soka education, dewey, and vygotsky

As students of a Soka Education institution based on the ideal of “value creation” I think that it is important that we clarify just exactly what this term means. In this chapter of Education for Creative Living, Makiguchi outlines the basics of his philosophy of value. His philosophy is different than that of Kant in that he makes a distinction between truth and value. Truth is the objective description of an object. It is scientific. Truth cannot be argued; it is the same for everyone. The concept of value, however, is based on the relationship between an object and the observer. Thus, value changes relative to the observer or the time. Makiguchi also classifies value into three categories: beauty, benefit, and good. Beauty is valuable to the individual aesthetically, benefit is valuable to the individual’s continued existence, and good is valuable to the community as a whole.

What, then, is value creation? Makiguchi writes, “When we speak of creation, we refer to the process of bringing to light whatever has bearing on human life from among elements already existing in nature, evaluating these discoveries, and through the addition of human effort further enhancing that relevancy. In other words, creation reworks the “found order” of nature into an order with special benefits for humanity. Strictly speaking, then creation applies only to value, and not to truth, for truth stops at the point of discovery . . . when someone brings together previously unrelated things to the manifest benefit of humankind or builds upon earlier works to increase their relevance, that is called invention, origination, or creation” (57). In other words, value creation requires creativity and imagination. This process involves seeing connections between seemingly unrelated things, and bringing them together to create something valuable to oneself or to society as a whole.

As other articles have argued, certain schooling practices often have the effect of destroying a student’s creativity and imagination. As the example of the lego-building student demonstrates, when teachers evaluate students’ production, it often has the effect of taking away the autonomy of the students’ creative process. With these newly imposed standards, what now matters is what the teacher deems valuable, not what the student deems valuable. For Makiguchi, the purpose of education is the help students create value as they see fit in relation to their own lives.

It was difficult for me to understand the argument being made in Goulah’s article comparing Makiguchi and Vygotsky in terms of the concept of space. For Makiguchi, the local community was a place where students could learn universal principles and concepts through direct observation of their immediate environment. This proposal provides a solution to Dewey’s critique that oftentimes knowledge is learned in isolation from the conditions in which it will be applied in the future. If students learn from direct observation of their immediate surroundings, not only will their learning be applicable to real life situations, but it will also stimulate their interest as it has a direct connection to their lives. This would create the formation of positive attitudes that promote positive learning experiences in the future, as Dewey feels is so important. For Vygotsky, the importance of the environment seems to be its effect on the individual’s psychological development of beliefs, ideas, attitudes, etc. Thus, although their ideas are similar, I believe they emphasize different aspects of the notion of space.