LEARN with Porsche” is a program for young people jointly implemented by Porsche Japan and the University of Tokyo’s Institute of Advanced Study’s Individualized Optimal Learning Donation Research Division. The program brings together young people from junior high through high school across Japan and provides them with opportunities to learn about the importance of having dreams and to develop their abilities in an environment that is best suited for each individual, while also building their self-confidence and motivation. This is not a type of event that seeks a single right answer or goal. Readers of this report may feel a bit bewildered, or may be inspired by the thoughts and actions of young people as a result of the students’ movements. The desire to “know” that arises from some trigger. That is the real appeal of this program. Although the program is geared toward young people, there are many scenes that will make you think about the state of contemporary society and education. The first program was held last summer (2021) in the Tokachi area of Hokkaido, and Travel Watch has reported on that event in detail. The schedule of this program includes assignments at each location, but these individual assignments and destinations are not known to the students at all. Students are not informed of the individual tasks and destinations. They are notified at the site on the day of the event or the night before, and they must either utilize their own local abilities or work with their peers to complete the tasks. There are also multiple tasks prepared, and there are scenes where the students are forced to make a choice (or give in) on the spot. And to overcome them, the following decisions are made. Participation in assignments is voluntary All participation is voluntary. While it is obvious that participation in the program is voluntary from the initial announcement of participation, the tasks assigned at each location may be interpreted as you wish within the conditions of the program. If you fail to arrive on time, there is a possibility that you will be left behind. The program is designed to include such selfishness and trouble. It is a valuable experience to think about how to deal with such problems within the group. There is no special reward for successfully completing all the tasks. Completion of the assignment or reaching the final destination itself is not the primary goal. No use of smart phones, tablets, PCs, and other information communication devices are prohibited during the assignment. They are to be left with the staff when the group meets in the morning. They will be returned at night for family contact. In other words, no Internet searches or map applications can be used during the activity. Students are expected to think for themselves and act as a group. What is important is that from the day of departure from home, students are expected to think for themselves and control the direction of the group. They are not allowed to be accompanied by parents or friends. Staff and collaborators accompany and watch over the students during the program, but do not interfere. Although there is a leader, there is no “please come this way” guidance like in a tour, and the group is basically left alone. However, they are allowed to ask for advice and chat with the staff members about matters other than their assignments. The idea is that there are many insights to be gained from conversations with adults in various positions and occupations with whom one does not normally have much contact.
New Learning Opportunity Implemented by Porsche and the University of Tokyo’s Institute for Advanced Study Here, we would like to briefly introduce the “LEARN with Porsche” initiative. LEARN with Porsche” is a series of programs initiated and developed by the laboratory of the “Research on Optimal Individualized Learning” donation research division led by Senior Research Fellow Kengryu Nakamura at the University of Tokyo’s Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology. In addition to “~with Porsche,” several “LEARN” programs are held simultaneously and as needed for the purpose of research on “developing the talents of all children,” and they function as a place to pursue new learning opportunities that are individually optimized for children from a practical perspective. It is an initiative to seek educational solutions to help young people who have difficulty or tend to give up on their dreams, which is unique to today’s world, to have dreams and innovate for the future, regardless of their background or social status. Porsche Japan has endorsed this idea through the “LEARN with Porsche” program. Porsche continues to support young people with the concept of “Porsche. Dream Together” based on the idea that there is no superiority or inferiority in having a dream, and this program is a part of that. Since the program is conducted in collaboration with Porsche Japan, the second half of the program is designed to expose students to the world of Porsche, but the purpose is not to show them the world of Porsche. The point of the program is not to showcase to the students the world of Porsche, but rather to change the emotions of each individual when they experience firsthand the high-performance Porsche, a sophisticated industrial product that is the culmination of technology that they do not have much contact with in their daily lives. Therefore, most of the program schedule is a trip to places unrelated to Porsche. Before the day of the program, the number of students was narrowed down to 11 after screening and interviews. They were boys and girls from the third year of junior high school to the third year of high school, and were drawn from all over the country. At this stage, however, the students were not informed of each other’s faces or profiles. The first day of the program began with the students being told that they would meet at the ticket gate of Uwajima Station on the Yosan Line in Ehime Prefecture, Shikoku, with tickets mailed to their homes to get there.
