Learning Cities in East Asia Japan Korea and China

Learning cities in East Asia: Japan, the Republicof Korea and China

SoongHee Han · Atsushi Makino

Published online: 12 September 2013

© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht and UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning 2013

Abstract Lifelong learning cities emerged in Japan in the 1980s and 1990s; in the

Republic of Korea in the 2000s and 2010s; and in China mostly from 2000 onwards.

They were a countermeasure to the increasing challenges of global as well as post-

industrial uncertainties at the turn of the century, when cities were trying to find

governmental instruments to engage in cultural processes, community building and

personal development as the new way of urban life. Learning was perceived to be a

panacea to solve the social problems occurring in overwhelming processes of

modernisation and industrialisation. The authors of this paper assert that the practice

of and research on learning cities, especially in the East Asian region, need to go

beyond the technical rationalities which are guiding government tools, and explain

the realities to which they are meant to be applied. In order to do this, the authors

investigated three separate but inter-connected scenes found in Japan, the Republic

of Korea and China, revealing that the learning city is a phenomenon which reflects

complex social dynamics and the interaction of many minds. While the cases in this

region are distinctive, they do share some common characteristics. The authors

place these within what they term a “community relations model”, which they

contrast with the “individual competence model” which is usually found in initia-

tives of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and

schemes implemented in the area of the European Union (EU).

S. Han (&)

Seoul National University, Seoul, Republic of Korea

e-mail: [email protected]

A. Makino ·

University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

e-mail: [email protected]

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Int Rev Educ (2013) 59:443–468

DOI 10.1007/s11159-013-9372-2

Keywords Learning city · Learning community · Community education · Adult

education in East Asia · Kominkan · Shequ education

Resume Les villes apprenantes en Asie orientale : Japon, Republique de Coree et

Chine – Des villes d’apprentissage tout au long de la vie sont apparues au Japon

dans les annees 1980 et 1990, en Republique de Coree entre 2000 et 2010, et en

Chine essentiellement a partir de 2000. Elles constituaient une contre-mesure aux

defis croissants poses au debut du siecle par les incertitudes de la mondialisation et

de la post-industrialisation. Les villes tentaient alors de trouver des solutions

publiques pour s’engager dans des processus culturels, la construction d’une com-

munaute et le developpement personnel, traits d’un nouveau mode de vie urbain.

L’apprentissage etait percu comme une panacee pouvant resoudre les problemes

sociaux resultant des phenomenes implacables de modernisation et d’industriali-

sation. Les auteurs de l’article avancent que la pratique et la recherche relatives aux

villes apprenantes, notamment dans la region d’Asie orientale, doivent depasser les

rationalites techniques qui guident les instruments publics, et expliquent les realites

auxquelles ces derniers sont censes s’appliquer. Dans ce but, les auteurs ont etudie

trois scenes distinctes mais interconnectees, selectionnees au Japon, en Republique

de Coree et en Chine; ils signalent que la ville apprenante est un phenomene

refletant une dynamique sociale complexe et l’interaction de nombreux points de

vue. Si les differents cas de cette meme region sont specifiques, ils possedent aussi

des caracteristiques communes. Les auteurs classifient ces dernieres selon ce qu’ils

appellent un « modele de relations communautaires » , qu’ils opposent au « modele

de competences individuelles », ce dernier figurant couramment dans les initiatives

de l’Organisation de Cooperation et de Developpement Economiques (OCDE) et

dans les schemas appliques par l’Union Europeenne (UE).

Introduction

The concepts of the learning society and lifelong learning emerged in the 1970s and

1980s; a time when learning was considered a panacea which cured symptoms of

the post-industrial risk society. This is reflected in Norman Longworth’s definition

of a learning city:

A learning city, town or region recognizes and understands the key role of

learning in the development of basic prosperity, social stability and personal

fulfilment, and mobilizes all its human, physical, and financial resources

creatively and sensitively to develop the full human potential of all its citizens

(Longworth 1999, p. 4).

Learning cities in East Asia were the outcome of instrumental policies by

government bodies to mobilise citizens’ learning that enhanced personal develop-

ment, economic prosperity and social inclusion. In Japan, the learning city policies

were boosted in the 1990s by the Ministry of Education as well as the Ministry of

Trade and Industry in the context of a bubble economy. In the Republic of Korea,

the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997 suddenly called for the active role of lifelong

444 S. Han, A. Makino

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learning and learning cities as a main policy instrument; to build a new concept of

regional self-governance, learning cities were designated in the 2000s and 2010s. In

China, rapidly growing metropolises and the shadow of social discrepancies in cities

stimulated the introduction of community rebuilding and adult education pro-

grammes to promote citizens’ participation in community activities, mainly in the

2000s and early 2010s.

Most of all, the experience of learning city programmes in this region had a clear

connection with placating the discontent of what citizens had perceived as the

outcomes of the process of industrialisation and post-industrialisation. Especially in

the Republic of Korea and in China, large metropolitan cities sought a new image to

become environmentally safe and culturally dignified. Learning was perceived as a

solution to the social problems occurring in overwhelming processes of modern

industrialisation that distorted the city image into merely a money-making machine.

With lifelong learning being the new concept of education in post-industrial, post-

modern, post-welfare times (Griffin 2001, p. 48), linking up with the policies of

lifelong learning and learning cities seemed promising in efforts to replace the

distorted image of urbanisation, industrialisation, and modernisation in those cities.

On the other hand, rural communities and smaller cities also found strategies for

development in learning city concepts, especially in Japan. They wanted to attract

more incoming populations and create new community structures for living together

beyond merely increasing job opportunities and economic stability. More concepts

from the fields of culture, design and general creativity were adapted in city

planning to display the key icons of these new stages of city development.

We believe that the distinctive features of the Asian type of learning cities can be

characterised as a community relations model, which is different to the European

individual competence model. First of all, European learning cities have attributes

from the individual competency model in the sense that learning is fundamentally

an individual process, and learning city programmes aim to enhance individual

competence as their contribution to communities and workplaces. A typical

statement in a learning city strategy implemented by the Organisation for Economic

Co-operation and Development (OECD) or by a European country is along the

following lines:

the coordination of work-oriented and general/leisure-oriented education and

training, in a way that allows all citizens easily to relate their development as

individuals to their development as workers (CERI/OECD 1993, p. 10).

By contrast, the Asian perspective in learning cities underlines the problems of social

conditions and identities, cultural discontent and conflicts within the cities, as well as

various intergenerational and gender tensions etc. Social exclusion and conflict in a

society are more focused here and, therefore, cultural and liberal learning dominates

the curriculum in the context of community activities.We call it a community relations

model, a unique Asian perspective on lifelong learning and learning cities, which

emphasises more of the “mode of relations” and group learning activities.

More or less, over time, the emphasis on social and collective aspects has always

been a part of the social history of Asian countries. The concept of “individuality”

and the “modern sense of individual freedom” only emerged in the Asian region

Learning cities in East Asia 445

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after the Second World War, when Asians experienced a new sense of freedom,

individual responsibility and democracy. The Republic of Korea and Japan

experienced this immediately after the end of the Second World War, and China a

little later. Personal confidence and cultural manoeuvring in defining modern

personal identities were also established then to meet this modern culture and the

equivalent social structure.

In this paper, we discuss the characteristics of the Asian type of learning cities in

the sense that they are based upon a community relations model which aims to

tackle social problems rather than economic goals and employment.

