The Independence of Learning and Other Essays on Education

Should a government run its own schools? In 1883 Fukuzawa Yukichi, founder of Keio Gijuku and Meiji Japan's most widely read public intellectual, said no: politics changes by the month, learning must not, and the state's universities should be cut loose from the ministries and handed to a council of scholars.

This collection gathers his sharpest writing on education. He tells the political activists of the popular-rights movement to stop pestering the government and take up the vast unclaimed work of private society; argues that the aim of education is a happiness that keeps rising as people develop; insists, with homely examples from shop signs, carpenters and cookshops, that poor children who will leave school within a year should learn hiragana, the iroha and the abacus first; and answers the moralists who blamed the schools for "insolent" youth by pointing to the real teacher, society itself.

Each essay is translated complete and unabridged from the Japanese, with a translator's note, endnotes and source information.