The SSH (Super Science High School) project offered us the opportunity to build an unprecedented program for female students. Focusing on providing practical “encounters” with nature, our curriculum forces our students to take positive leadership in their research activities, and to develop their presentation skills which are integral for communicating with an international audience. The other favorable effects on our students are shown in the charts below.
This year, our students are not planning to go out to distant areas for their research activities. We have chosen to stay in our local area and take a closer look at natural creatures around our school - our institution stands on a hill surrounded by trees and paddy fields.
Currently, observing the plants on the hill and the creatures inhabiting in paddy fields are among the students’ research assignments. Students are now eager to find out about the behaviors of the local Reeves’s pond turtles and Red-ear sliders. They will employ the “mark-and-recapture method” as well as “biotelemetry”. We would like to further continue providing education focusing on this kind of contact with animals and with nature.
I would like to finish with an interesting bit of information from a survey conducted by Dr. Hishoshi Nakano. In that survey one third of elementary school children answered yes when asked whether they thought dead people could live again. This was reported in newspaper articles, and critics suggested that something was desperately lacking in the education curriculum. What was lacking, many argued, was the ‘Heart-Enriching education’ which is to say the study of life and the living world. But without encountering that living world as it is, such heart-enriching education is simply not possible. I wonder if this is only true with elementary school children. What about junior high school students and high school students? What about college students, and moreover, even adults? It is my firm belief that in our age, for all generations, real-life encounters with nature are indispensable to our education, and to live our lives as humans.
Seishin Girls’ High School AKIYAMA Shigeharu