Learning cities: governmental instrument and self-organising learningcomplexity

The momentum of the learning city programme was directly ignited in 2007/2008

by the impact of global economic turmoil and local reflections of the social as well

as economic uncertainty. A scenario has been proposed elsewhere (Han 2007) in

which global capitalism might produce a neoliberal version of the lifelong learning

discourse which heavily influenced the shaping of local policies of learning cities in

East Asian countries. The author especially highlighted the social uncertainty

brought by the bubble economy and the Asian financial crisis, which put whole

Asian societies at risk; he focused on the fact that lifelong learning was adapted at

that time to heal these situations, with the learning city concept among the “chosen”

strategies.

Under these circumstances, cities in Japan, the Republic of Korea and China have

been carrying out bold experiments for two decades in implementing the idea of

learning cities, learning communities and learning towns, embedded in municipal

ordinances and city planning committees. The details, however, have been

somewhat different in the three countries. For example, Japan has a long history

of self-reliant community activities based upon the kominkan [community culture

centre] tradition1 before the learning city concept was introduced, though some

cities, such as Kakegawa, were later internationally referred to as the origin of the

self-declared learning city movement. The Republic of Korea, by contrast, had a

strong initiative by the central government, based upon the Lifelong EducationLaw,2 in promoting the programme implemented at primary local government

(municipality) level. China, however, has carefully benchmarked the best practices

and ideas of the two other countries, and introduced a similar programme in large

metropolitan cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou.

Broadly speaking, in all three countries the learning city programme and policy

were implemented as a governmental instrument to meet the global challenges

which increased local uncertainties in each country, by means of adapting the

people’s self-governing participation towards the emergence of civil society. The

1 For more background information on Japanese kominkan, see Iwasa (2010).2 The Lifelong Education Law of the Republic of Korea (MOEHRD 1999) succeeded the SocialEducation Law (MOEHRD 1982).


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“instrument”, however, in Thomas Popkewitz’s terms, took on characteristics of a

utopian version and a “cosmopolitan image” (Popkewitz et al. 2007). It has

mobilised social engineering and technical rationalisation as a tool for upgrading the

social life structure of municipalities and provinces (Simons and Masschelein 2007,

p. 3).

From a governmental perspective, most of the tools reveal themselves as

technical instruments which bring the concept of a learning panacea to the fore,

supposedly curing all kinds of post-industrial social problems. Popkewitz et al. term

it “cosmopolitanism that brings the European renaissance back to the present”. They

write,

Cosmopolitanism is an historical “tool” to consider the transmogrifications of

European Enlightenment images of a universal reason, rationality, and

progress as a mode of living inscribed in the Learning Society. The learner of

this new society is a cosmopolitan guided by compassion for continual change

and innovation. It is a consuming project of life that regulates the present in

the name of the future action (Popkewitz et al. 2007, p. 18).

The focus here is to know how this cosmopolitanism (in this case the discourse of

the learning society) functions as an interpretive lens to explore the political objects

and social administration of people, and how the rules and standards of conditions

produce these self-governing actors (lifelong learners) as agents of social progress

and reformation (ibid., p. 18). Similar approaches with this technical rationality are

found in white papers of the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation

(CERI/OECD) and in many European strategies (see, for example, Longworth

1998). Although some critics point out the limits of this approach, it has already

spread to whole global policy frameworks. Learning region programmes in Europe,

for example, are more instrumental and practical in terms of human capital

promotion, individual competence and life skills development, chiefly based upon

the OECD’s Definition and Selection of Competencies (DeSeCo) framework

(Raven and Stephenson 2001).

In contrast with this, the learning city in East Asia, from our perspective, can only

be grasped within the contextual framework of self-organising and self-growing

complexities in communities and towns, as observed in the cases of three countries

in the latter part of this article. The learning city, in theory and practice, embodies

the whole complex dynamics of the modern city and human learning in various

ways underlying this scene, especially personal and political relations. Therefore, in

order to properly understand the East Asian learning city situation, the technical

rationalities of the European/OECD model need to be replaced by a more critical

and comprehensive social complexity perspective.

In the sections below, we present this discursive framework, illustrating it with

three different cases from Japan, the Republic of Korea and China. Asian lifelong

learning cities have emerged since 1979: in Japan in the 1980s and 1990s; in the

Republic of Korea in the 2000s and 2010s; and in China mostly from 2000 onwards.

The 1990s have a special significance in understanding the context and experiences

in all three East Asian countries. With the burst of the bubble economy in Japan in

1991, the state lost the character of ultimate omnipotence that had led its national


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growth and approach to social redistribution. China’s open door policy,3 especially

after 1992, rapidly destabilised society and increased social inequality and

discontent. Korea, too, was hit by the Asian financial crisis in 1997 that brought

chaos to its economic and social system.

Lessons from Japan: community activities revisited

Up to 2010, a total of 86 municipalities in Japan had reportedly declared themselves

a lifelong learning city, a rate of only 5 per cent of all municipalities (Ogawa 2013,

p. 62). In 1979, only two municipalities had participated, by 1989 the number had

increased to 37(ibid.). However, this is only a small number of municipalities to

have been identified with the notion of the learning city compared to the Republic of

Korea, where already more than 40 per cent of all municipalities had been

designated as lifelong learning cities by 2010. How can this be interpreted?

In fact, many more communities in Japan had already been practising as a

“learning community” in the context of the Social Education Law4 and with

kominkan as centres of their activities since the mid-20th century, but they have not

been counted as a part of the “learning city” initiative in this context. Being

different in its origins from the notion of social education, the learning city is a

comparatively new phenomenon in Japan, brought with the stimulus of the

government-led lifelong learning campaign. The bubble economy, which lasted

roughly from 1986 to 1991, and community dissolution have accelerated the

adoption of lifelong learning into society.

Bubble economy and lifelong learning

The lifelong learning policy in Japan emerged and was legislated in the high bubble

period that lasted, with a number of versions, to the period of the “long-term

depression”. It is ironic that the idea of lifelong learning grew in the late 1980s with

the emergence of the bubble economy that expanded service markets, and in which

adult learning and education were perceived as a kind of commodity in the bubble

market frame, as something individualised and commercialised. It was 1991, when

the bubble burst, that the Lifelong Learning Promotion Law5 was enacted.

3 The term “open door policy”, in the context of modern China, refers to Deng Xiaoping’s policy of

opening up to the outside world, welcoming foreign investment in an effort to modernise Chinese industry

and boost China’s economy.4 The Japanese Social Education Law [sometimes also referred to in English as the Adult Education Act]was ratified in 1949 (MEXT 1949). Iwasa remarks that the definition of “social education”, in Article 2 of

this Act, “is quite similar to the concept of ‘non-formal education’” (Iwasa 2010, p. 65).5 The Japanese Lifelong Learning Promotion Law of 1991 (MEXT 1991) was complemented by the BasicLaw on Education (MEXT 2006), which included an amendment in which the philosophy of lifelong

learning was clarified. The Basic Plan for the Promotion of Education (MEXT 2008) included the

measure of “creating an environment for lifelong learning” for each “basic direction of education

measures”. And the first section of the Second Basic Plan for the Promotion of Education (MEXT 2013)

comprises “four basic policy directions to build a lifelong-learning society based on autonomy,

collaboration and creation” (all quotations taken from the provisional translations provided on the website


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The legislation for this law was first proposed as early as 1987 by the Ad-hocEducation Council Report as a transition of Japanese education to the new platform

of the “lifelong education system”, then reaffirmed by the Central EducationCouncil Report in 1990, stating that “lifelong learning is the activity that targets

personal satisfaction, according to personal needs and reasons…”,6 mostly focusing

on individuality, with new concepts like individual decision making and autonomy.

