#262_Scientizing "Awe"
I held a "Learning from the Past to Create the Future" study session for the first time in a while.
It is a study session I lead locally, focusing primarily on lesson planning.
Among the many content items, "awe" is one that tends to be avoided.
Isn't it just forcing emotions on students?
Is there even any teaching material that everyone finds "moving"?
Sharp words flew around from the very beginning.
It feels vague, and it's hard to grasp what is actually being learned.
That seems to be the general impression.
The first half was about "what we learn through awe."
My personal conclusion is "analyzing the 'wow' factor."
(I used to call it "scientizing," but since the nuance is different from being scientific, I've been calling it this lately.)
Because we are human, the reasons we feel moved differ from person to person.
The reasons are as varied as the people themselves.
However, by verbalizing the reasons for that "emotion" and exchanging our perspectives and thoughts, we can notice differences in each other's viewpoints and values, and acquire perspectives and values we didn't have before.
As a result, our way of looking at things, events, and people becomes richer, which helps deepen our understanding of diverse values.
Awe includes both the fear of something far beyond our reach and the respect and reverence for it.
The existence of something so daunting that one cannot approach it.
When people realize there is something that transcends them, they naturally become humble and can increase their desire to connect with and learn from others.
By coming into contact with something greater than oneself, one's self-consciousness shrinks and one can recognize the smallness of one's own existence, which seems to increase the desire to connect with people and be useful to others.
* There are reports that awe promotes group cohesion and that people who have experienced awe have higher life satisfaction and well-being.
In other words, through learning about awe,
recognizing the existence of something great,
verbalizing the reasons why it feels great,
and recognizing one's own smallness,
intellectually understanding that there is a world beyond one's imagination
and that there is a world one could never see on one's own,
sparks the emotion of "wow" or "I can't compare to that,"
and gives rise to the desire and wish to polish oneself, improve, and live in a certain way.
I believe that what we learn in the study of awe consists of two things:
1. The existence of something one can never reach, along with its reasons, meaning, and value.
2. The recognition that one is an existence living in connection with others.
These are the two things I believe we learn.
Therefore, for (1), understanding based on concrete events is important, and for (2), connecting it to one's own way of life becomes important.
In the second half, we thought about it using teaching materials.
We used the famous material "Ao no Domon" (The Blue Tunnel). It's quite a tricky piece of material.
This material is originally from the novel "Onshu no Kanata ni" (Beyond the Grudge) by Kan Kikuchi.
It is a story about a protagonist who has killed many people and digs a tunnel to save others in order to repent for his sins.
The theme that first came to mind when I read it was,
"Can a person atone for the sin of killing others while still alive?"
The protagonist, Ryokai, killed many people for his own selfish interests.
After repenting and becoming a monk, he begins digging a tunnel known as the "Blue Tunnel" in a part of Yabakei, which was famous for many people falling to their deaths every year, but the question arises: is this act truly atonement?
The story is long and complex.
Opinions were first divided on the point of "what should we ask?"
In conclusion,
if we are to treat it as a lesson on awe, I think we reached a consensus that we should focus on "Ryokai's way of life" and "Sanenosuke's way of life," and deepen the discussion by asking what a beautiful way of life is and whether their ways of life can be called beautiful.
Can it be said that Ryokai lived a beautiful life?
What kind of life is a beautiful life?
Is Ryokai's way of life truly altruistic, or is it selfish?
Several questions have emerged that I would like to examine with the children.
At the end, after abstracting the conditions for a beautiful life,
I want to ask the children and myself, "How will you live?"
Keep the questions simple.
Think deeply about just that one question.
Precisely because the teaching material is long and complex, I want to conduct the lesson with that kind of development.