I can imagine schools metaphorically crushing down students, but schools physically crushing students to death boggles my mind.
Needless to say, this pathological situation （I think it’s okay to call it that） at schools is nothing less than a projection of the pathology of the social system. If society as a whole has a natural vitality, with clear-cut goals, then even if there are some problems in the educational system, they can somehow be overcome by the power inherent there. However, if society loses its energy, and there’s a widespread sense of hopelessness, this will show up most prominently, and have the greatest effect, in the educational arena. In schools, in classrooms. Like canaries in coal mines, children are the ones who are most sensitive to, and first to detect, the corrupt air.
As I mentioned earlier, when I was a child, society itself had room for growth, so that there was room for conflicts between the individual and the system, and as a result they did not turn into major social problems. Because of this societal flexibility, there was a space for all kinds of contradictions and frustrations. Or to put it another way, there was room to retreat when you were troubled. But now, after the period of rapid growth and the bubble economy is over, it’s difficult to find a place of refuge like that. Thinking that everything will work out if you just go with the flow no longer exists as a solution.
A society in which there is not enough room to escape produces deep problems in the educational arena, and necessitates new solutions. First of all we have to create a place where these solutions might be found.
What kind of place would that be?
It would be a place where the individual and the larger system can each move freely, and gently interact and negotiate with one another. In other words, a place where each person can freely stretch out their arms and legs and take a good, long breath. A place apart from hierarchy, efficiency, and bullying. Simply put, a warm, temporary shelter. One that anyone can enter and is free to leave. A serene middle ground between individual and community. Whatever position one takes up in it is left up to the person’s discretion. I’d like to call it a space of individual recovery.
It can be a small space at first. It doesn’t have to be anything big. A compact, handmade sort of place where all kinds of possibilities can actually be tried out, and if something works, it can become a model or springboard and then develop further. That space can gradually be extended even more. That’s the way I see it. It might take time, but I think that’s the most correct and rational way to go. It would be great if these spaces could spring up spontaneously everywhere.
But these spaces need to form organically. The worst-case scenario would be if an entity like the Ministry of Education tried to force it. Since what we’re advocating is a space of individual recovery, having the country institutionally try to solve the issue would be getting the priorities wrong, and it would end up a total farce.
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In my own case, when I look back to when I was in school, the biggest saving grace for me was having some close friends, and reading tons of books.
When it came to books, I greedily devoured a wide range, like I was busily shoveling coal into a blazing furnace. I was so busy every day enjoying one book after another, digesting them （in many cases not properly digesting them）， that I didn’t have any time left to think about anything else. Sometimes I think that might actually have been a good thing for me. If I had looked at the situation around me more, thought deeply about the unnatural, contradictory, and deceitful things there and plunged right into pursuing things I couldn’t accept, I might have been driven into a dead end and suffered because of it.
Also, reading so widely helped to relativize my point of view, and I think that was very significant for me back when I was a teenager. I experienced all the emotions depicted in books almost as if they were my own; in my imagination I traveled freely through time and space, saw all kinds of amazing sights, and let all kinds of words pass right through my very body. Through all this, my perspective on life became a more composite view. In other words, I wasn’t gazing at the world just from the spot where I was standing, but was able to take a step back and take a more panoramic view.
If you always see things from your own standpoint, the world shrinks. Your body gets stiff, your footwork grows heavy, and you can no longer move. But if you’re able to view where you’re standing from other perspectives—to put it another way, if you can entrust your existence to some other system—the world will grow more three-dimensional, more supple. And I believe that as long as we live in this world, that kind of agile stance is extremely important. In my life this has been one of the biggest rewards of reading.