Exploring Obara Kuniyoshi's Thought Of Teachers

Obara Kuniyoshi is a famous educator of modern Japan. He, an educator devoted himself to practicing theory and practice of education throughout his life, founded one from kindergarten, primary, secondary general education institutions to the university-Tamagawa institute. Embodied in all his works, whole-person education is the core of Obara Kuniyoshi's educational thoughts, and is also the essence of all his education theories. The Whole-Person Education theory is very rich in content, but its essence is embodied in three aspects of Whole-Person qualities: the thought that the ideal of education lies in the creation of the six values of truth, goodness, beauty, holy, health and wealth, which means the educated should get a well-balanced and harmonious development in such six aspects as knowledge, morality, art, religion, health and life; the thought that education should follow the principles of respecting the personality of students, students'independent learning, valuing students'self-study, encouraging students to do manual work, establishing close relationship between teachers and students, and better practice than precept; the thought that teachers themselves should also have the whole-person quality, which is embodied in their pursuit of the six values of truth, goodness, beauty, holy, health and wealth. This paper mainly discusses the third aspects, the whole-person teacher thought of Obara Kuniyoshi.This dissertation is probed from the following four chapters.Chapter one is an introduction, elaborating on the significance of choosing the topic,the generalization of research and on the thoughts of investigation in this paper.Chapter two expounds the form of teachers'thoughts by Obara Kuniyoshi. Obara Kuniyoshi's grandfather was a private school teacher, because of which he was constantly influenced by what he sees and hears in childhood. During his study in Kyoto Empire University,he broadly touched upon a large number of western classics,which laid a solid foundation for the generation of his ideas. Critically,he absorbed the ideas of those westerners like Plato, Kant, Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Dewey, and other Eastern educators'Thought like Confucius. These exerted deep influence on him.The third chapter mainly focuses on the whole-person teacher thought. The whole-person teacher thought of Obara Kuniyoshi aims to train the all-round development of harmonious teachers. First of all, this paper talks about the status and role of teachers. Obara Kuniyoshi thinks that the key issue of education is teachers. He said: for education, prosperity or the death of it, is the teacher, are people. Then, the paper analyzes the contents of teachers'whole-person theory. In addition,he regarded that education are composed of six aspects: knowledge, morality, art, religion, body and life, which respectively means truth, kindness, beauty, holiness, health, and wealth. And he compares theses six aspects with six petals flowers big cosmos which are in full bloom in autumn,in order to explain the theory person's harmonious and comprehensive development in various aspects. Teachers must to pursuit these six aspects in order to improve their own literacy. Obara Kuniyoshi raised five proposals to training teachers'literacy,(l)to establish a firm belief in education and mission;(2)learning to be persistent;(3)to respect children, to make friends with them;(4) to continuously improve personal charm;(5)to have an international spirit. The next analysis round Kuniyoshi view of teacher characteristics summarized as the road-oriented, the whole-person teacher, religious state and finally describes the impact of his thought.The fourth part, with our current situation and problems of teachers, explore the contemporary revelation of the whole-person teacher thought by Obara Kuniyoshi.Obara Kuniyoshi is a pioneer of new education campaign. He dared to challenge traditional education,and created his own theory and practice of the whole-person education. So,he enjoyed a high international reputation. His whole-person teacher thought not only played an important role in guiding teachers to develop in his times in Japan,but also have great inspiration and reference in today's majority professional development and growth of teachers.