Reading the "Living for the future"

1. Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake

Through this disaster, I considered "What is a human being?" again and again. A human being is an animal that has language and uses it. Then what do we, human beings, find life worth living for? It is a life that we should respect as a living creature. And next I considered "What is the most important thing for students?" I think it is school where they can come together. After the earthquake, students came to meet their friends and to make sure whether their friends were all right. Friends are wonderful. This earthquake disaster had us rethink what school was and recognize that school was the place to make friends. Students have to make more and better friends in their school lives not to mention studying.

2. Make-up textbooks

We published an experience book whose title is "Living for the future". After the earthquake, all that we could do was just to write down our dreadful experiences in disaster. The purpose of this book is to think 1) How should we live and act as human beings? (mutual help and volunteer work), 2) What caused this disaster from scientific and social views? (the mechanism of earthquake), and 3) How should we act in a future disaster? (the disaster prevention system). We are intelligent creatures that can communicate with language. I hope the young will study English harder as an active international language.

3. Communication with others

Mr. Sugiyama talked about how to live by using "living for the future", a textbook for disaster prevention. He put much emphasis on "language" in his lecture. The language that we use in our every day lives without special attention is essential in disasters. We can help each other and do volunteer work because we can communicate with others by speaking. That is to say, the absolute necessities in a disaster are water, food and "language".

-Student's impressions-

"Human beings are able to communicate with each other through languages. It is important to write down and to tell each other what we are thinking." I thought it was great that even a little child can communicate with others by letters.

In this seminar, "Spoken words will be forgotten soon. However written words will not disappear. That is why writing down words is important." were impressive words for me. I was able to learn about the importance of writing down words and communicating with others.