3/8 A PROPOSAL TO THE UNITED STATES-JAPAN FOUNDATION

Assuming the above observation is generally correct, we would like to try to create and develop those widely usable digitized and/or multimedial teaching materials for social studies education which are quite helpful in enhancing the understanding of America. 　　　We will also explore the possibility that a few teachers of English will participate in this project in order to support and complement the efforts of those teachers of social studies by teaching "America" in English classes at junior high and high schools. This is reasonable, considering that time which can be allotted to teaching of America in the class of social stuides is rather limited.

3.Project Rationale and Description

America is a multiethnic, multicultural and multilingual country. By contrast, Japan is a mono-ethnic, mono-cultural, and mono-lingual country. It is thus reasonable to say that this difference constitutes one of the crucial barriers against our understanding of America. This naturally requires us to study America in terms of a many-sided approach. As noted above, it is mandatory for us to understand American politics, economy, industry, geography, and so on and so forth especially from a current point of view. Take economy, for instance. As has been recently reported, the U.S.'s fiscal 1999 budget forecasts a surplus of ＄9.5 billion for the year. This, according to the newspaper, is thanks to the fast economic growth of the past few years. We hope we can enhance our understanding of America by studying why and how it has taken place. 　　　Our objective originates from this general perspective. In order to effectively teach "America" in the classrooms at primary/junior high/high schools, teachers of social studies need and actually must know much about the above aspects of America, and need possess and utilize teaching materials of high quality. 　　　To be more specific, we need a rich database in subjects like social studies, geography, history, and civics due to their inherent characteristics. Teachers at primary/junior high/high schools are usually very busy. It is thus almost impossible for them themselves to obtain good teaching materials for those focused areas, in our case, America, which help the students understand them―not to mention those materials which directiy reflect the actual life of the people there. A situation like this has motivated our objective. To develop those teaching materials which contribute to the understanding of the U.S. and to digitize them and create a database will make it easy to transform and distribute them. And to open our homepage on the WWW site will make it possible and easy for school teachers to easily get and utilize those materials and to exchange information. 　　　It has been widely discussed that the situation of social studies education in the Hokuriku area is not favorable and that enhancement of the understanding of America by those teachers and their students has to be promoted as soon as possible. This is partly because the financial aid has tended to be centered upon the understanding of Asian countries on the coast of the Sea of Japan mainly due to geographical reasons, although the interest in the U. S. has been covertly quite strong and the necessity of a systematic study of the U. S. has long been noticed. Now the time has come, and the perspective must be global: that is, it must be not only pan-Japan Sea but also pan-Pacific. This is the essential reason for our proposal described above and why the USJF funding is required for that.

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