Japan homelearning article -- another one!
Covert
Hi all,
We're on a roll here in Japan with homelearning stories in the news!
On Aug. 28, the Asahi Evening News ran a large spread on homelearning in
Japan, and just a few days ago, the Daily Yomiuri newspaper followed up
with a hefty story on the same subject.
A word or two of forewarning about the Daily Yomiuri article that follows:
The story appears generally well-written and researched. But there is one
glaring omission. The writer fails to note that the new "Homeschool
Support Association of Japan" (HoSA), a nonprofit organization, is
neither independent nor neutral. It was created recently by a very much
for-profit corporation called Atmark, which is also mentioned in the
story. Mr. Kozo Hino, a Japanese businessman, serves as a head of both
Atmark and HoSA.
Some of us in the homelearning community in Japan are wary of this setup:
On the one hand, the Homeschool Support Association of Japan is
*officially* supported by a long list of Japanese companies and
educational institutions (read: schools). At the same time, the HoSA is
officially endorsed by one -- count 'em ONE -- genuine, longtime
homelearning parent in Japan, and that is Ms. Yoshiko Kubo, who is
featured in the story. Moreover, the HoSA has one -- count 'em ONE --
overseas homelearning advocate on its official supporters list, and that
is Mr. Christopher Klicka, senior counsel of the US-based Home School
Legal Defense Association. All of this can be confirmed (in Japanese) at
the HoSA website at:
http://www.homeschool.ne.jp/Hosa/yakuin.html
It is also more than a little unsettling that such a questionable
organization as the HoSA, as stated in the story below, sees its function
as "investigating exactly how many homeschoolers there are in Japan and
working on ways to bring them together."
As for the motives of Atmark, HoSA's parent company, in providing its
Internet-based learning services to prospective homelearning clients: It
is quite ironic -- and very revealing -- that the Atmark spokesperson in
the following story quotes a need for Japanese workers to be more
competitive with American ones. It is ironic because Atmark itself, a
Japanese for-profit corporation, has recently made its debut in the
worldwide home-education market by forming a tie-up with a U.S.
education-related organization, the Alger Learning Center & Independence
High School (www.independent-learning.com), based in Washington state,
USA. Not to mention that Atmark/HoSA has been seeking support from the
controversial, US-based HSLDA. And they say *politics* makes strange
bedfellows....
And then there is the intimidating, almost threatening, talk in the
following story about the Japanese Ministry of Education's stance on
homelearning. For the record, folks: The Education Ministry has taken no
OFFICIAL position on home education in Japan one way or the other, as far
as we are aware. (Education Ministry officials do, however, love to speak
"unofficially" and without being named, as in this newspaper story, so
that nobody is held accountable for any statement about home-based
education that comes out of the ministry's offices. Clever, eh?)
While it is true that under current statutes, parents in Japan do have a
legal obligation (reportedly at the risk of being fined) to make sure
their children get a proper education, Japanese homelearning families are
easily getting around that stipulation by letting their children --
rather than the parents -- make the ultimate decision to leave the public
school system and learn at home.
True, as the story states, the ministry has not given its legal blessing
yet to homelearning in Japan. But it is also true that the ministry is
generally not standing in the way of those families who opt to learn at
home. Harassment of homelearning families in Japan by the Ministry of
Education is indeed rare at present.
OK, enough forewarning, now on to the news....
Enjoy,
Brian Covert
(KnoK NEWS)
in Osaka, Japan
--------------------------------
[Daily Yomiuri - 2 Sept. 2000]
STAY-AT-HOME KIDS SHUNNING THE SYSTEM
By Tim Large
Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer
For Yoshiko Kubo, it was the bullying that clinched it. During two weeks
of teacher training at the local middle school, the mother of two saw
enough nastiness to put her off the school system for good. "The teachers
were doing everything they could to stop it, but there was terrible
bullying -- during class, everywhere, every day," she said. "I decided
there was no way I could send my daughters there."
So Kubo chose to do what until recently was almost unheard of in Japan:
educate her children herself at home.
Six years later, Asuka and Sakura, 12 and 9, respectively, find turning
up to class as easy as tumbling out of bed. Though they are officially
registered at the local primary school, neither has knownthe chime of the
recess bell or the squeak of chalk upon a blackboard. But, according to
their mother, they are noworse off for that.
"At regular school, everything is decided by adults," said Kubo, who
works evenings at a cram school in Chiba Prefecture. "There's a schedule:
Do this, do that, follow the rules. Homeschooled children have to take
responsibility for themselves."
