No. 46 Nanzan Elementary School Opening Commemorative Lecture

(public information Inagi September 15, 2015 issue publication)

Nanzan Elementary School is the 12th new school in the city, and opened on April 1, 2014. It was newly constructed in the area of the "Nanzan Eastern Land Readjustment Project," which promotes good town development in a section of the Tama Hills that crosses the central part of the city from east to west, and was designed based on three basic principles. proceeded.
The first point is an "environmentally friendly school that coexists with greenery" that takes advantage of the rich natural environment of the hilly area, the second point is a "school that cooperates with the community" in line with new town development, and the third point is , the concept of a "disaster-resistant school" that makes use of earthquake-resistant ground.
We hope that Nanzan Elementary School, which was newly born in this way, will make the most of the hills and location conditions rich in nature, and become a so-called "satoyama school" that is familiar to everyone in the area. With that in mind, we decided to make the monument of our school a bronze statue of Kinjiro Ninomiya.
This bronze statue used to be installed in many schools in the past, but it is rare for it to be installed at a new school, and it seems that there are cases where it is removed at an existing school. Kinjiro Ninomiya traveled all over the Tohoku region to provide farm management consulting, and as a result, managed to rebuild the management of more than 600 villages. Unfortunately, however, his achievements have been forgotten recently, and the significance of the statue has been misunderstood.
This time, we invited Ms. Mariko Nakagiri, who is the 7th generation descendant of Kinjiro and who received a doctorate in education from Kyoto University, as a lecturer. Although the time was limited, he gave a fruitful lecture titled "Cultivating Rich Human Resources: A Way of Life Learned from Kinjiro Ninomiya."
The idea of Hotoku, which is necessary to put into practice the idea of a water wheel, which is half obedient (know, observe, accept) and half defy (take measures, devise), is the beginning of everything. It is based on the fact that there is something, and I am convinced that this will lead to the "satoyama education" that our school is aiming for.
I would like to express my gratitude to Professor Nakagiri for giving a lecture on that day, and I would like to thank the many citizens who came to the venue on that day.