The Significance of the Disappearance of “Diverse” from “Guaranteeing Educational Opportunities”: An Interpretation from the Viewpoint of the Victory of Formalism and the Educational Consumer

The so-called “Educational Opportunity Guarantee Act 2016” was adopted and established in the National Diet in December 2016. As is well known, it gained impetus through lobbying from people involved with alternative “free schools,” pursuing a stable position within the system, along with the night junior high school movement. This process, in which a discussion that shakes the foundations of public education as a whole was brought to the fore by the margins of the public education system, is extremely interesting. Elsewhere, the final text of the law is sharply distinguished from its original plan, and has been severely criticized by people involved in the movement. This paper focuses on the point among these that both in word and in deed, the concept of “diverse” has disappeared from the initial “guaranteeing diverse educational opportunities.” With guidance from the arguments of David F. Labaree, this paper interprets the process of this alteration (loss) as the triumph of formalism over actualism in education, a “victory” for the educational consumers who view public education as private property.