YM COLUMN ARCHIVE

March 18, 2009

My thought on space education in Paris

I’ve just heard the news that the space shuttle “Discovery” with Astronaut Koichi Wakata onboard was successfully launched. I expected beforehand I would hear the news in Paris, which exactly so happened. Good news indeed. I will report to you of his activities at some future date. For now, let me just say of my expectation of his safe return back home after achieving fine performances and enjoyable stay onboard for a long period of three months.

I’ve been in Paris quite in a long while. For past over ten years it was my annual practice to visit Paris in March to attend the preparatory meeting for LAC (International Astronautical Congress) that is held in autumn. Last year I failed to attend the meeting because of my tight schedule, so this is the first time in two years. Last night I had an active discussion with my old friends, and just before we concluded we talked about how space itself and achievements of space activities would be useful to human lives; if so in what way? I, on my part, spontaneously talked about my long-held idea of space’s contribution to education, which was received by interesting reactions.

As for the space education, the ISEB (International Space Education Bureau) was formally established at Fukuoka session some years earlier, participated by each education department of Space Institutions such as ESA (Europe), NASA (USA), CSA (Canada) and JAXA (Japan). This year Japan is in charge of chairing ISEB conferences, and so it is fairly tough to coordinate debates and activities among participants.

It has passed about twenty years since the commencement of an educational activity in rather a peculiar way by the name of “space education”. Meanwhile in Japan, the three space related organizations were integrated to form JAXA in 2003, in which Space Education Center was founded in 2005.

The word “space education” may be intuitively associated with all round educations from infant children to university students. In a way it is true in a sense of lifetime education. In JAXA’s Space Education Center, however, the educational activities are focused to target upon elementary, middle and high school students in order to avoid unfocused education for everybody. On the other hand, we are all aware of importance to do something for university students, which is, regrettably, almost substantially negligible, not to say completely nothing though. The reason for this is because if we take action for university students, then the budget allocations for children will obviously become scarce. Our final conclusion was that we had no other choice but to concentrate on junior students.

In an international cooperation of space education under the international organization of ISEB, however, there is a special reason to consider university students in its center of the educational program. Probably this is affected by concepts of each staff member in charge of education under one’s institution and also there is a particular reason to this from an objective viewpoint.

The first is ESA. In the international institution of ESA organized by space-advanced countries of Europe, it is naturally understandable that the education for children will, unlike monetary unification, be carried out by independent educational policies of each country not under the framework of ESA. On the contrary, it is a common sense of Europeans that university students are mutually exchanging each other across the borders so that it is quite natural for them to educate the students in a sphere of Europe. Therefore, the university students of Europe are entitled to the right and duty to involve in activities for space education on the level of ESA.

The second reason for university students becoming the center of education is that the space related concerns of each country have to depend upon work-ready graduates from their expectations as of national hope or industrial need or the thoughts of space related parties. The above is my personal view but this seems to be not entirely wrong as I sensed from the discussions yesterday with my multi-national friends from France, Philippines, Korea, Germany, USA, Russia and Italy. Generally accepted opinions in Europe seem to be: a national concept that the education should be implemented by some other national institution and not by space organizations; an industrial expectation from their wish to acquire ready-made students (not really made ready, though) that it is the very university students who bear the future of the country and the near future of the world; a keen motive of space institutions that they must ensure able students to compete with rival countries in the field such as a life science.

As to the first “national concept”, my opinion was accepted from my friends that there would be no problem if the national educational system is established to educate students, in which case all space organs must do is to provide educational materials concerning space, but actually what’s going on is that we just can’t entirely leave the problem in hands of the governments, and so space institutions most understandable of the attractiveness of space and working at the forefront of space activities must directly contribute to the education.

As to the second industrial expectation and the third keen motive of space institutions, their contentions are somewhat understandable to a certain degree, because it is certainly true of its vital importance for enterprises and institutions to employ excellent human resources. If excellent students desiring space job come into the attractive business of space, the space industry will become more active with more national budget, which will make the industry really happy. It is also understandable for space related concerns that they expect to have able students to elevate the level of space activities instead of their going into other fields of life science, nano-technology or robot. It was generally agreed among my friends that the arguments of the second and third have substantial reasons.

I put my question, “Is an education for elementally, middle and high school pupils to make reserves for excellent university students in space world?” to which everyone answered “no”. The argument on this subject has not been fully discussed yet, but I think it was at least confirmed among my friends that we must further continue our work to analyze and synthesize the diversified aspects of “space activities”. What I presented before them about the diversified aspects of space activities are the following propositions:

(1) There are various aspects to space such as the motive to   constitute natural science, the motive to inspire artistic sense and the elements deeply concerning war and peace of the world. When we think of the ancient philosophy that determined the value of the world into the three classifications, “Truth, Beauty and Virtue” I think the three aspects of space beautifully correspond to the ancient philosophy. I am a layman in this field, so I hope to be educated someday of the true meaning of philosophy by whoever well versed in this knowledge. Meanwhile please take my opinion as that of a layman.

(2) The natural science so constituted became the target subject of scientists who created the consistent scenario on 13.7 billion years history of universe ever since its birth as the most intellectual heritage of mankind. And many events and facts contained in the scenario provide good examples to inspire intellectual curiosity of children deep in their mind. These events and facts are complicatedly interacting each other to make it more attractive, the more one thinks about it the deeper the fathom of space becomes.

(3) The space to inspire artistic sense has helped artists to create numerous artistic works such as music, painting, carving and literature, which were born from the space. Although I don’t know much about the artistic world, I think many of you may have a sense of something common between arts and space. I shall never forget all through my life of the middle school classroom where the girl improvised the music after the image of “Pale, Blue Dot” sent by Voyager 1 from 6.6 billion kilometers away and the boy instantly composed the poem.

(4) The space decidedly concerned about the war and peace of the world contains fundamental elements regarding the fate of mankind, which were developed, good or bad, by space technology. The idea of attacking other countries from space would never have occurred unless rocket technology was developed. On the contrary, recognition of ourselves on the earth in space or obtaining the viewpoint to look at things from space would never have been acquired. Our viewpoint, life and means might all have been developed by space technology, and so accordingly we had to raise the level to connect “war and peace issue” with our fatal crisis as a mankind.

If we like it or not, we have to go on living alongside with venturing into space. Activity spheres of space itself and space activities will give a grave influence upon children in the future much more than we adults have ever experienced.

Like it or not, we may be under the circumstances of the absolute necessity to live on by looking at things only through screening of space. Maybe such is the time nowadays for children to live or forced to live: if so, on the premise that we understand the desire of industry and space related concerns to a certain degree, there must be prepared an educational system to let children involved in the atmosphere of the modern age from an infant age and to open up the new road for children to walk through “space screen”. This is what I truly feel.

Space activity has only 20 years experience since it started. I hope we will be able, out of practical experiences, to theorize what we can and boldly challenge against what we have to newly develop, so that we will continue our work to pioneer the new age for children without hesitation. The column on the Kojiki I wrote last week is a part of theorization.

I welcome your opinions on this column to the following E-mail address.
matogawa@planetary.or.jp

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