ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the way in which the problem student in Japan has been constructed as related to the identification of the good student. As T. Popkewitz points out, school pedagogy constructs “double gestures,” that is, understanding the “problem” student impinges on recognizing what constitutes the “good” student. The chapter focuses on a “history of the present” in order to historically understand the subject and the politics of subjectivity-formation in such a way as to rethink the processes that have produced the “problem” student. It shows that the notion of the “problem” student in Japan is historically contingent and has shifted over time. The chapter argues that the construction of the “problem” is not an ideological product, but a discourse that involves an intersection of power relations and multiple technologies. It also argues that, in contemporary Japan, the rescuing of the “problem” student involves inclusion and exclusion as a double gesture.
