Japanese Education–Now With Even MORE School Baked Right In!
The Japanese Education Ministry announced Friday that starting in 2011, they are increasing the number of class hours for elementary and junior high school kids for the first time in 40 years. This is a retreat from the Ministry’s “yutori kyoiku,” or relaxed education policy that began in the 1970’s.
Students will now be taking an extra 10 percent of Japanese, foreign language and social studies. There will be a super-sized portion of 22% more math and 33% more science. Kids will now need to learn 1,200 English words, up from 900. Even more kanji will need to be learned. And the 30% of the content of the textbooks that was cut in 1998 will be making a heralded comeback.
(photo by Eugene Matusov)
So, does this mean that the 6 day school week is also making a comeback? No official word, yet. But I wouldn’t be making plans for a Saturday afternoon trip to the zoo in 2011.
[note: article edited for accuracy by editor on February 19]
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What does a video from a KISS concert have to do with this story?
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I was expecting “I wanna rock and roll all night and party every day”…
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Poor kids. Every night on my way home from work around 8 or 9pm I always see a bunch of junior high students leaving their juku to head home. These kids don’t need more education. What they need are more efficiently run classes to teach the necessities (and I don’t mean entrance exam trivia). The fact that juku exists as a complete replacement for “real” school means that these kids are just wasting their time.
Government, are you listening? Start with universities and work down from there. Starting reforms from elementary school is a joke.
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I disagree with starting education reforms from the top down. Here in Los Angeles (where I worked in the school system for many years), we’ve faced many educational changes that start from the high school level and students are simply not prepared to deal with them.
I think that if students are to be expected to handle a different workload or style of teaching, they should start when they’re young and malleable.
Japan may be different considering the laziness of the average university student compared to primary/secondary education, but I still think the younger the better.
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That’s exactly the problem though. Why are these kids busting their butts? There’s absolutely no reason at all. It used to be that by studying hard you got into a good university and you were set for life. That’s still a big factor, but things are changing quite a bit in the working world.
Based on your theory about starting from the bottom up in Japan, if they were to adjust elementary school to match colleges, officials would have to make kids eat a box of Pocky and play outside for 4 hours before sending them home to play video games.
As it stands now, the kids ARE prepared for an intense college experience and would probably be much better off actually learning something in secondary education.
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I didn’t say they should make school harder in primary education, I just said changes should be made from the bottom up. I was arguing with your point about reforms at the university vs primary level rather than the article about including more work.
I attended Japanese university for a while, so I know how lax the system is compared to the American university I went to, but I think it makes sense for culture. They are trained to be good, follow-the-leader workers, then get a huge 4 year break before re-entering the grind as a company employee. I’m not saying it’s right, just the way it is.
I can’t say what’s right for Japanese society, but I still do think that if changes are made, they should happen when the children are younger. If you made the university level harder with the rest of the system the way it is, I think the already high suicide rate would skyrocket.
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I’ve never really understood why Japanese universities are seen as such a holiday. True, the end-of-semester exams at the one I went to were largely a joke, but you were expected to do a fair bit of work in class, especially in seminars. The thesis at the end of the four years also needed work, and the students do put in a lot of effort there. This was a national university, probably in the top twenty in the country, and the flagship university of the region, so I can assume it was more rigorous than a small private one perhaps. And the workload changes a lot when you get into grad school as well.
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That university in Japan is “a holiday” is largely a misconception amongst foreigners that’s played up by Japanese students themselves. Compared to their primary education, university may be more enjoyable, but that it’s a walk in the park is just plain false.
My wife attends a national university that is not very highly ranked (although she’s a foreign student), but there’s still a decent workload for her to deal with, and all of her peers are serious about their education. I’d assume schools higher up on the national rankings would require even more of their students.
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I think the impression is helped a lot by the sense of it being a break between high school and cramming, and “conformist” “long hours” at a company. That is, rather than being a slacker place, it just seems relatively less stressful than the two highly stressful environments it falls between.
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Nonsense. If the kids are not prepared for university, how a change in the university can prepare them? Only if you dumb down the universities. That’s the path some countries decided to follow, and the results are catastrophic. Good thing Japan noticed education is not just statistics, but the nation’s future.
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The people disagreeing with me don’t really seem to understand the dire situation that Japanese universities are in. K-12 education in Japan is a thousand times more intense than in the US and the students study all day long to prepare for entering college. If they are not going to regular school they are attending juku, or cram school, which is basically a test preparation school to prepare them specifically for the college entrance exams. After these same students spend all day in regular school and then cram school, they then return home at around 8pm to STUDY! When was the last time you saw any kid in the US or any Western country for that matter spend 12+ hours a day solely on education?
And for what? Japanese Univ. is a joke. Once you enter your school your only responsibility is to drink yourself sick for 4 years and write a thesis at the end.
