KnoK NEWS for 5 Feb. 2000
Covert
**** KnoK NEWS ****
-- Views from the world of learning in Japan --
Happy Chinese New Year!
And welcome to the 5 Feb. 2000 edition of KnoK (pronounced "knock") NEWS,
an informal and periodic bulletin concerning issues of learning in Japan
-- at home or otherwise. It is brought to you by the Covert family --
Kazumi, Kenya and Brian -- a multicultural, homelearning family in Osaka,
Japan.
KnoK stands for *KODOMO no KOKORO*, which means "Heart of a Child" in
Japanese. It is our belief that the heart of any child is indeed at the
center of true learning, wherever and however such learning may take
place.
///////////////////////// * /////////////////////////
5 February 2000
[Editor's Note: Hi everybody. We continue this edition of KnoK NEWS with
a deeper look at the latest buzzwords in Japan: *gakkyu hokai* --
classroom breakdown -- and its larger cousin, *gakko hokai*, or school
breakdown. The following (rather lengthy!) article, penned by a veteran
schoolteacher in Japan, provides many points for debate, as well as some
insights into just how mainstream Japanese educators view the problems
and the solutions.
Homelearners reading the following article about Japan will recognize
some familiar scenarios from their own countries right off, most notably
the role of educator as Official Pointer of Blame at every party
imaginable: the students, their parents, the government, the media,
researchers, society, foreigners -- at every party, that is, except that
institution known as school. In a hierarchical society like Japan where
the *appearance* of order often takes priority over actual learning,
Japanese teachers find themselves longing more than ever for the "good
ol' days" when their pupils just shut up and obeyed authority. But those
days are gone forever. More and more Japanese families are questioning
conventional schooling and seeking alternatives on their own. Although
homelearning families in Japan do remain far fewer in number compared
with their counterparts in other nations, this situation is slowly but
steadily changing. A seed of educational revolution is taking root in
Japan and, just as with other countries, a major factor in that
inevitable change has undoubtedly been classroom/school breakdown. --BC]
----------------
CLASSROOM BREAKDOWN AND SCHOLASTIC DECLINE IN JAPAN
[By] Yamagishi Shunsuke
Education in any country has its bright sides and its dark. The bright
side of Japanese education was once the excellence of its primary and
secondary schools. A 1976 OECD report on Japan prepared by a team of
examiners including former prime minister of France Edgar Faure and
Britain's Ronald P. Dore, then professor at Sussex University, stated,
"the Examiners' strong feeling has been that compared to their own
countries, Japanese achievements in these levels of education are very
substantial." For nearly a quarter of a century thereafter, Japan's
Ministry of Education, local boards of education, as well as elementary,
junior high, and senior high schools hosted numerous inspection groups
and study teams, not only from countries in the developing world but from
the industrialized countries as well.
Ten years after the OECD report was published, Edwin O. Reischauer, then
Harvard University professor and formerly U.S. ambassador to Japan, wrote
in the introduction to Benjamin Duke's *The Japanese School: Lessons for
Industrial America*, "In the past four decades, Japan has moved in U.S.
minds from being an economic basket case to becoming an economic
miracle." That impression of Japan continued to be current for a long
time, until very recently. Reischauer observed the significant role the
school education system had played in Japan's economic success, noting
that "the quality and morale of persons becoming educators in
Japan[,]...far more important than school facilities" and the "high
regard the Japanese show their teachers and the respect for teaching as a
high calling...[and the] strong supportive attitude for education on the
part of Japanese families," were the crucial factors responsible for what
Japanese education had achieved.
Thoroughly conversant with Japanese society and culture, Reischauer was
well aware of the dark side of Japanese education. He did not overlook
the notorious entrance-examination system that "rewards rote memory
rather than reasoning," the "poor teaching and very little study" at the
university level, and the English-language education practices that
produce remarkably few fluent speakers and writers of English capable of
taking an active role in international intellectual society. But he
appeared to believe that the achievements were of such a scale that they
could, in large part, compensate for such weaknesses.