The notion of lifelong learning was converted into actual policies by both the

Ministry of Trade and Industry and the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports and

Technology (MEXT). The term lifelong learning was recognised as covering both

individuals as agents of their own learning, from a commodity consumer’s

viewpoint, as well as the government’s role of fostering the platform for learning as

commodity production and distribution.

Before long, the bubble economy burst and Japan fell into a prolonged recession.

Now the pendulum of the historic clock swung from individual self-reliance back to

social integration. Markets were shrinking, so that the “re-integration of the

individualised Japanese society” became the top issue with this community

breakdown and the isolation of individuals, rising unemployment and the

breakdown of the welfare system, the need for environmental protection, and

foreign worker issues. A new role for lifelong learning was expected to reintegrate

the broken society by way of independent citizens’ voluntary participation. The

ideas of learning communities, learning cities or learning villages were adopted in

this context.

This stream of transition in the lifelong learning framework and identity was

clearly recognised when the Lifelong Learning Council submitted a report in 1998,

entitled The agenda for future social education administration to cope with the socialchanges, The report suggested that the former kominkan-based social education

policies needed to be connected with new policies of lifelong learning by mobilising

and re-engineering the previous social education administrative structures to

activate community building by more participation of citizens. Here, the term

kominkan implies a community learning centre, based upon the Social EducationLaw, relatively small and located within walking distance to promote community

activities and citizens’ active participation.

Linked with the “Heisei merge”,7 a historical period of mergers and restructuring

of local government units that lasted from 1999 to 2010, the logic of government

was to disconnect people from the previous social welfare system that was based

Footnote 5 continued

of the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports and Technology at http://www.mext.go.jp/

english/a05.htm [accessed 14 August 2013]).6 Translations of quotations from sources which are unavailable in English such as this one were made by

the authors of this article for the purpose of its publication in English. The page references (if any) given

refer to the Asian-language source (Japanese, Korean or Chinese) listed in the reference section.7 “Heisei” is the current era in Japan; the reign of Emperor Akihito, who acceded to the throne in 1989.

The term “Heisei merge (“sometimes also referred to as the “Heisei mergers”) refers to an initiative of the

Japanese central government which significantly reduced the number of cities/towns/villages by way of

merging them. The measure was implemented due to demographic developments (overaging in

combination with low birthrates, resulting in shrinking communities) in conjunction with problems of

government funding allocation.


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http://www.mext.go.jp/english/a05.htm

http://www.mext.go.jp/english/a05.htm

upon an egalitarian and security-oriented image of society, and instead make them

take part in the “pain-sharing” process. Under these circumstances, the 2004 Reportof the Lifelong Learning Committee of the Central Education Council states, “[i]t isimportant to raise public consciousness so every citizen becomes an agent of

building community and participating voluntarily in this process”, Lifelong learning

policy at this stage appeared to encourage citizens to draw on voluntary

participation in self-reliant supportive families, neighbourhoods and communities.

“Decentralisation” and “self-responsibility” were the key values in this process

(Makino 2012).

The social service role of lifelong learning as a means to restructure society

turned out to be an important factor in this context. However, despite these efforts,

government policies aiming to link lifelong learning and community building had

little evidence to prove their impact. It was obvious that the individualised and

consumer-oriented character of learning was not adequate to coping with the social

reintegration agenda. More fundamentally, policy makers lacked understanding of

the core mechanisms available to it. They simply failed to recognise what bonds

individuals together in sustaining the core identity of a community or what the key

mechanisms are which support a community in being a “real functioning society”.

The following two case studies from Iida City and Toyota City show how a

community reproduced a collective identity in which individuals fit into the whole

process of community building, long before the idea of the learning city was put on

the policy table.

New ideas in the old cases: two city stories

The case of Iida City, Nagano Prefecture, reveals how a community sustains its

social organising power and how human learning is related to this process. Iida City

is a typical rural community with approximately 100,000 inhabitants. The city has

20 kominkan, centres for community activities and learning. Additionally, there are

103 bunkan [branches] of the kominkan established at the sub-district level. To put itsimply, the city life runs through the web of the kominkan and bunkan.

To the citizens, the kominkan and the bunkan have a specific concept of engagement

with a specific mode of relations reflected in specific activities and lived experience.

Interestingly, Iida citizens use the expression “we do the kominkan” or “we do the

bunkan”. Kominkan or bunkan, in this context, are identified with a sort of activity, ortheir own life itself. People say “you will understand the community if you do the

bunkan”. They believe community life resides in the notion of bunkan activities, bothof which reproduce citizens’ community relations. In an interview conducted by

Makino Atsushi, an interviewee said:

At first, my wife was saying, “Honey, promise you won’t ever take that role of

director! You know that’ll give us tons of trouble!” But actually, it was she

who was first to be persuaded in the family. She started to say, “Say yes to

them, darling. They are so nice and begging, don’t you see you don’t have a

choice?” That switched the family into the bunkan mode. And when I took the

post, my seniors […] supported me in many ways. And then, I had already


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worked in various groups in the bunkan, so I had ideas of my own about how

we might better run the bunkan. I also knew who was good at what kind of

work, so, when I became the director, I went to see each of them and asked

them to work with me. This way, many people in the sub-district helped me

and that’s how I made some of my ideas happen. That’s exciting – to be able

to see your ideas happen – It really was! Now, inspiration keeps popping up.

You’re always thinking this and that. Before long, you’re addicted to the

bunkan… (male interviewee).

The Japanese philosopher Yoshimoto Taka’aki once said “Human beings are an

existence capable of often creating various burdens to suppress themselves, urged

by an inevitability beyond their control and knowing well that they would be

suppressed doing so”, and added that “communal illusion” is one of these kinds of

“burdens” (Yoshimoto 2012, p. 37). Participation in branches of the kominkan, inthis case, brings the “communal illusion” or community identity into reality. The

communal illusion is in some sense “an expansive self”, in which a person is being

pressed to accept the identity of as well as an obligation to the community that goes

beyond one’s personal life space. Here, something that bridges the communal

identity and the self-identity and connects society and the individual is, according to

Yoshimoto’s theory, the “inter-pair illusion” that mostly occurs between partners

like a husband and a wife, in which one mirrors the other (ibid.). The “inter-pair

illusion” delivers and projects an image of the communal illusion through “the

otherness” among the pair, then stabilises it to the level of “individual illusion” as

one’s ultimate form of existence. The interview response above shows how the

process of taking the director position in the bunkan can be explained by this

process, e.g. how a man accepts the role of community via the interaction with his

wife. It is an exemplary model that illustrates the mechanism of how individuals are

mutually connected with society.

The communal illusion of kominkan branches in this case, namely the communal

consciousness, has a structure that becomes visible and verbalised by various events

arranged in the activities of the kominkan and bunkan. They initiate various

community activities such as flower festivals, athletic meetings, conferences and

road maintenance, which help community members perform in their everyday lives

with mutual understanding and recognition that builds communication and

interactive relationships. The meaning of “we do bunkan”, as seen above, is in

fact identified with “we do activities” at the lived experience level.

