THE POLARIZATION OF EDUCATION

The start of the new school year in April ushered in sweeping changes in the curriculum of Japan’s public elementary and middle schools, as outlined in the June 2001 issue of Japan Echo (“Whither Japan’s Schools?” vol. 28, no. 3). These changes were based on the new Courses of Study, a set of guidelines issued by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology. Students now get two full days off a week and are given opportunities to learn about nontraditional subjects in “integrated study” periods.

In a round-table discussion appearing in the June issue of Sekai (“Genbahatsu: Sôgô gakushû wa konna ni omoshiroi!” [The View from the Classroom: Integrated Study Can Be Loads of Fun!]), three educators—Saitô Takashi of Meiji University, elementary school principal Chiba Tamotsu, and elementary school teacher Yoshimoto Yukio—discuss this new part of the curriculum. Chiba offers an interesting real-life example of how integrated study is being conducted. Fourth graders at his school were treated to Indian curry prepared at school by an Indian chef. The pupils had to eat it using just their right hands, and the girls had to wait until the boys were finished. This raised questions about eating habits in India, and the search for answers heightened students’ interest in the country in general. The aim of such instruction is to enable students to identify problems and to encourage original and creative thinking.

Another, more common use of integrated study has been to read and discuss newspaper articles in the classroom, a practice that apparently originated in the United States but is now catching on in Japan.

Katô Yukitsugu, a professor at Tokyo’s Sophia University, has high praise for the integrated-study initiative. In his article in this section, he places integrated study at the top of a vertical stack of subjects taught at school: “At the base come the ‘three Rs,’ the fundamental tools of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Next come science and social studies,” the instruction of which “should be based on a problem-solving approach. And at the top of the stack comes integrated study, self-directed learning outside the framework of the regular subjects.” Instead of viewing the three separately, Katô advocates establishing “connections between the different levels of the stack.” This, he maintains, will achieve a better balance “between the time spent on structured teaching of the basics and time spent more enjoyably,” which is when people are most eager to learn.

Education in Japan was long criticized for its overemphasis on cramming. This approach produced legions of workers with the basic skills needed to propel an underdeveloped economy forward but also invited excessive uniformity. As the economy matured, many people sought an educational system that would encourage originality and creativity. And many also maintained that cooping young students up in schools six days a week left no time to foster a sense of autonomy.

The Education Ministry responded by gradually reducing the number of classroom hours and giving students more “room to grow.” Starting in April the school week at public elementary and middle schools has been slashed to just 26 hours from 34 hours, and all Saturday classes have been eliminated. Around two to three hours a week are spent on integrated study, moreover, further cutting into the time devoted to other subjects.

While some have charged that too many facts are being crammed into students' heads, in recent years there has also been a rising tide of complaints that educational reform is causing scholastic standards to fall. These concerns have been intensified by the shorter hours and reduced content of the new curriculum.

University of Tokyo Professor Kariya Takehiko has been a long-time and outspoken critic of Japan’s education authorities. He has expressed great misgivings over the direction of education reform, saying that “room to grow” will only sap students of enthusiasm for learning and invite a further stratification of Japanese society, as lower income groups tend to attach less value to education. A group of education researchers headed by Kariya conducted a survey of 27 elementary and middle schools in urban areas of the Kansai region last year and found that scholastic achievement levels have fallen precipitously over the past dozen years. The findings of the survey, which originally appeared in the June 2002 issue of Ronza, are presented below. Now that students have two full days off every week, more of them are likely to attend private, after-school classes. But according to the results of the survey, achievement levels have been falling even among children taking these supplementary juku classes. Kariya and his colleagues express their anxiety about integrated study, saying that granting schoolchildren too much autonomy will invite broader gaps in experiential and self-directed learning.

Many teachers lament that not all subject matter can be covered on weekdays alone. And quite a few private schools that have kept their fuller curricula are trying to bolster enrollment by promising higher scholastic achievement.

The heavy hand of the education bureaucracy is often blamed for the constraining uniformity of the public education system. The new Courses of Study thus give individual schools considerable leeway in what is taught. Some have focused on providing youngsters plenty of room to grow and have devoted great attention to their integrated-study programs. Others have taken the opposite approach of concentrating on the three Rs to keep academic performance from declining, with some even offering extra classes after school or on Saturdays. Thus has begun a polarization of public education in Japan. At the same time, many more parents are turning their backs on public schools altogether and are enrolling their children in private institutions to stay a step ahead in the educational rat race. In primary education, the polarization seems to be going three ways. (Kondô Motohiro, Professor, Nihon University)

© 2002 Japan Echo Inc.