Administrators lengthening K-12 school hours have clearly lost track of what it is to be a child. They’re compensating for lower test scores by increasing class time, but they fail to realize that in most cases, the children are just burned out and not learning the importance of learning. They’re spending 12 years memorizing facts for one test. If universities would break from tradition and start rewarding kids for actually learning, juku would be cut out of the system and maybe regular schools could get back to what they should be doing anyway – teaching.
I say again, the kids are prepared for university in Japan – probably by the time their 12 year-olds. What these children need is new alternatives, not longer hours.
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The sorts of schools that push students for entrance exams are the more elite ones, the ones that students who want to go to university go to. The so-called ’shingakkou’ (進学校). Also, the universities where you can drink your way to a degree are the lower-ranked ones, and the major ones don’t allow that. Not that US universities are bastions of educational discipline at the BA level either, with grade creep and other problems making it almost impossible to fail.
The problems with the Japanese education system are well known by Japanese educators. But they can’t really fix it – it’s up to the MEXT, and that’s staffed with bureaucraps, who measure success the same way General Arnold did in WW2 – the more bombs the better. Doesn’t matter if they’re doing any good….
Beefing up textbooks wouldn’t be a bad idea in some ways. The government sets a maximum price for them, and as such their size is limited. One reason for the ’suspicious’ removal of certain content from the history texts that gets so much attention – there literally isn’t room to fit it in. Another item that my local paper mentioned quite heavily is the increased emphasis on Japanese culture and tradition – learning Japanese dance and koto and the like. Did not see anything in the paper about the controversial “patriotism” aspect, and the ‘moral education’ was going to be taught in terms of background rather than actual classes on morality.
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Hi Kevin,
That they are coming from such a system is exactly the impression I get when looking at some of the grad students at the research institute I am at.
“just burned out and not learning the importance of learning.”
That this pattern continues to take a hold of folks, is the impression I get.
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Kevin, I think you’re buying into the stereotype more than you should be. “A thousand times more intense”? Overdoing it a bit there, aren’t we?
There are elite schools and demanding parents, but it’s by no means the norm. It may be a situation that occurs more than in the States or U.K., but students are not slaves to school work. (You ever see a group of kids just wandering around the station or eating at McDonald’s? I do. A lot. They’re doing what kids do – Hanging out and having fun.)
Students are, however, very involved in school life, more-so than what we’re used to in the States. That doesn’t mean they’re cramming for calculus until 8pm, but they’re involved in school clubs, cleaning, events, etc.
I’d say many students only attend 1 or 2 juku. This isn’t through any research, but just from what I’ve been exposed to. They typically attend jukus in subjects that they aren’t strong at in school; as sort of an enhancement program, because their parents don’t typically help them at home like we may be used to in our own upbringings. Almost all of the responsibility for education is left up to the teachers, and if the student isn’t doing well in school some parents will often make a complaint regarding the faults of the teachers.
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that is one side to japan’s emphasis on test based acheievement. Students are not tested on their ability to analyze or to think for themselves, but to spit out memorized facts.
It’s part of japan’s mentality to do every thing the “right way” or with “common sense.” Students are not usually encouraged to think for themselves or ask difficult questions.
This is the way their culture works. I can’t say I agree with increasing school hours. But, nor can I praise the the education system of the US. Mostly for me, it’s just he will of the individual to become accomplished. Good teachers can help you along the way to become motivated, but the desire to be educated must continue with the person. I can’t say I would want to raise my child within the Japanese educational system.
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So you think making kids spend 12+ hours per day studying is healthy? I know a heck of a lot of parents here who would beg to differ on that point…Japanese parents. This isn’t about a cultural difference. This is about poor planning by the Ministry of Education in Japan.
Case in point. Juku is a relatively new practice. It started about 25 years ago, and before it had caught on, most parents were satisfied with the education system. However, during the bubble economy, more and more families were deciding to send their kids to these test prep schools so their children could make more money in better companies. At that point in Japan’s history, Universities and businesses were *directly* related. If you got into a good university you got into a good company. It’s not the same anymore. BUT…the system isn’t compensating to deal with the current problem. Administrators compare Japanese test scores with those around the world and see them slipping. They don’t know what’s going on so they’re coming up with the mistaken conclusion that children need more time to study. I’ve talked to many, many parents who are angry that ALL of the time their kids spend in “regular” school is being wasted because their not learning anything productive. This is because at some point it was taken for granted that if you wanted to do well on your college entrance exam that you had to go to juku. So now we’re stuck in a system where children attend “regular school” for no apparent reason, then go “to school”. Can you imagine going to school, and then going to school? This isn’t a cultural difference, this a Ministry grasping for answers to a problem that starts with unchanging universities.
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Wow, that’s twice now that I wrote their instead of they’re. Guess my education was a great success.