Reischauer was not the only one to comment on the role of education in
economic growth; many scholars of Japanese society from the United States
and Europe have acclaimed it. While Japanese themselves were not
particularly confident of their own educational system, they ultimately
began to believe these high estimations voiced by outside observers.
The economic crisis that struck Japan in the 1990s, however, shook
Japanese society, bringing profound changes to people's lifestyles and
attitudes. These changes are still going on, and education is very much
part of it. People's confidence in the educational system that helped
make Japan a world economic power and that sustained its growth has been
seriously undermined. What has really caught them off guard, however, is
the unexpected emergence of the problems of classroom breakdown and
declining scholastic achievement, phenomena of the schools that seem all
the more sinister because their causes are unknown.
The breakdown and collapse of classroom order (*gakkyu hokai*) has been
particularly startling. The teacher's attempts to call the class to order
are to no avail: students continue to chatter and play among themselves,
neither opening their textbooks nor taking out their notebooks. When
chided or reprimanded, students talk back or speak insultingly to the
teacher, sometimes even walking out of class. There have been cases when
the entire class suddenly left the room.
Teaching, under such conditions, is obviously impossible. Similar
situations occurred during a period about twenty years ago when violence
and trouble in the schools became pronounced. Such cases, however, were
generally confined to certain high schools and junior high schools where
trouble-making students disrupted discipline and classroom order. This is
the first time, moreover, that the specter of classroom breakdown has
visited elementary schools, even first and other lower grades.
An NHK television program aired in early 1999 showed a lower-grade
elementary school class in which some students, completely ignoring
instructions, were wandering around the classroom at will. The veteran
teacher in charge was completely at a loss to deal with the situation.
The program helped to impress the general public with the seriousness of
the classroom-breakdown phenomenon.
There were many until very recently who did not believe that such loss of
classroom control was possible in Japanese schools; they included
specialists in education and many dedicated teachers. One professor of
the department of education of a national university at first wrote that
he did not think the term classroom collapse was appropriate to the field
of education, reminiscent as it is of the "collapse of the bubble
(*baburu hokai*)," referring to the deep recession that set in when the
overheated economy suddenly deflated. After he began visiting elementary
schools to study the actual situation, however, he confessed that he
ceased to have any reservations whatsoever about using the term.
There was no longer any doubt in his mind, the professor reported, of the
severity and the reality of classroom breakdown, after watching one boy
in music class suddenly stop playing his recorder. When asked to continue
by [the] teacher, he got up and ran out of the classroom, with most of
the others in the class following along [with] him. In another case, he
observed a child of about ten, returning to school after classes had
ended to get something forgotten, turn on a veteran teacher with insults
and shouts of hatred, throw chalk, and overturn a goldfish tank in rage.
In any era, at any time, [there] are always a few children who cause
trouble and pose special discipline problems. We need to know how
widespread the classroom breakdown syndrome has become in Japan, but so
far the problem has not been adequately measured. The Ministry of
Education, citing the difficulty of conducting a nationwide survey, has
so far done nothing. When specialists in education do studies on a
limited scale, they invariably uncover cases such as those described
above. Some believe that in the Tokyo Metropolitan area, one class out of
every twelve is out of control, but that estimate is by no means certain.
One important source of information on this sinister problem that seems
to be spreading through the schools like a plague is *Gakkyu hokai*
[Classroom Breakdown] (Asahi Shimbunsha, 1999), a compilation of articles
reporting on specific cases in the national daily *Asahi Shimbun*
[newspaper]. Through this book, one sees how the newspaper initially
reported on the phenomenon.
The causes of classroom breakdown are not yet clearly identified, but a
book entitled *Gakko hokai* [School Breakdown] by Kawakami Ryoichi
(Soshisha) (see this issue, p. 14) explains changes in the living
environment that have contributed to the transformation in children, from
the viewpoint of a junior high school teacher. With thirty-three years of
teaching experience behind him, the author notes that more children in
recent years find it difficult to sit properly in their chairs or stand
at attention during school assemblies. Many are generally frail of build
and seem unable to move their bodies easily and smoothly, and, while
stubborn and self-centered, they tend to be afraid of others. They cannot
easily put up with difficulty or pressure and their feelings are easily
hurt, but they lack common consideration for others. Giving a number of
examples, he shows the pronounced differences between today's junior high
school students and those of twenty years ago.
