touch freely, but if they are interested, I want them to touch them more and more. Since we don't know where children will demonstrate their talents, we created a space that provides many opportunities.

I personally began to face learning actively when I could feel the connection between the real world and school subjects. The biggest influence was volunteering for the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake when I was a first-year high school student. At that time, the issues I was learning about in social studies connected with the problems occurring in the real world.

Academics are not closed worlds of math or social studies; they become knowledge that transcends subject boundaries when facing the real world and solving problems. My choice of SFC, where I could learn cross-disciplinarily, also came from that realization.

I was involved in the founding of my previous school, Futaba Future Junior and Senior High School, and served as its vice principal. This was part of a series of work starting from the formulation of the education reconstruction vision for Futaba District. SFC was also on my mind when launching Futaba Future. I envisioned children, as "exchange students from the future," confronting the difficult challenges of the real world.

There is also much to learn from children. I was convinced that by releasing the power to be unconstrained by taboos or precedents from the classroom, adults would also gain stimulation and new discoveries, leading to a creative reconstruction.

That's right. The education reconstruction vision was created by the eight towns and villages of Futaba District, with the then-superintendent of education of Okuma Town leading the way. That vision is for children to participate in solving regional issues through active learning. The goal is for that practical learning to create a synergy with learning that supports the reconstruction of the region. Yumeno Mori shares that vision.

I have viewed headwinds as opportunities, so I don't have many memories of struggling. The children are also flexibly creating activities and learning that exceed adult expectations.

Yumeno Mori has no bells and no uniforms. There are classes for each subject, but the children choose them actively. It might have been the adults who took more time. Spontaneous learning can look like playing at first glance, so initially, there were misunderstandings like "Are they actually doing lessons?" However, I think this approach to education was understood by the community relatively quickly.

I think it is incredibly significant. For twelve years after the earthquake, it was a town without children. When I saw children in the town at the opening of Yumeno Mori, it was a shock to me as well.

In a town where adults had been gritting their teeth to face challenges, a landscape appeared where children were playing. This change was like a black-and-white photograph suddenly turning into color. It was the moment the future approached with overwhelming persuasiveness.

I believe they can. Yumeno Mori was a bold challenge toward what we aimed for in the education reconstruction vision. The challenges of reconstruction have not yet been solved, but if we don't engage in deep practice here, the future will become uncertain.

The members who discussed the education reconstruction vision as frontline teachers after the earthquake are now principals of various schools. Even now, as we discuss things at the Futaba District Principals' Association, I can see that everyone is approaching education with that same sense of crisis.

Futaba Future was an inquiry-centered learning center that aimed to produce various leaders. While it was desirable for synergy to be born between children from outside Futaba District and local children, Yumeno Mori is not aiming for this.

Yumeno Mori started its first year with 26 students and has now increased to nearly 70. Here, I want the children who have come to live in Okuma Town for various reasons to overcome difficult challenges and acquire the power to realize a free society that is ideal for them.

Since the education at Yumeno Mori is public education, it is not just about things that can only be done in Okuma; the basics are things that should be addressed anywhere in the country. In that sense, you could say we are taking the lead in addressing the educational challenges that Japan is facing.

I still frequently discuss things with my former seniors and colleagues from the Ministry of Education, and what I feel is that the national government, experts, and frontline teachers all share the direction of the transformation we should aim for in their heads. However, it is difficult to realize that on the ground. What I have consistently done since the earthquake is to practice and give shape to the solutions that become visible when facing such challenges.

At Yumeno Mori, we are practicing in a thoroughly bold way things that are required nationwide, such as the connection between early childhood education and school education, the shift to inquiry-based learning, the shift to individually optimized learning using ICT, and the realization of an inclusive education system where diverse children can demonstrate their respective potential. Inclusivity is not just about the presence or absence of disabilities, but about creating a society where everyone, including children who are not attending school, can play an active role without being left behind.