In these activities, people expand their identity up to the level of the whole

community. They associate, participate and understand certain activities in the

mode of the kominkan and the bunkan. Local leaders are nurtured and selected in

this context. Leaders work for local citizens, appreciating their merits, and citizens

support the leader by engaging themselves in the improvement and development of

local life. Citizens are closely engaged in others’ lives and develop caring

relationships in this process. Thus a self-governing and living relationship gathers

momentum. It is verbalised through the dialogues between citizens and improved in

verbal recognition. Thus a mutual relationship is constructed. It is the power to

propel this self-management of local citizens as a hidden driving force that makes


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the local community work. Such a hidden driving force makes citizens’ lives stable

and sustainable in a community. Although the local community seems conservative

and monotonous at a glance, it actually drives the mechanism that makes the mutual

relationship in the organisation sustainable among citizens in that way (University

of Tokyo 2012).

This provides the following images: a local community and the individual share a

common platform to produce, based on reciprocity, relationships of diversity and

multiplicity, which can be seen as “expansive reality” (Uno 2011). The vitality of

the local community is activated by citizens themselves, who embody and cause

each layer of this multiplicity to communicate with each other.

A second good example of this issue is the case of Toyota City, Aichi

Prefecture.8 The rural–urban interlinkage project “Young people, let’s go to the

countryside!” selects young city-dwellers to settle in rural areas and enables them to

practise an agriculture-based life to discover the accumulated local culture and to

develop new values. It also fosters a new value system in rural areas by enhancing

communication opportunities between urban and rural communities. A leader of the

programme says:

I like summer festivals. Though the village got smaller and mostly elderly

people remained, the summer festival is still passed down to welcome young

people. An interesting point here is that the festival looks clumsy when

prepared in village meetings, then it suddenly turns out to be a perfect

coordination and goes hand in glove to complete the building of a festival

tower and the opening of the festival. Everyone enjoys the festival. I can feel

the potential of this community. It is the experience of the summer festival that

enables us to live a life all year round with communal support and fantastic

cooperation. I feel the vitality of the fantastic cooperation that enables our

grandmothers and grandfathers living here to undertake heavy burdens easily

together.

The summer festival provides a crucial momentum, especially at the level of

physical collaboration, and a collective operation of the community, which makes

for harmony and cooperation in people’s everyday lives. Participants share

experiences that correspond to their bonding and communication during the festival

and this mood remains to support their collective life throughout the rest of the year.

These scenes expose the other side of rural life, with entirely different dynamics.

It overturns our prejudice that rural villages are conservative with static and closed

minds. The hidden dimension of people’s collective experiences, seen in the case

above, is being connected with new cultural discoveries, and is surely what has

never been exposed to outsiders. This traditional mode of life has been stacked

neatly on whole layers of history, waiting to be re-discovered by future generations.

This community life has long been forgotten, and has failed to be captured in the

perspective of urban modernity or lifelong learning. Now, the administrative

8 In 2012, Toyota City, a regional urban centre in the north of Aichi Prefecture, had a population of

422,830; for more information see http://jscp.nepc.or.jp/en/toyota/index.shtml [accessed 12 August

2013].


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http://jscp.nepc.or.jp/en/toyota/index.shtml

expediency of the Japanese government has tried to merge and restructure the units

of the cities without considering what really constitutes a community with a

revitalised “sense of community”. The Heisei merge and the Lifelong LearningPromotion Law forgot these lessons and the result was the destruction and abandon

of local communities.

From community to city

Modern industrial society has created a monotonous society with flat values in the

framework of the nation state. People are both part of a mass labour force and

themselves mass consumers, who fit into this standardised production and

consumption environment as a single value. In such a society, people’s lives are

homogenised, equalised, and secured by the government, in that the people’s rights

are identified with the wealth distributed and privatised evenly, in what we call the

national welfare system. This uniform system of flat values, however, has been

rapidly dismantled, and replaced by reciprocal multilayers of diversity. This change

is now widely recognised from inside the system.

The discovery of multiplicity leads the transition of the images of a society, from

what replicates itself monolithically to what creates new forms of interpretation in

steric (three-dimensional) formation. A good example is a practice called sumibiraki[the lifestyle movement or activity that opens a private space, such as private offices

or houses, to the public while also sustaining the original private functions and

uses].9 A space of this kind, for example, can overcome the confined restrictions of

the property concept, up to the point where mutual and reciprocal forms of

communication evolve. Coined by the Japanese artist Wataru Asada in 2008,

sumibiraki in practical terms means something like this:

A corner of a personal house space, once exclusively private, can possibly be

open to neighbours to share one’s favourite interests with others … where a

small community is created to share the influence of one’s work or hobby

activities with others, slowly but steadily (Asada 2012, p. 14).

The idea of sumibiraki denies the way in which a dominant social pattern of values

is dispersed to replicate the surface horizontally. Rather, it creates new niches of

communication between the prevailing structures while making the best use of the

existing conditions of the structure.

The renewal of a city or a local organisation is possible by the connections

between the communities of mutual interest, not the administration, as the locus of

control and protection. People can produce constructive power to organise the rich

networks of communities. This power can change the logic and colour of the

learning market. The exchange of learning in a community also reflects the unique

locality, the structure of various and multiple local economies, and employment,

by networking. The state or nation is nothing other than the interconnection of

multiple complex layers of such relationships. In the era of globalisation (with

9 The literal meaning of sumibiraki is “open living”.


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cosmopolitan internationalisation), new “markets”, as dynamic networks of

community, seem to have the potential to comprise a new form of a nation

state and reorganise the given market-dominant social order. The basis is

“learning” and “learned social existence”. Japanese society has now arrived at this

point. The way in which the living existence of citizens organises this “society” is

indeed a learning society.

Lessons from the Republic of Korea: government engagement and theemergence of the civil self

Similarly to the Japanese experience above, the lifelong learning city in the

Republic of Korea also has two faces; it has in principle both government initiative

and community empowerment. Kim Shinil defined it as follows:

The lifelong learning city is a supporting system for lifelong learning in a

community of city, county, and district, which has been promoted by the

Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development since 2001.

Lifelong learning city means an integrative community empowerment project

for enhancing competences of individuals as well as community by utilizing a

variety of educational institutes and informal learning opportunities (Kim

2004, p. 1).

Since 2001, however, the government’s social engineering has dominated the whole

process in practices other than the aspect of civil society participation and

community self-organisation. First of all, it has a strong legal foundation in the

Lifelong Education Law (MOEHRD 1999), an administrative structure at ministerial

level, and a top-down managerial framework conducted by the National Institute for

Lifelong Education (NILE).10 Overall, a series of social engineering policies, such

as social planning, execution by an input–output model, and monitoring feedback

systems were established for learning cities to function by.

While a considerable number of “how-to” models prevail in the relevant

academic journals, it is not easy to find research that reveals “why”, or the nature of

“what” the lifelong learning city policies and programmes in the Republic of Korea

have been. Mostly the articles on this subject have tried to develop practical models

or “know-how manuals” for implementation, rather than trying to understand the

factors behind this development.

In this section, we argue that the phenomenon of the learning city goes far

beyond simple social engineering and government planning; rather it is a co-product

of the programme within this socio-historical context, which is deeply interlinked

with the social changes in the 1990s–2000s of Korean society as a whole.

10 The Korean National Institute for Lifelong Learning (NILE) was established in 2008. Its purpose is to

motivate lifelong education for the people by performing the tasks related to the promotion of lifelong

education in accordance with Article 19 of the Lifelong Education Law (MOEHRD 1999).


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A decade of uncertainty

In the Republic of Korea, the learning city initiative was launched in 2001 and has

grown up in the last two decades. In order to understand this development, it is

necessary to understand the complex background of this phenomenon. During the

1990s, Korean society experienced a crucial momentum that changed society as a

whole at a deeper level.