The answer to “LEARN with Porsche” will be known in 10 years. The interview began with a train ride from Matsuyama Station to Uwajima Station. At this point, we did not know each other’s faces, but we had reserved seats close to each other in the reserved seating area. I was curious to see how we would naturally get to know each other in our seats next to each other, but it was no problem. It seemed that by the time we arrived at Okayama Station before Matsuyama Station, self-introductions had already been completed to some extent. It seemed that many of the students were not shy and were very active this time. We arrived at Uwajima Station, where we sat next to each other on the train, and got to know each other well. We gathered at a restaurant in front of the station for our first meeting. Welcome to Uwajima! Mr. Nakamura starts the meeting by saying, “This is the beginning of ‘LEARN with Porsche’. We won’t know what we will do tomorrow until the morning. The most important thing is to feel what is happening on site. The theme of this year’s meeting is “Suddenness and Coincidence. Even if someone speaks to you for a moment, the world will change. It seems that you spoke to each other while coming to Uwajima. This has already created change,” he tells us again, reiterating the purpose of the program and its emphasis on experience. If you listen carefully, you will hear that they were making a memo of self-introductions on the train. It is interesting to see this kind of unexpected movement. It will probably be 10 years before we find out the meaning of this program and the answer to our question,” Nakamura said. What? That’s a long time! The students were all surprised out loud. It’s not hard when you are young. But you will definitely understand this when you get older. Even I, when I was in junior high school and was addicted to working in the photo darkroom, my teacher told me, “What you are doing now is an experience you will have in the future,” to which I replied, “Bullshit! I laughed. I never dreamed that 40 years later I would still be doing photography. But I am sure that I was enthusiastic and “spontaneously” creating a lot of works at that time. At this point, the food researcher Yoshiharu Doi, who is also a visiting researcher in Mr. Nakamura’s laboratory, is introduced to us. He will be with us for the next three days of our trip to Shikoku. The audience was excited by the appearance of a celebrity. He said, “Mr. Nakamura and I are doing completely different things, but for some reason we hit it off. It might be interesting to think about where we are connected,” Doi introduced himself. Thus ended the first day’s meeting, with only the morning meeting time announced, without informing the participants of their destination.
A terraced field suddenly appears, poking through the sky. On the morning of the second day, we boarded a cab without being told where we were going. We continued along the complicated coastline formed by the rias coast of Uwajima, and stopped in front of a nondescript cliff. Looking closely between the trees, we could see stones piled up like a stone wall. Look at these stone-wall-like cliffs. It goes all the way up. What is this? Mr. Nakamura asked. Castle ruins? A castle wall? Did they build a barrier? the students. In fact, this stone wall extends over the entire peninsula of Mizuhanoura. This is how it is everywhere in this area. The students were a bit overwhelmed when they heard that it covered the entire peninsula. It covers the whole area! Is it to prevent landslides?”
“Stairs? Are they building terraces?” Stone walls like this would not have been built without some purpose. Continuing on, we arrived at a fishing port that resembled a bay. This is Yusumizugaura, overlooking the terraced fields of Yusumizugaura, which are being preserved by the non-profit organization “Association for Preservation of Terraced Fields,” and where a restaurant and a direct sales shop are also located. Here, we interviewed Mr. Shigeaki Matsuda, representative of the “Association for the Love of Yuko. The “terraced fields of Yuko Mizunagiura” were selected as an Important Cultural Landscape in 2007. Generally, they are called “terraced fields,” but here they have a history of being called “danbata” (terraced fields). They are steeply sloping and steeply cut, and the flat areas are very narrow, almost only one ridge. The local dialect “dandan” means “thank you. It is a very symbolic dialect. It is said that the name “Mizunagaura” also comes from the fact that people carried water up the mountain. The students were overwhelmed to see pictures of their ancestors, whose shoulders were raised as a burden cob from years of carrying a balance. The terraced fields began to be built in the Edo period (1603-1867), and the stone walls were first used in the late Meiji period (1868-1912), when mulberry trees were cultivated for sericulture. From the beginning of the Showa period (1926-1989), sweet potatoes were cultivated, and in the 1950s, potatoes were also grown. These days seemed to be the heyday of the area. Mr. Haruki Miyamoto of the Yodo Historical and Cultural Research Association also gave us an explanation of the half-farming, half-fishing lifestyle of field cultivation and sardine fishing. Sardines are often poorly caught, and the terraced fields are destined to be poor areas with low harvests despite the hard labor. Sardines were used as fish fertilizer, and rats were so numerous that the village hall even bought the rats that were caught. Eventually, the cultivation of mandarin oranges and pearl cultivation stabilized their livelihood, and they were surprised to learn that when the terraced fields were reduced to forests, the number of rats also decreased. As pearl and yellowtail cultivation flourished, the terraced fields were reduced in size and most of them returned to the forest in the Heisei era. If this amazing history is not preserved, it will collapse and disappear without a second thought,” he said. What you just saw is what’s left of it,” Nakamura said, and the students seemed to sense something. The terraced fields that our ancestors had built, carrying balances and carrying burdens on their shoulders, had been swallowed up by nature in the blink of an eye.
Sweating and experiencing the work in the terraced fields Next, to actually experience the work in the terraced fields, we decided to put plastic bottles of our beverages in the balance and carry them up the steps. Unlike in the past, the terraced fields are equipped with stairways, but the slope is as steep as 45 degrees, so we had to be careful not to lose our balance. We also experienced repair work on a section where the masonry had collapsed. It was an experience of hard labor with a pickaxe in a narrow terraced field.
© Source travel watch
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