Parents have changed a great deal as well. Kawakami points out that
children betray little remorse even if caught shoplifting, and their
parents are less likely to require children to show a sense of
responsibility for their own actions. The eye of the community and adult
society as a restraining factor on children's behavior, meanwhile, has
noticeably weakened.
The issue of classroom breakdown is still at the stage when it is known
mostly from often-sensationalized mass-media reporting. It has yet to be
dealt with in systematic surveys or research, analyzing the conjunction
of classroom phenomena with changes in juvenile behavior, examined
against the backdrop of overall changes of society.
Classroom breakdown is a serious concern not just for educators but for
the business leaders who exercise influence in Japanese society. It was
reported that in seminars targeted at businesspeople ordinarily
interested in little beyond matters of the economy, lectures on classroom
collapse draw a noticeably larger crowd than usual. Their anxiety about
what is happening to their young grandchildren, rather than their
grown-up children, is notable.
Even more difficult for the general public to grasp than the phenomenon
of classroom breakdown is that of the decline in scholastic achievement.
Public concern about the trend appears to be limited, although those
involved in education are seriously worried.
Following the defeat [of Japan] in World War II, the Japanese educational
system underwent drastic reform. Not long after the curriculum was
revised and teaching methods following American models were introduced to
the schools, the decline in scholastic achievement became evident,
stirring considerable controversy; the recent debate is apparently the
first time since then that the issue has resurfaced.
It is understandable that educators, whose boast that their education
system was among the most efficient and effective in the world is now
being doused by charges of a "distressing decline in scholastic
achievement," are feeling a bit shell-shocked. The cruel verdict has been
passed down by university teachers. The jacket blurb for *Bunsu ga
dekinai daigakusei* [University Students Can't Do Fractions] (Toyo Keizai
Shimposha, 1999) says: "You may find it difficult to believe, but two out
of every ten university students cannot do primary school-level
arithmetic."
These figures are the result of tests given by Nishimura Kazuo (one of
the editors of the book and professor of the Institute of Economic
Research, Kyoto University) and others to students in economic classes,
featuring mainly arithmetic and mathematics problems at the elementary
and junior-high school level -- problems like 7/8 minus 4/5 = ? and 2
divided by 0.25 = ?
The book says that more than 20 percent of the students in the faculty of
economics of one of Japan's leading private universities could not do
this kind of problem. Such students, it turns out, are not tested in
mathematics in the highly competitive entrance examinations; since they
have not seriously studied math for years, believes Nishimura, they
simply forgot what they learned in primary school.
Most students in the national universities, for whom mathematics is a
required subject for the entrance examinations, are strong in the
subject. Judging from the test results for private university economics
faculties in which basic mathematical ability is needed just to
understand the lectures, private university students in general appear to
be deplorably poor at math.
Pointing to the pronounced decline in the basic arithmetic and math
skills of university students, especially those in the humanities at
private universities, Nishimura calls for greater public attention to
this trend, declaring that it stems directly from the decision by the
humanities faculties of private universities to drop math and
science-related subjects from their entrance examinations.
Nishimura blames the universities' way of administering entrance
examinations for the problem, arguing that they deliberately invite
students who cannot do math by allowing them to choose between math,
geography, history, and social studies for their elective examination
subject (English and Japanese only being required). In every other major
country, math is a subject required for college entrance: the Scholastic
Aptitude Test (SAT) in the United States measures students' scholastic
ability on the basis of English and math skills; China, Korea and all
other leading countries of both East and West designate math as a
required subject for university entrance exmination.
The problem with this scholastic achievement decline is not just a matter
of being poor at math. Students in recent years do not ask questions and
seem to have little appetite for learning; they will master the learning
tasks they are assigned but show little interest in pursuing knowledge on
their own. University faculty do not hide their indignation at the
increasingly frequent number of students who enter engineering or science
departments by choice, but have taken only one subject (either physics or
chemistry) in high school and must receive remedial classes in
high-school level subjects as soon as they get into university.
From April 2002, Japanese schools will go completely onto the five-day
week and will put into effect a considerably revised set of Ministry of
Education guidelines for the curriculum. Since the number of hours of
classroom time will decrease, the content of the curriculum must be cut
back. The ministry says its 30 percent trimming of the curriculum has
been done with meticulous care, but critics declare that such an
educational policy will only accelerate the decline in scholastic
achievement.
At a time when administrations in many nations of the West have made
enhancement of the quality of primary and secondary education a priority
task and are adopting educational reforms aimed at raising standards of
scholastic achievement, critics charge that only Japan, ostensibly to
ease the pressure of competitive education on children, is moving in the
opposite direction with its cutbacks on curriculum that could aggravate
the decline in scholastic standards.
The issue of declining scholastic achievement is difficult to verify
scientifically or statistically, so it has been difficult to carry on a
balanced discussion of the problems. The qualities that were once so
highly praised and looked up to in Japan's primary and secondary
education are no longer even mentioned. One wonders whether the high
estimation Japan's education system once enjoyed was nothing more than a
fleeting dream.
*(Yamagishi Shunsuke is professor at Tama University and a specialist on
education.)*
(copyright - The Japan Foundation 1999)
[Source: "Japanese Book News," Number 28, Winter 1999, pp. 1-3. Published
quarterly by The Japan Foundation; Tokyo, Japan]
WISH I'D SAID THAT (Quote of the Day):
"My first art teacher was neither a professional nor a professional
artist. Instead he was a bricklayer and a stone mason."
--Eugene Grigsby Jr., in *Black Art: Ancestral Legacy,* 1989
-- Views from the world of learning in Japan --
Happy Chinese New Year!
And welcome to the 5 Feb. 2000 edition of KnoK (pronounced "knock") NEWS,
an informal and periodic bulletin concerning issues of learning in Japan
-- at home or otherwise. It is brought to you by the Covert family --
Kazumi, Kenya and Brian -- a multicultural, homelearning family in Osaka,
Japan.
KnoK stands for *KODOMO no KOKORO*, which means "Heart of a Child" in
Japanese. It is our belief that the heart of any child is indeed at the
center of true learning, wherever and however such learning may take
place.
///////////////////////// * /////////////////////////
5 February 2000
[Editor's Note: Hi everybody. We continue this edition of KnoK NEWS with
a deeper look at the latest buzzwords in Japan: *gakkyu hokai* --
classroom breakdown -- and its larger cousin, *gakko hokai*, or school
breakdown. The following (rather lengthy!) article, penned by a veteran
schoolteacher in Japan, provides many points for debate, as well as some
insights into just how mainstream Japanese educators view the problems
and the solutions.
Homelearners reading the following article about Japan will recognize
some familiar scenarios from their own countries right off, most notably
the role of educator as Official Pointer of Blame at every party
imaginable: the students, their parents, the government, the media,
researchers, society, foreigners -- at every party, that is, except that
institution known as school. In a hierarchical society like Japan where
the *appearance* of order often takes priority over actual learning,
Japanese teachers find themselves longing more than ever for the "good
ol' days" when their pupils just shut up and obeyed authority. But those
days are gone forever. More and more Japanese families are questioning
conventional schooling and seeking alternatives on their own. Although
homelearning families in Japan do remain far fewer in number compared
with their counterparts in other nations, this situation is slowly but
steadily changing. A seed of educational revolution is taking root in
Japan and, just as with other countries, a major factor in that
inevitable change has undoubtedly been classroom/school breakdown. --BC]
----------------
CLASSROOM BREAKDOWN AND SCHOLASTIC DECLINE IN JAPAN
[By] Yamagishi Shunsuke
Education in any country has its bright sides and its dark. The bright
side of Japanese education was once the excellence of its primary and
secondary schools. A 1976 OECD report on Japan prepared by a team of
examiners including former prime minister of France Edgar Faure and
Britain's Ronald P. Dore, then professor at Sussex University, stated,
"the Examiners' strong feeling has been that compared to their own
countries, Japanese achievements in these levels of education are very
substantial." For nearly a quarter of a century thereafter, Japan's
Ministry of Education, local boards of education, as well as elementary,
junior high, and senior high schools hosted numerous inspection groups
and study teams, not only from countries in the developing world but from
the industrialized countries as well.
Ten years after the OECD report was published, Edwin O. Reischauer, then
Harvard University professor and formerly U.S. ambassador to Japan, wrote
in the introduction to Benjamin Duke's *The Japanese School: Lessons for
Industrial America*, "In the past four decades, Japan has moved in U.S.
minds from being an economic basket case to becoming an economic
miracle." That impression of Japan continued to be current for a long
time, until very recently. Reischauer observed the significant role the
school education system had played in Japan's economic success, noting
that "the quality and morale of persons becoming educators in
Japan[,]...far more important than school facilities" and the "high
regard the Japanese show their teachers and the respect for teaching as a
high calling...[and the] strong supportive attitude for education on the
part of Japanese families," were the crucial factors responsible for what
Japanese education had achieved.
Thoroughly conversant with Japanese society and culture, Reischauer was
well aware of the dark side of Japanese education. He did not overlook
the notorious entrance-examination system that "rewards rote memory
rather than reasoning," the "poor teaching and very little study" at the
university level, and the English-language education practices that
produce remarkably few fluent speakers and writers of English capable of
taking an active role in international intellectual society. But he
appeared to believe that the achievements were of such a scale that they
could, in large part, compensate for such weaknesses.
Reischauer was not the only one to comment on the role of education in
economic growth; many scholars of Japanese society from the United States
and Europe have acclaimed it. While Japanese themselves were not
particularly confident of their own educational system, they ultimately
began to believe these high estimations voiced by outside observers.
The economic crisis that struck Japan in the 1990s, however, shook
Japanese society, bringing profound changes to people's lifestyles and
attitudes. These changes are still going on, and education is very much
part of it. People's confidence in the educational system that helped
make Japan a world economic power and that sustained its growth has been
seriously undermined. What has really caught them off guard, however, is
the unexpected emergence of the problems of classroom breakdown and
declining scholastic achievement, phenomena of the schools that seem all
the more sinister because their causes are unknown.
The breakdown and collapse of classroom order (*gakkyu hokai*) has been
particularly startling. The teacher's attempts to call the class to order
are to no avail: students continue to chatter and play among themselves,
neither opening their textbooks nor taking out their notebooks. When
chided or reprimanded, students talk back or speak insultingly to the
teacher, sometimes even walking out of class. There have been cases when
the entire class suddenly left the room.
Teaching, under such conditions, is obviously impossible. Similar
situations occurred during a period about twenty years ago when violence
and trouble in the schools became pronounced. Such cases, however, were
generally confined to certain high schools and junior high schools where
trouble-making students disrupted discipline and classroom order. This is
the first time, moreover, that the specter of classroom breakdown has
visited elementary schools, even first and other lower grades.
An NHK television program aired in early 1999 showed a lower-grade
elementary school class in which some students, completely ignoring
instructions, were wandering around the classroom at will. The veteran
teacher in charge was completely at a loss to deal with the situation.
The program helped to impress the general public with the seriousness of
the classroom-breakdown phenomenon.
There were many until very recently who did not believe that such loss of
classroom control was possible in Japanese schools; they included
specialists in education and many dedicated teachers. One professor of
the department of education of a national university at first wrote that
he did not think the term classroom collapse was appropriate to the field
of education, reminiscent as it is of the "collapse of the bubble
(*baburu hokai*)," referring to the deep recession that set in when the
overheated economy suddenly deflated. After he began visiting elementary
schools to study the actual situation, however, he confessed that he
ceased to have any reservations whatsoever about using the term.
There was no longer any doubt in his mind, the professor reported, of the
severity and the reality of classroom breakdown, after watching one boy
in music class suddenly stop playing his recorder. When asked to continue
by [the] teacher, he got up and ran out of the classroom, with most of
the others in the class following along [with] him. In another case, he
observed a child of about ten, returning to school after classes had
ended to get something forgotten, turn on a veteran teacher with insults
and shouts of hatred, throw chalk, and overturn a goldfish tank in rage.
In any era, at any time, [there] are always a few children who cause
trouble and pose special discipline problems. We need to know how
widespread the classroom breakdown syndrome has become in Japan, but so
far the problem has not been adequately measured. The Ministry of
Education, citing the difficulty of conducting a nationwide survey, has
so far done nothing. When specialists in education do studies on a
limited scale, they invariably uncover cases such as those described
above. Some believe that in the Tokyo Metropolitan area, one class out of
every twelve is out of control, but that estimate is by no means certain.
One important source of information on this sinister problem that seems
to be spreading through the schools like a plague is *Gakkyu hokai*
[Classroom Breakdown] (Asahi Shimbunsha, 1999), a compilation of articles
reporting on specific cases in the national daily *Asahi Shimbun*
[newspaper]. Through this book, one sees how the newspaper initially
reported on the phenomenon.
The causes of classroom breakdown are not yet clearly identified, but a
book entitled *Gakko hokai* [School Breakdown] by Kawakami Ryoichi
(Soshisha) (see this issue, p. 14) explains changes in the living
environment that have contributed to the transformation in children, from
the viewpoint of a junior high school teacher. With thirty-three years of
teaching experience behind him, the author notes that more children in
recent years find it difficult to sit properly in their chairs or stand
at attention during school assemblies. Many are generally frail of build
and seem unable to move their bodies easily and smoothly, and, while
stubborn and self-centered, they tend to be afraid of others. They cannot
easily put up with difficulty or pressure and their feelings are easily
hurt, but they lack common consideration for others. Giving a number of
examples, he shows the pronounced differences between today's junior high
school students and those of twenty years ago.
Parents have changed a great deal as well. Kawakami points out that
children betray little remorse even if caught shoplifting, and their
parents are less likely to require children to show a sense of
responsibility for their own actions. The eye of the community and adult
society as a restraining factor on children's behavior, meanwhile, has
noticeably weakened.
The issue of classroom breakdown is still at the stage when it is known
mostly from often-sensationalized mass-media reporting. It has yet to be
dealt with in systematic surveys or research, analyzing the conjunction
of classroom phenomena with changes in juvenile behavior, examined
against the backdrop of overall changes of society.
Classroom breakdown is a serious concern not just for educators but for
the business leaders who exercise influence in Japanese society. It was
reported that in seminars targeted at businesspeople ordinarily
interested in little beyond matters of the economy, lectures on classroom
collapse draw a noticeably larger crowd than usual. Their anxiety about
what is happening to their young grandchildren, rather than their
grown-up children, is notable.
Even more difficult for the general public to grasp than the phenomenon
of classroom breakdown is that of the decline in scholastic achievement.
Public concern about the trend appears to be limited, although those
involved in education are seriously worried.
Following the defeat [of Japan] in World War II, the Japanese educational
system underwent drastic reform. Not long after the curriculum was
revised and teaching methods following American models were introduced to
the schools, the decline in scholastic achievement became evident,
stirring considerable controversy; the recent debate is apparently the
first time since then that the issue has resurfaced.
It is understandable that educators, whose boast that their education
system was among the most efficient and effective in the world is now
being doused by charges of a "distressing decline in scholastic
achievement," are feeling a bit shell-shocked. The cruel verdict has been
passed down by university teachers. The jacket blurb for *Bunsu ga
dekinai daigakusei* [University Students Can't Do Fractions] (Toyo Keizai
Shimposha, 1999) says: "You may find it difficult to believe, but two out
of every ten university students cannot do primary school-level
arithmetic."
These figures are the result of tests given by Nishimura Kazuo (one of
the editors of the book and professor of the Institute of Economic
Research, Kyoto University) and others to students in economic classes,
featuring mainly arithmetic and mathematics problems at the elementary
and junior-high school level -- problems like 7/8 minus 4/5 = ? and 2
divided by 0.25 = ?
The book says that more than 20 percent of the students in the faculty of
economics of one of Japan's leading private universities could not do
this kind of problem. Such students, it turns out, are not tested in
mathematics in the highly competitive entrance examinations; since they
have not seriously studied math for years, believes Nishimura, they
simply forgot what they learned in primary school.
Most students in the national universities, for whom mathematics is a
required subject for the entrance examinations, are strong in the
subject. Judging from the test results for private university economics
faculties in which basic mathematical ability is needed just to
understand the lectures, private university students in general appear to
be deplorably poor at math.
Pointing to the pronounced decline in the basic arithmetic and math
skills of university students, especially those in the humanities at
private universities, Nishimura calls for greater public attention to
this trend, declaring that it stems directly from the decision by the
humanities faculties of private universities to drop math and
science-related subjects from their entrance examinations.
Nishimura blames the universities' way of administering entrance
examinations for the problem, arguing that they deliberately invite
students who cannot do math by allowing them to choose between math,
geography, history, and social studies for their elective examination
subject (English and Japanese only being required). In every other major
country, math is a subject required for college entrance: the Scholastic
Aptitude Test (SAT) in the United States measures students' scholastic
ability on the basis of English and math skills; China, Korea and all
other leading countries of both East and West designate math as a
required subject for university entrance exmination.
The problem with this scholastic achievement decline is not just a matter
of being poor at math. Students in recent years do not ask questions and
seem to have little appetite for learning; they will master the learning
tasks they are assigned but show little interest in pursuing knowledge on
their own. University faculty do not hide their indignation at the
increasingly frequent number of students who enter engineering or science
departments by choice, but have taken only one subject (either physics or
chemistry) in high school and must receive remedial classes in
high-school level subjects as soon as they get into university.
From April 2002, Japanese schools will go completely onto the five-day
week and will put into effect a considerably revised set of Ministry of
Education guidelines for the curriculum. Since the number of hours of
classroom time will decrease, the content of the curriculum must be cut
back. The ministry says its 30 percent trimming of the curriculum has
been done with meticulous care, but critics declare that such an
educational policy will only accelerate the decline in scholastic
achievement.
At a time when administrations in many nations of the West have made
enhancement of the quality of primary and secondary education a priority
task and are adopting educational reforms aimed at raising standards of
scholastic achievement, critics charge that only Japan, ostensibly to
ease the pressure of competitive education on children, is moving in the
opposite direction with its cutbacks on curriculum that could aggravate
the decline in scholastic standards.
The issue of declining scholastic achievement is difficult to verify
scientifically or statistically, so it has been difficult to carry on a
balanced discussion of the problems. The qualities that were once so
highly praised and looked up to in Japan's primary and secondary
education are no longer even mentioned. One wonders whether the high
estimation Japan's education system once enjoyed was nothing more than a
fleeting dream.
*(Yamagishi Shunsuke is professor at Tama University and a specialist on
education.)*
(copyright - The Japan Foundation 1999)
[Source: "Japanese Book News," Number 28, Winter 1999, pp. 1-3. Published
quarterly by The Japan Foundation; Tokyo, Japan]
> NEXT TIME: Q & A on Homeschooling in Japan <* * * *
WISH I'D SAID THAT (Quote of the Day):
"My first art teacher was neither a professional nor a professional
artist. Instead he was a bricklayer and a stone mason."
--Eugene Grigsby Jr., in *Black Art: Ancestral Legacy,* 1989
A. Yates
Covert Family,
Our homeschool group in NC, USA, is looking for some pen pals. Are you
interested? If you are, I'll send more details.
Thanks,
Ann
Our homeschool group in NC, USA, is looking for some pen pals. Are you
interested? If you are, I'll send more details.
Thanks,
Ann