First, the learning city was a scheme for developing the notion of a civil society.

The 1987 June Democracy Movement ignited the events of the 1990s,11 a decade of

the emergence of civil society and various “new social movements” in the Republic

of Korea. The destruction of the Berlin Wall and the downfall of the Eastern bloc

had a considerable impact on mainstream politics in the Republic of Korea, and

dramatically widened the space for free speech and the participation of civil society

organisations. Knowledge and information were at the core of these civil politics.

Second, from 1995 the axle of politics moved from the central to the local level,

and this became the decade of the restoration of local self-governance or “the return

of the cities”. Local self-governance and elections that had been suspended by the

authoritarian regimes since the 1961 military coup came back to restore and direct

elections for mayors and governors. The future of the “cities” was moved to the

hands of the residents. Each municipality became a balance between the governing

bodies and the people who now had autonomy to vote. Local autonomy and city

politics brought uncertainty, and various experiments were undertaken to create a

new future.

Third, the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997 disarmed trade unions and labour

market safety mechanisms, and an increase in unemployment endangered social

stability. The changes deconstructed the traditional stability in families, neighbour-

hoods, the labour market, and social classes and generations. As a result,

communities were exposed to risk. On the one hand, the economic turmoil directly

hit the younger generation who had barely finished college. At the other end there

was the older generation, rushing towards an aged society in a rapid tempo. The

aged unemployed were not equipped for a second chance in a job or in life. They

were never trained or educated to meet those kinds of changes. Finding a solution

was not only about providing skills and knowledge for job mobility; a more

immediate and urgent need was to heal people’s wounded self-esteem, and re-

establish confidence by promoting humanities classes, literature and history courses

for the homeless which provided chances to restore their wounded dignity (Han and

Yang 2007).

In retrospective, society as a whole was facing “critical uncertainty”, with much

anger and frustration in the face of the coming risks. To make this situation worse,

people’s discontent was mostly expressed at the local level, while the “cities” had

just regained self-governance and were not ready to deal with such considerable

uncertainties. What the cities had done so far was mostly of a civil engineering and

11 The June Democracy Movement, also known as the June Uprising, was a nationwide democracy

movement in the Republic of Korea that generated mass protests from 10 June to 29 June 1987. The

demonstrations forced the ruling government to hold elections and institute other democratic reforms

which led to the establishment of the Sixth Republic.


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building infrastructure nature; social welfare policies at the local level only began in

the late 1980s; little attention had been given to a cultural and intellectual support

system in a city paid for by the local government. Something was needed to deal

with this situation.

Centrally planned, locally implemented

The first three learning cities appeared in 200112 with official recognition, financial

subsidies, and policy guidelines from the Ministry of Education and Human

Resources Development (MOEHRD). Up to now (2013), 118 out of 227

municipalities have been designated as learning cities, which constitutes 52 per

cent of all cities nationwide. Major characteristics in the ideas of learning cities can

be summarised as follows.

First, what “learning cities” have done initially was to set up an administrative

structure, an organisation and professional staff to plan, implement and provide

services. Academic scholars and researchers provided papers to help them conduct

needs assessments, design educational programmes and build networks.

Second, in so doing, “lifelong educators”, certified experts in lifelong learning

practice, made a large contribution. “Learning city” was a specialised area of public

policy and programmes supported by these professionals.

Third, the ultimate goal was to create a learning city atmosphere, by not just

providing separate educational programmes, but rather nurturing a whole city

environment where provision and participation are organically interconnected

across the entire social ecosystem of learning, including learning circles and

networks, interlinked with various civil society organisations. However, in many

cities this did not actually happen. While the number of programmes increased, they

did not always lead to change.

As already mentioned earlier, while in Japan the number of municipalities in

2010 that were declared learning cities was just about 5 per cent in total, the

proportion of learning cities in the Republic of Korea in the same year had reached

40 per cent. The question is why there was such a considerable difference between

the two countries. A few possible reasons come to mind. For example, while the

cities in Japan declared themselves as learning cities on a voluntary basis, the cities

in the Republic of Korea were officially designated and financially subsidised by the

Ministry of Education; while Japan already had a long tradition of self-government

in local communities, so that the impact of the learning city programme was

minimal, the Republic of Korea had only just restored local autonomy and elections,

and the learning city programme was very useful in educating residents of cities to

construct local citizenship. In Japan, the tradition of the kominkan had played a key

role in fostering learning communities, long before the learning city initiative had

emerged, while in the Republic of Korea community development in terms of

12 The first three officially recognised learning cities/learning regions in the Republic of Korea were

Gwangmyeng city, Jinan-gun and Yuseong-gu.


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culture, knowledge and civil participation was a rather recent phenomenon.

“Building communities” with a vision of lifelong learning and a learning society in

the Republic of Korea was, in this sense, well-timed and topical.

Since the main goal was to “build communities”, social inclusion in programme

provisions was broader than raising employability, despite the programme being

implemented right after the shock of the Asian Financial Crisis. The learning city

was a government instrument to promote local initiative and civil participation, to

increase social inclusion by having marginalised people participate in adult learning

and community activities. Another factor was that there was a social division of

labour between “lifelong education programmes” and “regional human resources

development programmes”: The “social” dimension of integration and inclusion,

community rebuilding and caring for crisis victims was addressed through lifelong

education and learning city programmes, while the policies for raising employabil-

ity were initiated by regional human resource development programmes.

But the learning cities programme did also help deliver subsidiary educational

qualifications, especially in rural communities. Korean society is by and large a

“credential society”, where obtaining higher education degrees and certificates, even

in the adult stages, has greater value and merit in breaking barriers towards

obtaining decent jobs. The Lifelong Education Law (MOEHRD 1999) was one of

the education laws aiming to provide various qualifications outside schools and

universities, from basic literacies up to higher education, through the credit bank

system, corporate universities and cyber colleges.13 Education at a Glance,published by the OECD, shows that in 2010 the percentage of adults (aged 25–34

and 55–64) in Korea who had attained tertiary education was considerable: 65 per

cent in the 25–34 age cohort and 13 per cent in the 55–64 age cohort (OECD 2012,

Chart A1.1, p. 26). The learning city was a policy instrument that delivered various

levels of formal education to local adult residents.

Broadly speaking, lifelong learning programmes in the Republic of Korea have

been centrally designed and locally implemented. First, the governmental initiatives

for the programme include the Lifelong Education Law that underpinned the

programme with a legal basis, by stating in Article 15 that the “government can

designate and support selected municipalities (cities, districts and counties) as

lifelong learning cities” (MOEHRD 1999). Policy guidelines conducted by NILE

provided a comprehensive design and monitoring system, based upon the five-year

General Plan for Lifelong Learning Promotion. However, the learning city

programme is, by its nature, in large part each city’s own local business, to cope

with their own problems, based upon their own regulations and financial support.

An immediate consequence of the learning city policy was the increase in adult

education programme provision through public institutions like lifelong learning

13 The credit bank system (CBS) is an open education system which recognises diverse learning

experiences gained not only in school but also out of school. When a student accumulates the necessary

CBS-approved credits, that student can obtain an associate or bachelor’s degree. Cyber colleges are

institutions offering distance learning courses, a mode of learning which already existed before private

homes had computers, but is now growing exponentially.


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centres,14 libraries and art centres. A survey confirmed that learners’ participation

rates and time spent at adult education programmes were higher in the participating

cities than other cities (Ko 2009). The adult learning participation rate in Korea has

steadily increased from 26.4 per cent (2008) to 35.6 per cent (2012), which in part

owes much to the sustained programme initiatives of learning cities (ibid.).

