明日から新年度となります。春は変化の時。色々な道から自分の道を選ぶ時です。
選ぶと言えば、人生にはいくつもの“選択”をする機会があります。学校や会社、人生の伴侶を選ぶというような大きな選択もありますし、今日は何を食べようか、どの服を着ようかなど一日の中でも様々なことを選んでいます。迷ってしまい、なかなか決まらないでいると、機会を逃してしまうようなこともあります。選ぶことは大事なことです。

これまで、学校教育では“選ぶ”ことについて、実はあまり取り組んでこなかったと思います。希望する進路実現のため学力をつける、健康や身体育成のため体力や敏捷性をつける、リーダーシップや協調性・積極性を育む、といったことは、各教科の授業や学校行事、部活動などで取り組んできました。これらはいわば「選ばれる力」です。例えば学力が高い、試験で点が取れることは、大学等の入試で選ばれること、また、体力などがあることは部活動のレギュラーなどに選ばれること、リーダーシップや協調性などは自治会やクラスの代表などに選ばれることに繋がります。これら「選ばれる力」はもちろん大切なものであり、文部科学省が定めている中学校の学習指導要領にも、“基礎的・基本的な知識及び技能を確実に習得”させることが“生きる力”の育成に必要であるとされています。

しかし、最近の大学等の入試や企業の採用試験などでは、学力などの「選ばれる力」よりも、自分が大学や企業に入って何をしたいかを問われるようになっています。自分が何をするか、何を選ぶか、これらが求められる時代であると言えます。「選ぶ力」、すなわち、情報収集力や分析力、判断力、表現力等について、学校教育でも取り組むべき時代になっているのです。実は前述の学習指導要領にも、「課題を解決するために必要な思考力，判断力，表現力その他の能力をはぐくむ」「生徒の興味・関心を生かし，自主的，自発的な学習が促されるよう工夫」などの表現があり、各授業や「総合的な学習の時間」「総合的な探究の時間」で取り組むこととなっています。しかし、「選ぶ力」は生徒の個性や興味・関心などによって異なっており、講義形式の授業ではなかなか取り組みにくいものでした。

本校では、多くの授業で自主的な課題研究等に取り組むとともに、高校の総合進学コースでは２年生と３年生の各週3時間の時間、生徒が自分の興味や関心によって好きなテーマを選び自由に研究をする「総合的な探究の時間」を設定しています。ルールは「半年に一度みんなの前で発表する」のみです。昨年から実施していますが、最初は自分で好きなことを研究できるということに戸惑っていた生徒たちも、「高校に入って初めて自分でテーマを決めて調べていくということを本格的にやったけど、難しかったです。でも、最終的に完成した時は達成感がありました。来年も引き続き頑張りたいと思います。」「テーマが決まるのに時間がかかってしまったけど、テーマを決めてからはスライドを作るのも調べるのも楽しかったです。その事について、もっと知りたいと思い、将来もそっちの方向に進みたいと思うことが出来ました。」と、一年が終わるころにはどんどん積極的になっています。次年度も若葉祭（文化祭）で発表する予定ですので、楽しみにしてください。

樟蔭中学校高等学校　校長　小嶋信男

The new school year starts tomorrow. Spring is a time of change and it’s time to choose your own path.

Speaking of choosing, one will have many opportunities to make choices in life. There are big choices to be made, such as choosing a new school, a career, and a life partner, but we are also faced with less important ones, such as what to eat and what clothes to wear. If you are unable to make decisions, you may end up missing out on opportunities. Needless to say, our choices in life are important.

Up until now, I don’t think we have focused enough effort on “choosing” in school education in general. Developing academic ability to achieve a desired career path, improving physical strength and agility for health and physical development, and fostering leadership, cooperativeness, and positivity are things that should be addressed in each subject’s classes, school events, club activities, etc. These skills and traits can be viewed as, so to speak, the “power to be chosen.” For example, having high academic ability and getting high marks on school exams leads to success in university entrance exams, having good physical strength leads to being selected for higher honors in club activities, and having leadership and cooperation skills means selection to the student council or a class leader role. Selection as a representative to one of the above-mentioned is of course important. In fact, the curriculum guidelines for junior high schools stipulated by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology state that “ensuring the acquisition of basic knowledge and skills is central to the development of a student’s zest for life.”

However, in recent years, university entrance and company recruitment exams have begun to ask questions about what you want to do when you join a university or company, rather than being based solely on your academic ability. It can be said that we live in an era where people can, and are in fact required to, choose what they want to do. The time has come for school education to focus on the ability to choose, that is, the ability to gather information, analyze, judge, and express. In fact, the previously mentioned curriculum guidelines state the importance of “cultivating thinking, judgment, expressiveness, and other abilities necessary to solve problems as well as ‘promoting independent and spontaneous learning by taking advantage of students’ interests.” Also included is the expression “devising ways to improve students’ skills.” These are areas to be worked on in each class, as well as during ‘comprehensive study time’ and ‘comprehensive research time.’ However, the choices and decisions to be made differ depending on each student’s personality and interests. This has traditionally been difficult to address in typical lecture-style classes.

At our school, many classes involve independent research, and in the high school general studies course, second- and third-year students are given three hours a week to choose their own topics and learn about things based on their own interests. To facilitate this, we have set up ‘comprehensive inquiry time’ for students to do research in. The only requirement of this time is that students present their research to their peers once every six months. This program has been in place at Shoin since last year, and some students who were initially hesitant about it said that it wasn’t until they entered high school that they had the chance to seriously study a topic of interest and research it on their own. Other comments include, “It was difficult, but I felt a sense of accomplishment when it was finally completed. I want to continue working hard next year”, “It took a while to decide on a theme, but in the end, I was able to”, “I had fun making slides and researching it. I wanted to learn more about it”, and “I have decided that I want to head in that direction in the future.” We are planning to explain and exhibit more about this type of learning at the Wakaba Festival (culture festival) in the new school year. We hope you are looking forward to it.

Shoin Junior and Senior High School Principal – Nobuo Kojima