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Creating Value

By Jason Goulah
A classroom in a Soka School in Brazil [© Seikyo Shimbun]

I teach a graduate course for pre- and in-service teachers called Creativity and Critical Thinking, which focuses on creativity as theorized by Japanese educator Tsunesaburo Makiguchi (1871-1944). I could not help but recall Makiguchi's view of creativity, present in his theory of value creation and value-creating pedagogy (soka kyoikugaku), when reading Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum's book That Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back. Friedman and Mandelbaum argue that the American education system must develop more "creative creators" if the US is to compete successfully in the current--and future--globalized world. They substantiate their argument, in part, with the following quote from John Jazwiec, whose job entails "killing jobs":

The best way I can articulate what is a sustainable job is to tell you, as a job killer, [sustainable jobs are] jobs I can't kill. I can't kill creative people. There is no productivity solution or outsourcing [strategy] that I can sell to eliminate a creative person. I can't kill unique value creators. A unique value creator is, well, unique.

Jazwiec's repeated phrase of "unique value creators" in particular caught my attention, and although Friedman and Mandelbaum advocate for developing more unique value creators to compete in the global economy, they neither discuss how to do so in any practical terms nor consider deeper reasons for creating value beyond global economic competition. Makiguchi, whom American scholar Dayle Bethel called "The Value Creator," may offer insight into both issues.

Tsunesaburo Makiguchi [© Seikyo Shimbun]

Makiguchi was an elementary school teacher, principal and educational activist who theorized value-creating pedagogy first in a 1930 pamphlet called Soka kyoikugaku taikei gairon (Outline of the System of Value-Creating Pedagogy) and later in four volumes of Soka kyoikugaku taikei (The System of Value-Creating Pedagogy) published between 1930 and 1934. In these works, Makiguchi argued that the aim and goal of education should align with the aim and goal of life, namely happiness, and that genuine happiness is cultivated through value creation.

More specifically, Makiguchi believed that happiness is experienced when individuals, as members of society, become human beings who contribute to the development of society as empathetically connected and participating members of that society. He further believed that such contribution to society happens through value creation, and argued that schools must cultivate students' ability to create value in each moment. Human beings do not have the power to create matter, Makiguchi asserted; they only have the power to create value. Makiguchi described a person's ability to create value as "character value" (jinkaku kachi). He believed that increasing such character value is the objective of education, and that the purpose of value-creating pedagogy is to clarify the means to achieve that objective. Therefore, he propounded his value-creating pedagogy as "a system of knowledge as a means for cultivating capable people who can create the value that is the goal of human life."

The Goal of Life

So what is value creation in the Makiguchian framework, and how does one create the value that is the goal of human life? Makiguchi examined the neo-Kantian value system of truth, good and beauty from the perspective of practical educational philosophy and concluded that individuals can develop fundamentally happy lives through a combination of cognition of truth and what he called the creation of the values of gain, good and beauty.

Makiguchi distinguished truth, or facticity, which is objective and principally a matter of cognition, and value, which is a matter of individuals' subjective evaluation and interaction with reality. For Makiguchi, value creation consisted of creating values of individual economic/material gain, or benefit; social moral good; and aesthetic or sensory beauty. His pedagogy endeavored to foster students' ever-expanding capacity to create values of gain, good and beauty and to develop their cognition of truth (see figure).

In practice, Makiguchi's value-creating pedagogy engaged students in learning to learn and to derive wisdom from knowledge in order to create meaningful value in and from any (positive or negative) situation. That is, Makiguchi fostered students' creativity and ability to consciously apply learned knowledge in ways that generated personal benefit and social good. Such a value-creating life was committed, contributive and, thereby, fundamentally happy.

Makiguchi proposed his value-creating pedagogy in response to Japan's militarized education, of cutthroat competition and "examination hell," which he saw as fostering subjects of the state rather than autonomous and contributive members of society. As the Japanese government promulgated extreme nationalism and emperor worship, Makiguchi consistently advocated for a more socially engaged, student-centered pedagogy that incorporated democratic ideals. The Japanese government arrested and imprisoned Makiguchi in 1943 under the Peace Preservation Law for sedition and refusing to capitulate to State Shinto. He died in prison in 1944 from extreme malnutrition at the age of 73.

Makiguchi theorized value-creating pedagogy in the context of education, but Friedman and Mandelbaum's book illustrates its relevance and importance beyond the context of schooling. Indeed, Makiguchi endeavored to foster individuals capable of creating value in their interpersonal relationships, families, workplaces, and local and global communities. This remains the attitude of people committed to leading a contributive, value-creative life--and as Friedman and Mandelbaum suggest, it may also provide them employment and job security in the interconnected, globalized world.

Jason Goulah is Assistant Professor of Bilingual-Bicultural Education and Director of World Language Education at DePaul University, Chicago, USA.

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