The most popular programmes were not for improving vocational skills and

workplace competencies but rather programmes dedicated to liberal arts, culture and

sports. In Ulsan Metropolitan city, 92.6 per cent of adult learners have chosen

liberal arts and culture programmes, which shows a clear distinction from

vocational and skills development programmes in the region (Ulsan Institute for

Lifelong Learning 2013). The preference shown in this phenomenon seems rooted

in the East Asian Confucian tradition, where “learning” was about human

development and social cultivation based upon Confucian classics, which were

replaced by Western liberal arts subjects when the modern education system had

been implemented. The experience that humanities learning tended to pay off in

higher social positions also motivated people to share a preference for learning in

humanities and cultural arts education, not only in formal education but also in non-

formal settings. This feature of the East Asian scene clearly contrasts with the

European competence-based learning city experiences (Han 2013).

A fundamental limitation of the policy, though, is that the total amount of

funding was insufficient to make a significant impact on the learning culture of a

city as a whole. The total budget of the government was extremely small, and the

additional required funding relied on the municipalities. Financial support as well as

learning infrastructure were insufficient to facilitate full implementation of these

ideas. While the ideas were ambitious, the learning city programmes, in reality,

were second-rate.

From learning divide to territorial divide

The Republic of Korea has experienced a cultural change from the monotonous and

mono-layered colours of industrial urban life to the culturally coded full colours of

symbolic identities of post-industrial societies. Material production and life-

supporting mechanisms of a city no longer satisfy residents. The “localities”

accommodating the various parts of communities have developed their own

distinctive characters, thus revealing their own particular consumption style, living

patterns, ideas and identities. “Gangnam Style”,15 the famous YouTube song that

swept the whole world last year, satirises how a community is now reshaped by new

cultural codes in contemporary Korea. The hierarchies of living standards between

14 Lifelong learning centres in the Republic of Korea are a kind of local learning centres that deliver adult

education programmes and learning circle platforms. They are established, financed and managed by

local municipalities. Currently 395 lifelong learning centres are operated nationwide (MOEST 2012).15 Gangnam is the richest district of Seoul, with financial centres and business towns, where the fashion

and lifestyle represent the way in which the rich live. “Gangnam Style”, a K-pop song with dance moves

by the South Korean musician Psy, sarcastically mocks this way of life. Its YouTube video version, which

was shot in the Gangnam district, reached a record number of downloads in 2012.


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individuals are reflected in the hierarchies between communities: Korean commu-

nities are divided between “Gangnam” versus “non-Gangnam”.

Historically, education has been perceived as a method to realise democratic,

equal opportunities for those who have been structurally excluded from

participation and life chances. The reality in lifelong learning, however, is quite

the opposite. The haves participate more in learning activities than the have-nots.

Learning has in fact been distributed unequally according to age, jobs, and

regions: Younger generations participate more; college graduates participate more

than those with less education; high-income earners learn more than low-income

earners; urban dwellers have more opportunities than rural residents. Chances are

not even, and this pattern sometimes causes various side-effects. So far, not

enough evidence is available to show whether the learning city programme has

improved this situation.

There is actually reason to suspect that the learning city programmes, run

individually by each municipality, have augmented the discrepancies between rich

cities and poor cities, which are larger than ever. Since the programmes rely

heavily on municipalities’ financial capabilities and professional expertise, some

towns or communities suffer from lack of expertise and facilities, while others

enjoy a full provision of programmes. Some municipalities in metropolitan cities

have been able to find highly professional lecturers, while most rural cities are

deprived of these chances. For example, Ulsan Metropolitan City’s statistics show

that the number of education programmes in urban districts is twelve times higher

than the number in rural areas (Ulsan Institute for Lifelong Learning 2013).

Learners in some cities have proven capable of participating in higher level

cultural programmes, while others have been less capable. Some “high brand”

programmes have attained prestige status in some cities, while mediocre “copies”

exist in other cities.

Considering the full context, the focus of the learning city programme lies in

enlarging the share of public provision and creating a balance between private–

public ecosystems, by providing more programmes for the socially deprived which

private provision would not take responsibility for. Public monitoring systems to

re-direct the way in which programmes are provided and participated in are being

set up at central and metropolitan city levels. However, the cultural inequality

between cities cannot be easily removed. While learning cities have created a

public subsidised market for residents, the learning of upper-class citizens is

supplied by high-end private learning programmes with a limited membership,

while the majority of working-class citizens obtain knowledge from mass media

or public adult education provision. Post-industrial cities and communities are

establishing a new map of “high-end learning cities”, which reflect the differences

of lifestyle and cultural heritage, and are slowly, but significantly, drawing

“cultural borders” between municipalities, associated with traditional socio-

economic barriers. Some communities in this sense serve as a unit of prestige that

differentiates some residents from others. Learning now defines who the people in

these areas are, privileged by what kinds of lifestyles and cultural codes. The

provision of learning, depending on municipalities, now ranges from “premium

class” to “economy class”.


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Lessons from China: self-reliant communities and “shequ education”

Recently China has written a new chapter in the history of the learning city in a

global sense. Not only the speed of adaptation but also the enormous scale of the

programme are incommensurate with those of other countries. Most of the learning

cities in China were launched in the 2000s. As a pioneer, Shanghai launched in

1999, and Beijing followed in 2001. As Arne Carlsen and Jin Yang stated,

During 2002–2005, Beijing Municipality participated in the PALLACE

(Promoting Active Lifelong Learning in Australia, Canada, China and Europe)

project … Since then, more than 60 cities have set up their goals for

constructing a learning city, that include Tianjin, Chongqing, Guangzhou,

Wuhan, Hangzhou, Jinan, Changzhou, Nanjing and Dalian, to name but a few.

The development of learning cities has become a burgeoning phenomenon in

the whole country (Carlsen and Yang 2013, p. 4).

In a short period of time, the programme has expanded very quickly and

significantly. More than 100 national pilot programmes with 4,000 provincial

initiatives are now changing the picture of city life. Carlsen and Yang give a further

portrait on the current trend:

According to a survey by the Department of Vocational and Adult Education

of the MoE [Ministry of Education], 114 national experimental or pilot

learning communities have been organised in 30 provinces, autonomous

regions and municipalities. The number of pilot learning communities

organised by provincial authorities exceeds 4,000. In Beijing, for example,

every downtown area has established a community education network, led by

community colleges and adult education centres, and 80% of streets have

established community education and learning centres. In the majority of

districts and counties, school teachers were asked to go into communities,

participating in the development of the communities (ibid., p. 4).

Policies, however, are not implemented in a vacuum; they unavoidably come with

social problems and issues. If the problems are urgent, then the policies that follow

are prompt and extensive. So what factor made the learning city programme

implementation so quick and extensive? What really changed urban life in China?

How are the changes structurally interlinked with the emergence of “shequeducation”?16 We address these questions below.

Metropolitan communities at risk

Since 1978, China has adopted the open door policy. Foreign capital flew into

domestic markets, which propelled a market economy in coastal cities like

Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hangzhou and Beijing. These changes resulted in some key

16 The term shequ designates a sub-district-sized community unit and its administrative branch office,

now reformed into a new kind of community service unit. Shequ education, as we explain in a later

section of this article, is provided in local community culture activity centres.


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social issues: one concerns the regional discrepancies and social inequality between

rural and urban areas, and between coastal cities and inland areas. The other is the

changing nature of the large cities which are managed by the traditional top-down

socialist administrative system. Some kind of a new concept of cities was emerging.