She went on to describe a typical day. Getting up in the morning whenever
they want, Asuka and Sakura take turns making breakfast and doing the
dishes. They then settle down in a room of their choice to do their daily
assignments: arithmetic, English, geography, science. Fifteen or 20
minutes is usually sufficient to complete a given exercise. Kubo and the
children's grandparents are on hand to answer questions.
Afternoons are for reading at the local library (or going on field trips
to museums and galleries). Kubo is confident that by engrossing
themselves in books for up to three hours a day, they will stretch their
language skills and pick up a wealth of knowledge on the way.
By and large, the point is to follow their own noses, she added. If
something strikes them as interesting, they have the freedom, motivation
and investigative skills to pursue it for all it's worth.
"At the moment, my eldest is interested in weaving. She wanted to make a
big loom, so the other day we bought all the materials. Now, every
morning, it's clackity-clackity-clack," she said.
While unusual, Asuka and Sakura are not unique. Nobody knows exactly how
many children are being taught at home in Japan, but unofficial estimates
put the figure at somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000. What is clear is
that the trend is growing.
Statistically speaking, their numbers are hidden among the swelling ranks
of Japan's "truant" population. According to the Education Ministry, a
record 130,000 primary and middle school students were registered as
absent from school for 30 days or more in 1999.
Most discussions of absenteeism focus on bullying, delinquency and
psychological problems among juveniles. Certainly, a good many families
opt for homeschooling by default. It is a last resort for children who
simply will not -- or cannot -- go to school.
Yet, there is a growing awareness that increasing numbers are shunning
the school system for proactive reasons.
Kubo's family is a case in point. True, it was the bullying she witnessed
while training for her teacher's certificate that settled the matter. But
she had long been interested in homeschooling, she said, ever since an
American friend raved about its benefits.
To be sure, she is not alone in feeling that Japan's rigid school system
is ill-equipped for the job of fostering creative, responsible
individuals. Aside from the national soul-searching sparked by the recent
phenomenon of so-called classroom breakdown, the received wisdom is that
the times themselves demand new paradigms for learning. This feeling was
reflected in a proposal for the introduction of a three-day school week
by former Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi's private advisory council in
January.
"The most important question to ask of education is how far and how
richly children are being stretched," said education critic and former
schoolteacher Naoki Ogi. "It's not as simple as saying, 'You've got to go
to school.'"
Jun Adachi, an adviser at Atmark Learning Inc., a company specializing in
alternative approaches to education, agreed. "We're no longer looking for
factory workers who show up on time and don't say anything and just obey
the rules," he said. "To compete with American workers, we need better
thinkers, and the school system doesn't seem to generate enough of them."
In April, Atmark Learning launched Inter-Highschool, an online curriculum
tailored specifically for homeschoolers. The Internet school currently
boasts about 30 enrollees.
"We are trying to offer a different type of skill set, and we think that
homeschooling is the way to generate that," Adachi said.
Despite the general feeling that reform is sorely needed, homeschooling
families still find themselves up against a wall of opposition. There is
the legal question, for starters. Under the School Education Law, parents
can be prosecuted for failing to see that their children attend school,
though such cases are rare.
Home-education advocates counter that the Constitution is on their side.
They point out that while Article 26 states that citizens "shall be
obligated to have all boys and girls under their protection receive
ordinary education," it does not specify where this "ordinary education"
should take place.
Cut off from the real world?
The Education Ministry, meanwhile, refuses to recognize homeschooling as
a valid alternative to the nation's system of compulsory education. A
reason commonly cited is that children schooled at home are denied the
valuable socialization that takes place in the classroom and in the
playground.
"Learning is not just about filling your head with knowledge," a ministry
official commented. "It's about hearing what your friends think. It's
about realizing that people have different opinions."
Kubo herself admitted this was one of her greatest concerns. While her
daughters are not hermetically sealed from the outside world -- they have
made buddies at swimming club, for example -- they do sometimes wish they
had more friends, she said.
Christopher Klicka, senior counsel for the Virginia-based Home School
Legal Defense Association, rejects the socialization argument on the
grounds that club and community activities offer ample opportunities to
mix with others. He also said a little bit of protection could be a good
thing.
"There's a lot of negative socialization that goes on, and there's
positive socialization," he said. "Homeschoolers excel in positive
socialization."
