There are
methods of disaster education taught in Japan, specifically for tsunamis that
could be expanded upon to include other disasters and be applied in other
locations worldwide. These methods have led to the most successful evacuations
of school children during the GEJET at Kamaishi, where Toshitaka Katada [1] had been teaching tsunami evacuations at 14 schools since 2005. As he describes
in his article, his methods focused on involving not only the children and
their teachers, but their parents as well. He was able to transform the love
family members have for one another into trust, meaning that family members
would trust each other to be capable to escape by themselves rather than go
look for each other before escaping. Parents were also involved in
extracurricular activities, such as drills and creating personal hazard maps.
Key points in the lessons were that the dangers were real, and should be acted
upon by choosing the best possible method, by saving yourself (tsunami
tendenko) and not thinking about others as they should also save themselves. During
the tsunami, the children were able to judge situations and evacuate
themselves, using the knowledge they learned at school, even when they were not
at school but at extracurricular activities.
Another
source [2] explains how this disaster education was incorporated into the regular classes
at Kamaishi East School. The local tsunami history was taught in social
studies, the physics of tsunami in science class, and an essay about the 1896
tsunami had to be written for reading class. Other special classes included
first aid and running a soup kitchen.
The core
of these methods teaches children they can save themselves, which can be
applied to a multitude of disasters. The successful elements of these methods
are clearly the involvement of the parents, regular drills, incorporation of disaster
science and disaster behavior in regular classes and creating a personal hazard
map, as these actions lead to awareness of dangers and confidence in how to
react to them for the children, as well as trust between family members in
their capabilities. Both of these beliefs, the knowledge you can save yourself
and the knowledge your loved ones can save themselves, are necessary to start
to act to save yourself first. To gain this confidence, schools education can
play a vital part not just teaching the necessary actions through drills and
the science behind disasters, but also acting as an instigator to increase the
bonds and trust between parents and children. It is important to repeat the
drills and keep the knowledge active in the minds of the participants, both
children and their parents (or other caretakers), especially when no disaster
has occurred for some time. It would be very effective to implement the
teaching methods of Katada worldwide and expand them to include different types
of disasters, in locations where the same amount of parental involvement can be
reached.
[1] No miracle that 99.8% of the
schoolkids survived. How the children
of Kamaishi got through the tsunami, T. Katada, Wedge Infinity, 10 October
2011. Retrieved from
[2] Students credit survival to disaster-preparedness drills, S.
Kamiya, The Japan Times, 4 June 2011. Retrieved from http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20110604f1.html
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