013. Gakumon to Shite no Kyōiku-gaku by Ittoku Tomano (Books I read in 2025)

Published in 2022, the English title of this book ‘The Metatheory System of Pedagogy’ curiously only appearing once on the front cover of the hardbound copy better represent the contents of this book.

Tomano Ittoku’s ‘Gakumon to Shite no Kyōiku-gaku’ (Education as a Discipline) is an attempt by the author to find answers to questions related to the value and meaning of education in a world where according to him, postmodernism has made essentialism taboo. Thus the goal of the book, says Tomano, is to find a metatheory of Education since the rise of relativism has left the discipline of Education bereft of any foundation.

The chapterization of the book and Tomano’s conceptualization of pedagogy closely follows Wolfgang Brezinka’s three classes of educational theory: Educational Philosophy (Chapter 2), Educational Science (Chapter 3), and Practical Pedagogy (Chapter 4).

The first chapter outlines the crisis that has beset the discipline and there is no love lost between him and postmodernism. However, I should add that he seems to share similar views with postmodernism on how knowledge and reality are constructed through discourses, since his writing reflects the social constructionist views of Lev Vygotsky, i.e., the formation of the mind as a societal/communal process.

The second and the longest chapter in the book, Educational Philosophy, is where he attempts to establish his Metatheory. After establishing his metatheory, the third and fourth focus on providing scientific validation and a methodological approach respectively for the remaining two aspects of the discipline, Educational Science and Practical Pedagogy.

So, what exactly is the metatheory of Education that Tomano proposes and how does he build this? Tomano arrives at his metatheory of Educational Philosophy as follows.

1. Reality is best explained not through subject-object duality (Kant) nor through absolute idealism (Hegel). Rather reality is best explained through the phenomena itself.
2. Apart from the human’s awareness and intentions about the phenomena one perceives, there is a third element, that of emotion associated with this phenomena.
3. It is this emotion (desire/interest) that dictates meaning to the phenomena.
4. The fundamental emotion (desire) or driving force in human beings is freedom [and not the will to power (Niche) or quest for happiness (Bataille)].
5. Hence, the purpose of Education should be the realization of individual freedom, that is mutually agreed upon by other individuals through dialogue.
6. Therefore, educational policies that are enacted to achieve this should be tested against this scale, i.e the scale of general welfare.

Tomano relies on his mentor Takeda Seiji’s Hegelian desire-approach (Steps 2–3) to Empirical/Transcedental Phenomenology, the qualitative approach built on the works of Edmund Husserl.

He borrows Rousseau’s conception of freedom (Step 4), when he states that freedom of the individual should be compatible with freedom of the larger society, and that the degree of freedom is mutually recognized by the individuals that form this society.

After establishing this so-called metatheory, in order to provide a scientific basis for Educational Science, Tomano spends most of Chapter 3 in removing the positivist hierarchy that places quantitative over qualitative approaches.

Thus, in Chapter 4 Tomano naturally goes towards abduction as the methodological approach and recommends using analogy-based generalization, which I have no idea what he means by that. These three metatheories combined is what Tomano means by the term ‘system’ in the English title, ‘The Metatheory System of Pedagogy’, that appears on the cover.

I have more questions than answers now. I guess that is a good place to get off a book and board another one.

LibGuides defines Leisure Reading as “self-selected and independent reading of materials for personal and social purposes”. The ‘Books I read in 2025’ series of blog posts are the books that I have read in 2025 as part of my leisure reading. The inspiration for writing this series comes out of my frustration of forgetting the content of the books that I read and the impact the book had on me.

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