Five teachers of agricultural high schools will leave Tokyo on May 29 for Paris to visit agricultural high schools in France in a one-week itinerary.
These teachers have been selected from among 40 applicants to an interaction program that is first sponsored by the government of France aiming at promoting exchanges of agriculture-related persons between France and Japan on a long-term basis.
The Japanese governmental agencies, especially the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) and the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) have been cooperative with the French government sponsoring this new project.
The participants in the one-week trip to France plan to visit three agricultural high schools in the suburbs of Paris and Arras located in the northern part of France so as to observe the schools and exchange views with French teachers.
MAFF’s officials hope that the Japanese teachers will be able to learn many things of developed French agriculture through the program, which experiences will be useful for them to tell their students particularly about French practices for export-oriented agriculture and ecological farming.
According to MEXT, more than 82,000 students are studying agriculture at 306 high schools educating agriculture in Japan.
“Some of local governments and agricultural high schools have exchanged groups of teachers or students with similar schools in foreign countries. But this is the first experience for teachers of Japanese agricultural high schools to be invited at a study tour sponsored by the government of the foreign country,” a MEXT’ official told the press.