“Whom Would I Help in a Life-Threatening Situation?”

A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Japanese and German Primary School Children with Regard to Gender Differences

Abstract

Within the framework of a Japanese-German cultural comparison, the authors examine children’s anticipated willingness to help or to refuse help in life-threatening situations, and the reasons they give for their choices. To this end, they compare the conceptions of the ethics of “care” held by Japanese and German pupils, as discussed in a classroom community of inquiry. They employ the research method of extending and replicating an experiment, testing to what extent the findings are comparable from an intercultural perspective. The empirical verification is based, on the one hand, on lesson protocols of the Japanese experiment and, on the other, on transcriptions of video recordings of lessons in Germany. The authors evaluated the counted statements of the children in terms of content and analytically. The “philosophy for children experiment” of Toshiaki Ôse on the question “What holds a family together?”, conducted on 30 September 2002 with a fifth-grade class at the Hamanogō municipal primary school in Chigasaki, was replicated on 15 January 2007 with a fourth-grade class at the Peter Hebel Primary School in Karlsruhe, Germany.