New Japan Citizenship Education Forum Created

Founded on March 17, 2013, the Japan Citizenship Education Forum (J-CEF) (http://jcef.jp/) held a memorial symposium in Tokyo on the same day. J-CEF is a group that aims to develop citizenship education to nurture future leaders who want to participate in the change and creation of their community and society. For that purpose, it helps people who work for citizenship education to nurture and expand the networks, supports those involved in the field of education, and creates an environment where they can easily practice.

About 150 people participated in the symposium, which included teachers and students, from universities and non-profit organizations related to education. At the symposium, practitioners and experts reported examples and study results of citizenship education, which had been conducted in various parts of Japan. One of them was an approach to political education using a mock election. It is one of the education methods on which youth under 20 years old conduct research about candidates and party policies based on a real election, and then they vote in the mock election.

According to the Network Association for Mock Election Japan (http://www.mogisenkyo.com/), more than 6,000 students from elementary school to university voted in the House of Representatives mock election in December 2012. A total of 100 schools, with over 40,000 future voters, have taken part in mock elections so far. Daisuke Hayashi, the secretary general of the network who delivered the talk about the examples, mentioned the importance of mock elections for citizenship education, saying, "It is important that the young generations nourish a sense of sovereignty and self-affirmation."