ABSTRACT
The goal of this chapter is to share what we have learned from our efforts to transform and update moral education within public schools in Japan. Much criticism has been directed toward the present Japanese method of moral education for its inculcative and indoctrinaire nature that ignores students’ autonomous reasoning. The students often express frustration that moral education classes are simply boring and uninteresting, or that the conclusions to be drawn from the classes are easily predictable (Mase, 1987; Sano,1985). Given such criticisms, we have so far attempted:
1. To sustain the original objective of traditional moral education to foster the growth of “good” people, while also breaking down the long-held myth that indoctrination of certain moral values is almost unavoidable in any effort to attain that goal.