In our view, the Chinese learning city programme was an evolution of a new city

management system to cope with these changes. But before getting into details, we

would like to sketch out some key social changes in larger cities which are mostly

related to the job market mechanism, education competition and increasing social

instability, especially apparent in larger cities.

When Deng Xiaoping resumed the open door policy in 1992, he emphasised the

“revolution with productive power”. He claimed that socialism needed markets just

as capitalism needed planning. Now markets came to be a core principle along with

socialism, pervasive in everyday lives, and changing the city ecosystem. In the same

year, the government abandoned the state’s planned job placement policy for

college graduates. To allocate jobs to college graduates had long been an iconic

policy to support the socialist system, since a socialist economy, in principle, cannot

admit the existence of unemployment. The change in this regard was a signal of the

system’s fundamental transformation. Now, job allocation was handed over entirely

to labour market competition.

Education, among many instruments, was a key to win the labour market

competition. It once was a faithful social tool that led China to the gates of an

industrial society; it now became a sensitive tool for social mobility. The dramatic

economic development of China over the last twenty years was accompanied by the

expansion of basic education and the people’s desire to access higher education.

While the expansion of education provided a better-trained workforce for economic

development, it now turned into academic credentialism that profoundly changed

the rules of the game. The school certificate was a passport to prestige job markets,

to which individual schools adapted themselves to attain advantages in the

competition (Makino 2006). As a result, increasing numbers of colleges and

universities produced many overqualified college graduates with less job security

(Makino 2010).

Indeed, the previous government policy of planned job allocations for college

graduates had been a useful lever for intervening in school-to-work transition

programmes and for balancing the free labour market competition. After its

abolition in 1992, however, the concept of “unemployment” did appear in the

national statistics yearbook. The concept of dai ye (待业) or “those who are not

employed yet and waiting for government’s job allocation” was now replaced by

“unemployment” instead. With the concept of market prevailing in the job

allocation process, the urban life of salaried workers also became market-driven.

Now, cities are operated by the two principles of socialism and market.

Cities in China were gradually experiencing new problems that had never existed

before, for which new kinds of solutions had to be found. Let us give some

examples. Recently two million out of a total six million college graduates failed to

get jobs in a year (Makino 2010). Unemployed college graduates are highly

intelligent and seek jobs in groups, which people call “the ant tribe”, living in the

outskirts of major cities. Cities like Beijing and Shanghai have some border


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shantytowns where unemployed college graduates live in groups, while dreaming of

finding jobs or opening small offices. Their discontent about their situation, despite

the high amount of investment, often grows to the level of political unrest and

confrontation (Lian 2009).

Not only the younger generations, but also the aged are facing a new phase.

Ageing populations have grown rapidly and the proportion of the elderly in

Shanghai have reached up to 20 per cent, equivalent in average to the proportion of

the aged population in Japan. In the meantime, cities have become full of under-

skilled and poorly educated workers, who came in from inland areas. The inflow of

domestic immigrants not only made the cities vast in terms of population, but also

too heterogeneous to cohere into a unified entity of a community. The population

officially registered in Shanghai in 2010 was about 14 million, while the actual

population, either registered or not, is estimated to have reached up to 21 million

around 2010. A third of the population in Shanghai is constituted by workers from

inland areas and their families. These cities need to find solutions to handle

increasing discontent, in a balanced mode of socialism and a market economy.

Markets did not simply mean profit-making by supply and demand; rather, they

also required general values, such as “service”, “choice” and “rationale”, all of

which have never existed in former socialist city planning. From our viewpoint, the

introduction of Chinese learning city programmes and the concrete action of “shequeducation” were the implementation of the new values of a market economy. To put

it differently, it was a “city service programme based on citizens’ choice” – a whole

new concept that the market economy had influenced. The details will be explained

in the following section.

The shequ and shequ education outlined

To meet these increasing social problems, the Government of China developed two

policy responses. One was the “propaganda policy”, which shifts the causes of the

problems to the major “external factors”, threatening the government to remedy the

gap and unequal opportunities. The other was the adaptation of the “new community

management policy” since the year 2000.

The previous community management system had been based upon direct

supervision by the government agencies located in local communities to manage

community activities (which are called “unit activities”). But now the units were

replaced by shequ, or sub-district-sized communities, as a residential service agency,

permitting more autonomy and service functions for the residents, who were

encouraged to participate more in community activities. This transition has been

termed “from the unit socialism to individual marketism” elsewhere (Makino 2006).

Community education (shequ education), associated with the policy of a learning

city, was a key service programme that applied individual market orientation at

community level. The term shequ designates a sub-district community and its office,

which had been a branch of the former administration system, and was now reformed

to be the community service unit. The purpose was to unite residents for welfare

benefits and to stabilise the society. The community [shequ] is expected to enable

residents to participate in learning activities through voluntary services and clubs.


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“Shequ education” is a two-sided coin. On the one hand, it is the government’s

community management tool for increasing social integration by mobilising people

who have prestige and community ownership. It helps increase the collectivity of

local government. On the other hand, people use the available learning opportunities

to develop a sense of ownership in the community and use it as a chance to raise the

quality of life in the community. In this development stream, local governments

changed their identity from being controlling bodies to being service units which

mainly listen to the needs and voices of the residents who actually manage and

evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of the leadership of towns and cities.

The concept of “community” in this respect vividly demonstrates the “reversed”

relations between the governing bodies and the people who have more autonomy.

The degree of people’s satisfaction with community services comes as an ultimate

indicator to measure the city’s success in administration and management;

consequently the community administration depends upon the voices of residents.

Cultural activities and community education, in this respect, gain more attention in

representing the opinions of residents. It is what the “shequ education centres” were

established for.

These establishments, called “Community Culture Activity Centres”, are where

shequ education is provided. They are located in major metropolitan cities and

rich rural towns all over China. Residents participate in diverse learning, pastime

activity and meetings. These centres usually have facilities in independent

buildings, in several locations close in distance to provide one-stop community

administration services. Here is a description of an example of this structure, seen

in Shanghai:

When stepping inside the building, the 1st floor consists of a one-stop service

desk for community administration. The 2nd floor includes a theatre, lecture halls,

internet services, galleries and a cafe. The 3rd floor has a table tennis room, go game

and chess room, fitness centre, health check room and a youth activity room. The

4th floor holds classrooms, computer classrooms, piano practice rooms, art clubs, a

counselling room and a voluntary service room. The 5th floor has a library and e-

library, reading room, a parents’ and a children’s activity room and a youth library.

The 6th floor includes a painting club, a multimedia classroom, a practice room for

ballet dance and an administrative office.

Educational programmes provided at such centres can be illustrated as follows:

traditional painting, oil painting, knitting, English conversation, calligraphy, choir

singing, Chinese literacy, creative writing class and a computer class (elementary

level, intermediate level etc.). Some activities like fitness classes (including

training, sauna, shower) and internet services (including computer, consulting

service) are offered at a small fee, others are provided with no charge such as the

library services (including more than 100 kinds of magazines and 40,000 books),

and ping-pong. Some drinks are served free of charge. These activities make

everyday life rich and enhance understanding and cooperation among residents.

In sum, community education has two different aspects in Chinese society. First,

it consolidates the status of local government by increasing the community’s role to

ensure social integrity and also strengthens the residents’ sense of ownership in

community activities. Second, it raises residents’ self-esteem and gives them an


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incentive for improving their quality of life by participating in various cultural

activities and educational programmes.

