Kyouiku (教育) – The Learning Enterprise

Kyouiku (教育) is the term for learning or education. Social education and lifelong learning (shougai gakushuu) are terms used to refer to companies, adult education and related activities in Japan. Adult education originated immediately after the Second World War with the enactment of the Fundamental Law of Education (1947; revised in the 1980s). Since the mid-1980s, lifelong learning has been the more commonly used term. Not only does lifelong learning involve going to school to learn how to read and write, but it can also involve the learning that takes place outside the classroom through volunteering, outdoor activities, sporting events and so on. Companies in Japan promote learning activities for their employees. Companies have become learning organizations. A learning organization is ideally a system that is constantly in motion. Events are taken as suggestions and used for development processes in order to adapt the knowledge base and scope for action to the new needs. This is based on an open and individualized organization that allows and supports innovative problem-solving. Mechanisms that support such learning processes are the following: