Covert

Hi everybody,

Here's a story that ran a few days ago in a major Japanese paper on that
all-too-frequent phenomenon known in Japan as *gakkyu hokai*, or
breakdown of order in school classrooms.

The following article covers a seminar on this issue that was recently
held in Tokyo, and touches upon how other countries have dealt with -- or
not dealt with -- classroom breakdown on their own home turfs.

Regards,

Brian Covert
(KnoK NEWS)
Osaka, Japan

---------------------------


Asahi Evening News - 14 October 2000

http://www.asahi.com/english/asahi/1014/asahi101408.html


STUDENTS NEED AN OUTLET FOR THEIR EMOTIONS

The problem of 'classroom breakdown' is rooted
in children's growing sense of powerlessness,
say education experts.


By Kazue Suzuki
Asahi Evening News

Gone are the days when teachers conducted lessons with confidence and
students listened to them with respect.

Today, many schoolteachers in Japan -- from elementary schools to high
schools, in the city and countryside alike -- say that class management
is more difficult, with some students walking out, resorting to violence
or chatting among themselves during what are supposed to be study periods.

The phenomenon is so disturbing that it has even been given a name of its
own: *gakkyu hokai* (classroom breakdown).

"Beyond Classroom Breakdown," an international symposium held on Sept. 22
in Tokyo, focused on this widespread problem.

Karol DeFalco, a panelist from the United States, said: "Rather than
trying to fit the children into a mold that suits our schools, (let's)
think about changing the schools to fit the needs of the students."

DeFalco, who works to facilitate social development programs in New
Haven, Connecticut, was addressing the 700 people who filled Tokyo's
Yurakucho Asahi Hall to capacity last month.

Changing the curriculum to meet the students' needs is exactly what
DeFalco's team has been doing in New Haven -- a city of 130,000 people.
To cope with the problem of classroom disorder, the city's Board of
Education in the 1980s set up a special team to identify and tackle the
underlying causes.

"Behind the problem were changes in students' attitudes and behavior,"
she said. It took a year for the team -- consisting of 75 community
members, including teachers, university professors, students and parents
-- to identify why some students were behaving in ways that were holding
back their academic and personal progress.

The study found that students rated poorly in self-awareness, stress
management, ability to control their impulses, problem-solving and
communication skills. As these findings came to light, courses were
developed to fulfill their needs.

Pretend to be 6 years old

The new social skills course was first tested in DeFalco's class. "For
half a year, I gave up 45 minutes each day to teach social skills," she
said. Changes in her students' attitudes and improvement in academic
performances led to the course being extended to all the city's public
schools. Now, said DeFalco, "it's not a support program; it is part of
the curriculum from elementary school through high school."

DeFalco asked audience members to imagine they were a class and she was
their teacher, to give them a feel for how her classes work. Everyone was
asked to pretend to be the 6-year-old boy who was the protagonist in the
story she read aloud.

"In this story he is going to share with you some of his feelings," she
began.

"'Yesterday, my class went on a trip to the nature center, and I was so
excited,'" she read, and asked the audience to show excitement on their
faces. As the story went on, her commands had them looking "scared,"
"embarrassed" and "relieved" in turn.

She said that sharing feelings in this way helped students understand one
another better. In the actual class, "facial expressions" lessons are
followed by homework assignments, sometimes with simple instructions such
as: "Look at other people's faces in the cafeteria."

These and other lessons are an everyday event throughout the school year,
and through them children learn how to empathize and solve problems, she
added.

Another panelist -- Naoki Ogi, an education critic and former junior high
school teacher -- reported that one in six elementary schools in Tokyo
faces classroom breakdown, quoting a survey of 1,388 elementary schools.

Having visited hundreds of schools during the past seven years, he said
he had seen for himself that classroom breakdown was not only widespread
but complex in its causes.

*Gakkyu hokai* first attracted media attention around 1996. But three
years earlier, Ogi had noticed that some Tokyo teachers were beginning to
report that "panic boys," youths turning violent in class, were on the
increase.

With today's stressful social climate, he told the symposium, children
are losing hope for their future.

Still, Ogi was not completely pessimistic, telling his listeners: "In the
coming century, classroom breakdown will provide an opportunity to
rebuild adult-child relationships: they will be working as equal partners.

"If we apply this concept to the building of a school community, children
will be able to participate in actual school management."

The notion of "children's active participation in class" -- let alone
school management -- is not a present-day reality in the Republic of
Korea (South Korea), according to another speaker, Yoon Chul-Kyoung, a
researcher with the Korea National Youth Development Institute.

A government survey of classroom breakdown for which Yoon conducted
research found that 60 percent of teachers at junior and senior high
schools were thinking of quitting. Another striking discovery was that 67
percent of teachers said the most effective solution to class breakdown
was to give teachers more authority.

"Korean teachers' tendency to cling to their authority will only make it
harder to reach a solution," commented Yoon. "We need to see things
through children's eyes.

"Disorder in schools, having first surfaced among high school students in
(South) Korea sometime in the 1990s, is now spreading to elementary
schools," said Yoon.

Yoon also pointed to rigidity in the nation's curricula, lamenting: "Most
of our curricula are designed to make lessons a one-way street." But she
voiced the hope that Korean children, adopting a flexible approach, might
reform the school environment.

"Opening the school" is one solution, said Mayumi Ujioka, an editorial
writer for Asahi Shimbun who acted as a moderator of the symposium.
Panelists also offered hints on reducing teachers' stress levels and
revitalizing school communities.

Ask parents to help out

Ikuo Komatsu, director of the Educational Management Research Department
at Japan's National Institute for Educational Research, said that in
Britain parents, schools and the community at large were cooperating
closely to restore order in the publicly funded school system.

"(In Britain) teachers protect their own rest time by hiring the parents
to take care of children's safety," he said. He also advised: "Trust in
children's resilience."

Akira Yoshida issued a challenge to those attending the session. Yoshida,
deputy director of pediatrics at the Japan Red Cross Wakayama Medical
Center, also heads a group called Kinokuni Kodomo Support Net, which
focuses on the well-being and education of the young.

"Why not ask ourselves, each of us, what we can do to overcome classroom
breakdown? Teachers, please ask for help and say: 'I have such and such
problems in my class but I can't solve them all by myself.'

Parents, ask yourselves what sort of school you want for your children."

Ogi proposed that more than two teachers should be responsible for each
class at elementary school: "Not only does this reduce the burden on each
teacher but it gives the children the sense that many teachers are united
in taking care of them."

Among those busy taking notes at the symposium was Shiro Yasuda, a
retired principal from the town of Takahata, Yamagata Prefecture, three
hours outside Tokyo on the Tohoku Shinkansen line. "Schools in a
peaceful, close-knit community like my town may soon be seeing classroom
breakdown, too. My sympathies are with teachers who can no longer provide
a traditional education," he told this reporter.

Yoshie Ishiwata, who teaches elementary school in the Tokyo suburb of
Higashi Murayama, was struck by the U.S. educationist DeFalco's advice
that schools need to adapt to children's needs.

"I will think about what I can do here and now (toward that end)," she
said.

Hiroko Ichinose, a part-time teacher from Saitama Prefecture, said she
liked the idea, advocated by many panelists, of schools calling on
"outside resources."

But she said there was a big stumbling block: "In reality, it's not easy
to discuss your classroom problems even with the teacher next door."


Copyright 2000 Asahi Shimbun