BuddhaJones.org Archive Project

Free Nichiren Buddhism
← Archive Index Message Board
Apr 01, 2011 · BuddhaJones Message Board

Soka sneakiness in SOKA school?

SGI

I received a note from someone claiming that Spirit of Knowledge Academy, a taxpayer-funded charter school in Worcester, Mass., has nothing to do with Soka Gakkai, SGI or Daisaku Ikeda. Any resemblance is purely circumstantial.

Oh, really? What I want to know is: Why are SGI and SOKA pretending that they're unrelated? Clearly, they're related. But they sure have been careful to scrub the web of anything that might connect them.

Hmm. Maybe I'll have to put in a FOIA request to the Mass. Dept. of Education to obtain copies of all documents related to SOKA, going back to their initial citations of Daisaku Ikeda as the spokesman for Soka Philosophy.

Below is a screenshot of SOKA's linkedin profile. Click to enlarge. You can find the original page here, but probably not for long.
SOKA Linkin Screenshot

Image source: http://www.linkedin.com/compan...

Screenshot: http://www.buddhajones.com/upl...

Why are Soka and SOKA being so sneaky? What "value" are they "creating" by disguising their connection with each other?

Other SOKA newsbits....

Here:

WORCESTER -  California-based Google recently donated 32 computers to the Spirit of Knowledge Charter School to help it participate in a science and engineering pilot program with people in the United Kingdom.

And here:

WORCESTER -  Data from two local charter schools showed the School Committee last night that the two schools are not likely to help solve the achievement gap in this city, one of the goals the governor cited when he supported legislation to increase the number of charter schools in the state.

2 comments

mroaks
Apr 1, 2011 at 4:25 AM

Hey, I found a pdf on the sokacs.org website that clearly name checks Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, founder of Soka Gakkai. Any claim the SOKA isn't connect to Soka is flatly ridiculous. My question is WHY hasn't the press in Massachusetts made the connection? How would the taxpayers of Massachusetts feel if they knew they were paying for a school that spouts the ideology of a multi-billion dollar religious corporation?LINK HERE: http://sokacs.org/web_document...I saved it to my hard drive in case they pull it offline. From the document:

The Value-Creating ("Soka") Philosophy "Soka" is a contraction of "sozo kachi", meaning "creation of value" in Japanese. The Soka Education principles were first formulated by the Japanese educator Tsunesaburo Makiguchi (1871-1944), a contemporary and supporter of many of the John Dewey's educational principles. The main ideas of Soka Education are centered on creating value in the lives of students,community and society.The School CultureThe School will embrace an inspiring school culture based on a value-creating philosophyand positive character-building system through understanding and implementing the core tenetsof the Soka philosophy:• Beauty - demonstrated through creating physical beauty in the school or communityenvironment, and by producing "beautiful", excellent academic work;• Gain - defined as creating individual benefit or achievement; and• Good - defined as creating social benefit, or benefit to others or a group and not just to theindividual.
mroaks
Apr 1, 2011 at 4:29 AM

I have also mirrored a copy of the sokacs.org pdf here:http://www.buddhajones.com/upl...

← Soka's tax-funded… Archive Index Get your chant on →

About This Project

BuddhaJones.org Archive Project seeks to collect and preserve information related to Nichiren Buddhism in America. All copyrighted content is presented here without permission under Fair Use guidelines, explicitly for the purposes of research, teaching, criticism, comment, and news reporting. This is a nonprofit, educational site unaffiliated with any religious organization or corporation.