I think we are approaching the most difficult phase. When we created Futaba Future, I talked with the teachers and children about how we must also assume a crisis where the world might be hit by a disaster even greater than Fukushima in about 20 years. And we have been thinking about what kind of strength we should acquire to realize a sustainable society even in such an uncertain future.

However, the reality is that the COVID-19 pandemic, conflicts around the world, and the earthquake and heavy rain damage in Noto are occurring at a speed that exceeds expectations. Even amidst this, in Futaba District, building demolition is progressing due to reconstruction work, and the damage from the nuclear disaster is becoming less visible.

That's exactly right. Various generations live in Okuma Town, but what is necessary for current junior and senior high school students who have faint memories of the earthquake, and for children born after the earthquake, is the opportunity to think about their own way of life by overlapping it with the challenges of Okuma and the world. By meeting people who are actually facing challenges or touching the legacy of their predecessors, they think about their own way of life. I believe the significance of children challenging real-world problem-solving lies there. In that sense, it is important not to confine children to schools or classrooms.

A major influence was Professor Hiroshi Suzuki, who was my mentor during my SFC days. I learned from Professor Suzuki the importance of drama in education. The professor also did drama during his student days and is close friends with the playwright Oriza Hirata. After the earthquake, I collaborated with Professor Hirata to incorporate drama into educational reconstruction throughout Tohoku.

Yes. I believe two things can be learned through drama. One is "essential academic ability for a symbiotic society." This is the ability to use imagination by playing the role of another person, empathizing with others, and understanding things from multiple perspectives. It is important for engaging in repeated dialogue and coexisting with diverse others, including those with different ideas.

The other is "essential academic ability for a creative society." Drama is effective for fostering creativity because it makes it easy to engage in trial and error.

Since drama uses words and the body for expression, you can "tinker" with it in various ways. We call this "tinkering," and drama makes it easy to try out expressions. Creativity comes from the accumulation of trial and error, and by repeating failures, it leads to unexpected breakthroughs.

Trial and error through drama is very effective for fostering creativity and is actively incorporated into education abroad as well.

At the time, it was during a school exam break, and I could see the dire situation on television. Knowing that any person could be of help, I called ward offices in Nagata, Nada, and Higashinada. The Higashinada Ward Office told me, "Then please come," and I rushed to the site.

The sight of the town with collapsed buildings was real, but what truly gave me a sense of reality was when I spoke with residents at the evacuation centers. When I went around asking, "Is there anything I can do?" I was yelled at: "There's no way someone like you can do anything!" I was very shocked.

At that moment, I thought I had to do this seriously. There was the pain of the person in front of me, and I was being questioned on what I could do. Without this experience, I wouldn't be who I am today. That's why I have kept telling the high school students at Futaba Future to challenge themselves without hesitation on various occasions.

Futaba Future has training programs where students exchange opinions with staff from various countries at the UN Headquarters in New York or visit the Dachau concentration camp near Munich. This is part of an education to position Fukushima within a historical context. Since we call for applicants every year, I have tried to give them a push as much as possible.

That's right. In Kobe, there were instances where rice balls were left over at one evacuation center while they were insufficient at another. As a volunteer, I would appeal to the people at the town hall, but they couldn't move. I questioned what the administration and systems were for, and that awareness of the issues led to my subsequent inquiries.

I believe that is what "jitsugaku (science)," the motto of Keio University, is about. In my notebook, I have always kept a postcard of "The Mission of Keio University" left by Yukichi Fukuzawa. Fukuzawa preached to the Keio students: "Keio University is not satisfied with being merely a place of academic learning. (...) It is not enough to merely say this; through practice and action, we desire to be leaders of the whole of society." I believe this is important for all children as they grow into active citizens.

It's difficult, but I have a desire to create a truly democratic society where citizens participate through the power of children. To that end, we must individualize play, learning, and inquiry, and nurture each child so they can demonstrate their potential to the maximum. We need the qualities of a symbiotic society where people understand each other through dialogue, rather than the strength to overpower an opponent in a debate.

That's why drama is important, and I want to create that learning not just within the school, but together with the community and parents. I believe that building a school is building a town, and it is the very process of creating the future.