The merging of these two different aspects – local government and the residents

– under a new concept of community represents a clear transformation of the status

and role of local government into a form of “service centre” that caters to the

customers’ livelihood and desires. By consequence, the situation turns in the

residents’ favour so that local governments seek to avoid failing to satisfy the

desires of residents. This reversed relationship between local government and

residents empowers the community to achieve more autonomy from higher-level

bodies in the system of government. As residents strengthen their pivotal role in

community decision making, the community administration provides services more

geared to the desires of residents. Certainly it is interesting to see that cultural

activities and community education are the key aspect which mobilises the people’s

participation and eventually strengthens the administrative autonomy of commu-

nities despite their inferior position in the hierarchy of local administrative

structure: city (市), borough or district (区), community ( ).

Communities leverage their fiscal self-reliance in strengthening their autonomy

by attracting donations from local companies. This policy is also welcomed by the

superior borough governments, since it reduces their obligations. Another change in

the mode of administration is that some non-governmental organisations (NGOs)

and non-profit organisations (NPOs) now also participate in the consigned

management of the community centres or other institutions, which has a

considerable influence on the way in which the community is managed and

governed. Although the government still directs communities in principle, the main

characteristics are gradually changed to a sort of social welfare institution combined

with resident organisations like NPOs and NGOs in strengthening communities as

independent organisations for people.

Shequ education: the new edge of China’s education

By introducing “shequ education”, Chinese communities have started to move in the

direction of securing local self-direction. Considering that the mismatch between

the top organisations and the bottom ones cannot be avoided in the mixed situation

of socialist politics and the market system, the self-determining capability of the

bottom organisations is crucial in coping with consequent uncertainties. As a

Chinese saying puts it, “if there are policies at the top, there are countermeasures at

the bottom [shàng yǒu zhèng cè, xià yǒu duì cè]”. It has dual meanings: On the one

hand it shows a situation where the bottom does not follow what the top directs; on

the other hand it can also be understood that the policies from the top can have

practical mismatches to the situations of the bottom, so that the people are

investigating the countermeasures to the policy from the top. Indeed China is such a

vast country that it is hardly possible for all communities to act in a common way,

and local problems are met with local countermeasures. It is for this reason that

community activities and education assume importance in providing fundamentals

for establishing a strong basis of self-reliance in communities.


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So is there hope for a new educational edge in community activities and

community education? Non-formal community educational provision absorbs the

young unemployed and unskilled as well as the retired who need a decent life and

leisure. In these activities, residents share their personal competencies and cultural

collective intelligence to produce a new value system that can lead the community

to create a new vision. In effect, this framework provides a good model for the

learning city in China.

Discussion

The image of a city, in terms of cultural vitality, can be likened to a living organism.

Learning in a city is like breathing in a body: it is a core activity that brings a city to

life. As the French sociologist Emile Durkheim stated, a society is robustly

maintained by human learning and socialisation. Given that a city consists of

people, activities and infrastructure, learning is an indispensable mechanism. In the

same way that a human body is alive with the “activities” of respiration, digestion

and circulation, a city is alive with various activities, including learning, which

cause a city to be changed, renovated, and always young in adapting to new ways

(Han 2011).

In terms of cultural heritage, learning is brought to the fore, since culture cannot

be “built” like architecture, but needs to be acquired or “learned”. Cultural heritage

comprises what humans have learned to understand and reflect in behaviour in lived

experiences. What the cities need is not only museums, libraries and art centres, but

the cultivation of new modes of life that are incessantly learned, un-learned and re-

learned. In this regard, a learning city is not a simple tool, like a hammer or a

screwdriver, handy to fix something and then put on a shelf again. It is, rather, a

complex social phenomenon that awaits further investigation with scientific

methods of measurement.

In this paper, we have investigated three countries’ different experiences of a

learning society, community education, and the profiles of the people who

participate in programmes. The three cases of East Asian learning city experiences

show distinctive as well as collective characteristics: Japanese experience shows

that the concept of learning cities needs to incorporate the previous tradition of

learning communities run by the kominkan. With some contrast, Korean learning

city experience shows that it can be ignited by state leadership, allied with active

reformation of individual cities with local autonomy and supporting politics. This

has resulted in a variety of local characteristics of education provision which has in

some cases amplified borders between communities of uneven qualities of

provision. The rapid adaptation of learning city policies in contemporary China

shows new possibilities of developing the learning city as a cultural tool in

managing urban administration and recovering social stability. Four main charac-

teristics can be derived from these cases.

First, the ideas and implementation of Asian learning cities have been triggered

by global circumstances and uncertainties which threatened and dismantled the

traditional social stability and cohesion of each society.


123

Second, it was social rather than economic drivers that made the cities cope with

their own circumstances. The policies of learning cities in the East Asian region

have been shaped to meet the challenge of increasing instability. The metaphors of

the “knowledge society” and personal competency development, major icons of

learning city policies in Europe, have been less obvious than the issues of social

inclusion and community rebuilding.

Third, East Asian learning cities are built based upon a “community relations

model” which focuses more on activities to heal and stabilise social issues and foster

cultural unity. The Japanese kominkan, in this respect, can be considered a core

learning city programme; the Chinese “shequ education” contributes to the

empowerment of the autonomy of community groups, and the Korean lifelong

learning centres help local government build social capital among residents.

Fourth, major educational programme provision is mostly non-vocational, such

as liberal arts and cultural learning. Culture and art education with liberal learning

have proven to be the most popular programmes. The autonomous self and

community identity were the key learning outcomes in this vein.

In sum, a city is by nature a place for those who continuously learn. A city is an

accomplishment of “civilization” that conceptually implies something “cultivated”

and “learned” inside. Urban life is possible through letters, symbols and abstract

rules and regulations. Living without knowledge is a kind of basic problem in cities,

and the consequence is proven to be poverty; illiterates do not easily survive city

life.

The recent rediscovery of learning cities in Asian countries, especially in Japan,

the Republic of Korea and China, has restored the value of understanding how a

society reproduces itself in a collective way by virtue of human learning and

education. The history of the Confucian tradition, for example, adds a new

dimension to understanding the East Asian phenomena with roots originating long

before modern times.

The Confucian tradition, in this sense, can be reconsidered as linking the modern

experience to the historical heritage. In the Confucian tradition, learning has been

especially defined as a main social device for weaving the social texture and life of

the people. Learning by its nature was not solely for individuals who learn, but was

also seen to reside in the nature of the social modes and relationships that learning

creates. Early modern Korean cities were built in accordance with the principles of

Confucian Classics. Living is learning to realise the Way of Heaven on earth, where

the principles of living should be learned. This is the role of education.

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The authors

SoongHee Han is a professor of lifelong learning at Seoul National University, Korea. His research has

focused on the theoretical and philosophical construction of a learning society from a perspective of

complex learning ecology. His research projects are mostly conducted in comparative and global

contexts. He is also deeply involved in studies of popular education, critical theories in adult education,

and human rights education in the Korean context.

Atsushi Makino is a professor of lifelong learning in the Graduate School of Education, the University ofTokyo, Japan. He is one of executive directors of Japan Education Research Association and the Japanese

Society for Studies in Adult and Community Education. He has been involved in reforming the

administrative system and educational system, especially lifelong learning systems in local-level

governments of Japan. He is interested in the development of lifelong learning in the context of Japan’s

social change and the emergence of the concept of key competences or core competences in the de-

centralising and diversifying Japanese society.


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Learning Cities in East Asia Japan Korea and China

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