Klicka, who has defended thousands of homeschooling families in the
United States in legal conflicts, cited one court case in which a
prosecutor argued that children taught at home "don't have the
opportunity to meet up with the bully in the class and have to deal with
that. And we're like, is that a big advantage to be able to meet with a
bully?"
The author of "Home Schooling: The Right Choice" was in Tokyo last month
to advise the recently launched Home School Support Association of Japan
(Hosa), a nonprofit organization set up to champion the rights of
homeschooling families. The association is currently investigating
exactly how many homeschoolers there are in Japan and working on ways to
bring them together.
"When I began my work 15 years ago, it was only legal in five (U.S.)
states to teach children at home, and now it's legal in all 50 states,"
said Klicka, who has homeschooled his own seven children. "The parents in
America went through much to win a very basic and fundamental right...and
our hope is that Japan can avoid the mistakes that we had in America,
that this does not have to be a battle."
It will be if critics have their way. Aside from the knotty issue of
socialization, opponents of homeschooling question whether most parents
are pedagogically and economically able to take over the job of schools.
Tsuyoshi Suzuki, assistant professor of education philosophy at Aichi
University of Education, agrees with homeschooling in principle. But he
argues that as long as it is available only to a minority of families, it
cannot be considered a realistic alternative to the school system.
"To a certain extent, it depends on parents having high incomes, having a
high level of education themselves and being able to take responsibility
(for their children's learning) right to the end. In Japan, many of the
people who are removing their kids from the school system are not
especially like that," he said.
Home-education advocates point to a recent study of more than 20,000 U.S.
students to make their case. According to "The Scholastic and Demographic
Characteristics of Home School Students in 1998," on average, U.S.
homeschoolers outperform their public school counterparts by 30 to 37
percentile points on national standardized achievement tests across all
subjects. Parents' educational background, teaching credentials and
income levels have no substantive impact on academic performance, the
report concludes. What is more, a high percentage of homeschoolers go on
to prestigious universities or start their own businesses.
Such findings come as encouragement to Kubo, who, for all her conviction,
sometimes feels she is stumbling in the dark.
"When I first started six years ago, there was hardly any information
about homeschooling in Japan," she said. "I didn't know anyone who was
actually doing homeschooling."
She added: "I think I'm doing the right thing, but sometimes I can't help
wondering."
[Copyright 2000 - The Yomiuri Shimbun]
We're on a roll here in Japan with homelearning stories in the news!
On Aug. 28, the Asahi Evening News ran a large spread on homelearning in
Japan, and just a few days ago, the Daily Yomiuri newspaper followed up
with a hefty story on the same subject.
A word or two of forewarning about the Daily Yomiuri article that follows:
The story appears generally well-written and researched. But there is one
glaring omission. The writer fails to note that the new "Homeschool
Support Association of Japan" (HoSA), a nonprofit organization, is
neither independent nor neutral. It was created recently by a very much
for-profit corporation called Atmark, which is also mentioned in the
story. Mr. Kozo Hino, a Japanese businessman, serves as a head of both
Atmark and HoSA.
Some of us in the homelearning community in Japan are wary of this setup:
On the one hand, the Homeschool Support Association of Japan is
*officially* supported by a long list of Japanese companies and
educational institutions (read: schools). At the same time, the HoSA is
officially endorsed by one -- count 'em ONE -- genuine, longtime
homelearning parent in Japan, and that is Ms. Yoshiko Kubo, who is
featured in the story. Moreover, the HoSA has one -- count 'em ONE --
overseas homelearning advocate on its official supporters list, and that
is Mr. Christopher Klicka, senior counsel of the US-based Home School
Legal Defense Association. All of this can be confirmed (in Japanese) at
the HoSA website at:
http://www.homeschool.ne.jp/Hosa/yakuin.html
It is also more than a little unsettling that such a questionable
organization as the HoSA, as stated in the story below, sees its function
as "investigating exactly how many homeschoolers there are in Japan and
working on ways to bring them together."
As for the motives of Atmark, HoSA's parent company, in providing its
Internet-based learning services to prospective homelearning clients: It
is quite ironic -- and very revealing -- that the Atmark spokesperson in
the following story quotes a need for Japanese workers to be more
competitive with American ones. It is ironic because Atmark itself, a
Japanese for-profit corporation, has recently made its debut in the
worldwide home-education market by forming a tie-up with a U.S.
education-related organization, the Alger Learning Center & Independence
High School (www.independent-learning.com), based in Washington state,
USA. Not to mention that Atmark/HoSA has been seeking support from the
controversial, US-based HSLDA. And they say *politics* makes strange
bedfellows....
