How to Develop True Care: Three Interviews with Nel Noddings

Abstract

In these three interviews conducted in 2011, 2012 and 2016 and then translated for Japanese language publications, Nel Noddings discusses care ethics, today’s educational practices vis-à-vis her recent books, as well as how she and her husband Jim raised their ten children. The first two interviews appeared in Seikyo Shimbun, the daily newspaper for Soka Gakkai, a Buddhist lay organization based on the practice and study of Nichiren (1222-1282). The third interview appeared in Ushio, a monthly magazine aimed at a general audience. Providing a backdrop for the interviews is common ground found in the work of education philosophers John Dewey (1859-1952) and Tsunesaburo Makiguchi (1871-1944). In 1930, Makiguchi founded Soka Gakkai’s forerunner, Soka Kyoiku Gakkai, comprised of teachers and educators actively promoting education reform in Japan as advocated in Makiguchi’s The System of Value-Creating Pedagogy (1930).