Joint Studies on Aging and Death : With Special Regard to the Theoretical Foundation of Life-Long Education

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1) We have made our cooperative study to reconstruct theories of education in order to make a comprehensive theory on human becoming. This was accomplished by breaking the narrow limits of the usual theories which focus only on "children" , "life" , "youthfulness" etc. And expanding these aspects toward human-being and -becoming as a whole. We have already started this theoretical expansion by reconsidering the plinciples of theories on lifelong education.2) However, this expansion can be achieved only when we dare to cope with the overlooked themes on "aging and death" . Thus, our study on lifelong education has gradually been developed to a comprehensive one on "aging and death" . This study deals not only with the principal tasks for educational theory, but also with the urgent socio-cultural problems in a rapid and radical social change of age-hierarchy. Aided by the Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research in 1989-90 (Co-operative Research A) , we have tried to approach these vast tasks through a series of seven 3 or 4day research sessions and further daily research contact by mail or phone over a two year period.3) First, we examined the referential literature exhaustively, and found an absence of literature discussing "aging and death" from the viewpoint of human-becoming as a whole. Then we made a framework and program to allot tasks to each team member. In the second year we made a report, in which we developed the comprehensive theory on human becoming focusing on "aging and death" to round out our development of a theory on human-being. But mainly due to time restrictions, the research program could not be completed satisfactorily and became a preparatory report to the accomplished work which we expect to publish. The work of preparing this report repeatedly raised interesting questions for future research on the complex relationship between the human generation cycle and the individual life cycle.