And then there is the intimidating, almost threatening, talk in the
following story about the Japanese Ministry of Education's stance on
homelearning. For the record, folks: The Education Ministry has taken no
OFFICIAL position on home education in Japan one way or the other, as far
as we are aware. (Education Ministry officials do, however, love to speak
"unofficially" and without being named, as in this newspaper story, so
that nobody is held accountable for any statement about home-based
education that comes out of the ministry's offices. Clever, eh?)
While it is true that under current statutes, parents in Japan do have a
legal obligation (reportedly at the risk of being fined) to make sure
their children get a proper education, Japanese homelearning families are
easily getting around that stipulation by letting their children --
rather than the parents -- make the ultimate decision to leave the public
school system and learn at home.
True, as the story states, the ministry has not given its legal blessing
yet to homelearning in Japan. But it is also true that the ministry is
generally not standing in the way of those families who opt to learn at
home. Harassment of homelearning families in Japan by the Ministry of
Education is indeed rare at present.
OK, enough forewarning, now on to the news....
Enjoy,
Brian Covert
(KnoK NEWS)
in Osaka, Japan
--------------------------------
[Daily Yomiuri - 2 Sept. 2000]
STAY-AT-HOME KIDS SHUNNING THE SYSTEM
By Tim Large
Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer
For Yoshiko Kubo, it was the bullying that clinched it. During two weeks
of teacher training at the local middle school, the mother of two saw
enough nastiness to put her off the school system for good. "The teachers
were doing everything they could to stop it, but there was terrible
bullying -- during class, everywhere, every day," she said. "I decided
there was no way I could send my daughters there."
So Kubo chose to do what until recently was almost unheard of in Japan:
educate her children herself at home.
Six years later, Asuka and Sakura, 12 and 9, respectively, find turning
up to class as easy as tumbling out of bed. Though they are officially
registered at the local primary school, neither has knownthe chime of the
recess bell or the squeak of chalk upon a blackboard. But, according to
their mother, they are noworse off for that.
"At regular school, everything is decided by adults," said Kubo, who
works evenings at a cram school in Chiba Prefecture. "There's a schedule:
Do this, do that, follow the rules. Homeschooled children have to take
responsibility for themselves."
She went on to describe a typical day. Getting up in the morning whenever
they want, Asuka and Sakura take turns making breakfast and doing the
dishes. They then settle down in a room of their choice to do their daily
assignments: arithmetic, English, geography, science. Fifteen or 20
minutes is usually sufficient to complete a given exercise. Kubo and the
children's grandparents are on hand to answer questions.
Afternoons are for reading at the local library (or going on field trips
to museums and galleries). Kubo is confident that by engrossing
themselves in books for up to three hours a day, they will stretch their
language skills and pick up a wealth of knowledge on the way.
By and large, the point is to follow their own noses, she added. If
something strikes them as interesting, they have the freedom, motivation
and investigative skills to pursue it for all it's worth.
"At the moment, my eldest is interested in weaving. She wanted to make a
big loom, so the other day we bought all the materials. Now, every
morning, it's clackity-clackity-clack," she said.
While unusual, Asuka and Sakura are not unique. Nobody knows exactly how
many children are being taught at home in Japan, but unofficial estimates
put the figure at somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000. What is clear is
that the trend is growing.
Statistically speaking, their numbers are hidden among the swelling ranks
of Japan's "truant" population. According to the Education Ministry, a
record 130,000 primary and middle school students were registered as
absent from school for 30 days or more in 1999.
Most discussions of absenteeism focus on bullying, delinquency and
psychological problems among juveniles. Certainly, a good many families
opt for homeschooling by default. It is a last resort for children who
simply will not -- or cannot -- go to school.
Yet, there is a growing awareness that increasing numbers are shunning
the school system for proactive reasons.
Kubo's family is a case in point. True, it was the bullying she witnessed
while training for her teacher's certificate that settled the matter. But
she had long been interested in homeschooling, she said, ever since an
American friend raved about its benefits.
To be sure, she is not alone in feeling that Japan's rigid school system
is ill-equipped for the job of fostering creative, responsible
individuals. Aside from the national soul-searching sparked by the recent
phenomenon of so-called classroom breakdown, the received wisdom is that
the times themselves demand new paradigms for learning. This feeling was
reflected in a proposal for the introduction of a three-day school week
by former Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi's private advisory council in
January.
"The most important question to ask of education is how far and how
richly children are being stretched," said education critic and former
schoolteacher Naoki Ogi. "It's not as simple as saying, 'You've got to go
to school.'"
Jun Adachi, an adviser at Atmark Learning Inc., a company specializing in
alternative approaches to education, agreed. "We're no longer looking for
factory workers who show up on time and don't say anything and just obey
the rules," he said. "To compete with American workers, we need better
thinkers, and the school system doesn't seem to generate enough of them."
In April, Atmark Learning launched Inter-Highschool, an online curriculum
tailored specifically for homeschoolers. The Internet school currently
boasts about 30 enrollees.
"We are trying to offer a different type of skill set, and we think that
homeschooling is the way to generate that," Adachi said.
Despite the general feeling that reform is sorely needed, homeschooling
families still find themselves up against a wall of opposition. There is
the legal question, for starters. Under the School Education Law, parents
can be prosecuted for failing to see that their children attend school,
though such cases are rare.
Home-education advocates counter that the Constitution is on their side.
They point out that while Article 26 states that citizens "shall be
obligated to have all boys and girls under their protection receive
ordinary education," it does not specify where this "ordinary education"
should take place.
Cut off from the real world?
The Education Ministry, meanwhile, refuses to recognize homeschooling as
a valid alternative to the nation's system of compulsory education. A
reason commonly cited is that children schooled at home are denied the
valuable socialization that takes place in the classroom and in the
playground.
"Learning is not just about filling your head with knowledge," a ministry
official commented. "It's about hearing what your friends think. It's
about realizing that people have different opinions."
Kubo herself admitted this was one of her greatest concerns. While her
daughters are not hermetically sealed from the outside world -- they have
made buddies at swimming club, for example -- they do sometimes wish they
had more friends, she said.
Christopher Klicka, senior counsel for the Virginia-based Home School
Legal Defense Association, rejects the socialization argument on the
grounds that club and community activities offer ample opportunities to
mix with others. He also said a little bit of protection could be a good
thing.
"There's a lot of negative socialization that goes on, and there's
positive socialization," he said. "Homeschoolers excel in positive
socialization."
Klicka, who has defended thousands of homeschooling families in the
United States in legal conflicts, cited one court case in which a
prosecutor argued that children taught at home "don't have the
opportunity to meet up with the bully in the class and have to deal with
that. And we're like, is that a big advantage to be able to meet with a
bully?"
The author of "Home Schooling: The Right Choice" was in Tokyo last month
to advise the recently launched Home School Support Association of Japan
(Hosa), a nonprofit organization set up to champion the rights of
homeschooling families. The association is currently investigating
exactly how many homeschoolers there are in Japan and working on ways to
bring them together.
"When I began my work 15 years ago, it was only legal in five (U.S.)
states to teach children at home, and now it's legal in all 50 states,"
said Klicka, who has homeschooled his own seven children. "The parents in
America went through much to win a very basic and fundamental right...and
our hope is that Japan can avoid the mistakes that we had in America,
that this does not have to be a battle."
It will be if critics have their way. Aside from the knotty issue of
socialization, opponents of homeschooling question whether most parents
are pedagogically and economically able to take over the job of schools.
Tsuyoshi Suzuki, assistant professor of education philosophy at Aichi
University of Education, agrees with homeschooling in principle. But he
argues that as long as it is available only to a minority of families, it
cannot be considered a realistic alternative to the school system.
"To a certain extent, it depends on parents having high incomes, having a
high level of education themselves and being able to take responsibility
(for their children's learning) right to the end. In Japan, many of the
people who are removing their kids from the school system are not
especially like that," he said.
Home-education advocates point to a recent study of more than 20,000 U.S.
students to make their case. According to "The Scholastic and Demographic
Characteristics of Home School Students in 1998," on average, U.S.
homeschoolers outperform their public school counterparts by 30 to 37
percentile points on national standardized achievement tests across all
subjects. Parents' educational background, teaching credentials and
income levels have no substantive impact on academic performance, the
report concludes. What is more, a high percentage of homeschoolers go on
to prestigious universities or start their own businesses.
Such findings come as encouragement to Kubo, who, for all her conviction,
sometimes feels she is stumbling in the dark.
"When I first started six years ago, there was hardly any information
about homeschooling in Japan," she said. "I didn't know anyone who was
actually doing homeschooling."
She added: "I think I'm doing the right thing, but sometimes I can't help
wondering."
[Copyright 2000 - The Yomiuri Shimbun]