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Perhaps the amount of school that Japanese students attend, is to make up for something else? like parent involvement, particularly fathers. mothers are often overly invovled. But how much of a relationship can you have with your parents, if you’re out of the house from 7 AM to 8PM at night, and you might not even eat dinner at home? Again, it depends on the family, but I would surmise in many cases, parents lose touch with what their kids really want.
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“The writing was on the wall a couple of years ago when the yutori kyoiku debate had simmered to a boil amongst conservative policymakers, even though test scores in 2004 showed an increase over the scores from 2002, when more reforms were put in place.”
Japanese Wikipedia describes the results of the test coordinated by OECD as follows. The numbers show the ranks of Japanese children in each year.
Mathematics: 1 (2000) -> 6 (2003) -> 10 (2006)
Reading: 8 (2000) -> 14 (2003) -> 15 (2006)
Science: 2 (2000) -> 1 (2003) -> 5 (2006)
“But, as with some other aspects of politics in Japan, statistics are no match for blaring out one’s message on loudspeakers.”
What aspect of politics in Japan has been affected by the loudspeakers? Are you talking about Japan in the 1930s? Does the black van demanding the return of the northern territories in the link has anything to do with the story?
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I learned everything I know on the internet.
My passion for this topic stems from the fact that children in Tokyo are wasting away. Their chances to gain life experiences from things like hiking, riding bikes, going to the park are totally limited by their surroundings and yet the adults, the ones who should know better, force them to stay confined within their studies. What kind of future will that provide for them? Learning methods are definitely influenced by culture, but I think the government is doing a grave disservice to the boys and girls who are supposed to take the reigns of this country in the future.
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To be honest, this article is filled with outdated stereotypes and irritates me. The era of “entry exam hell” has passed for more than 10 years because of the decreasing number of kids. OK? The most unexpected(though many predicted) result of the yutori kyoiku is the aggravationg disparity of educational chances. Now, everyone realize this stupid measure caused simply the destruction of public schools that brough about the “Only rich kids can enter the expensive private schools and enjoy high education” situation. So, the opposants to the yutori are not only conservatives, but also liberals. OK? This is not right-left ideollogical issue. Damn Uyoku! What the parents and teachers hope is “If they wish, even the poor kids can learn enough” situation.
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I completely agree.
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While I understand there might be some incentives to want kids to relax more, at the same time, who are you to say that the Japanese education system is no good? Americans are getting trashed by the Japanese in many industrial aspects and Japanese educated students are much sought across the globe. That’s why America actively seeks to recruit foreign minds for science think tanks; there is a shortage with their own system. Top American scientists these days are mostly foreign-born or 2nd gen kids.
Yeah, so their university experience pales in comparison to the K-12 workload, well, the reason for the higher push in the teenage years is that’s when the maturing mind can still be molded. Hence, you’ve got less kids hitting drugs and being lazy (guess which nations are facing obesity issues) in many western nations, while Japanese are the opposite. Sorry, I do understand that the system might seem brutal to some but people who have gone through it will know it’s not useless. Japan economy is #2-3 in the world not from many people being born natural genius, but guess: hard committed work ethic.
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There is a lot in your post that I want to talk about but I need to separate some issues.
First, to get it off the table, obesity has nothing to do with laziness, and even countries like Japan and China are starting to have to deal with this challenge:
China warned of obesity time-bomb
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4106212.stm
Second, I don’t think the Japanese system is worthless. Not at all. I think it is training students very efficiently. Students are being prepared for the rigors of the working world and learning the Confucionist structure of leadership. This speeds the transition from school to work, and it allows for the overtime-laden corporate structure found in Japan today. Plus, Japanese students have a tremendous ability to retain information about a wide variety of topics ranging from math to history.
However, there is a lot of ground between being “lazy” and being overworked. How much is too much, and at what point does over-extended (time wise) education start to have a negative impact on society. This goes for most countries, but if the government here is going to continue to increased study time, maybe they should add some community service in there as well so the children don’t lose track of their humanity.
I totally agree with John K that a lot of people I meet here don’t appreciate the very act of learning. I’ve yet to meet one person who has started attending graduate school after starting work.
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My friend’s wife did. Got a degree in architecture.
And let’s not kid ourselves – obesity has a lot to do with laziness. Maybe not everything, maybe not even on a one-to-one scale, but to use this as an excuse to not exercise is a bad idea. If calories expended are greater than calories consumed you will lose weight. Bad food doesn’t help of course, but where you will find obesity “epidemics” is where people do not get a lot of physical exercise.
And it is true that while US graduate education may rank in the global top, its high school education is infamously lacking. This is what American researchers and educators frequently conclude – for example, the National Geographic Society and its frequent laments that too many Americans can’t tell France and Iraq apart on a world map…. This does not directly have anything to do with the Japanese experience of course, but does suggest that it might not be a model to follow.
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One person hardly indicates a growing trend.
I agree with your point that exercise is crucial to losing weight, but I differ in your use of the word laziness.
la·zy (lz)
adj. la·zi·er, la·zi·est
1. Resistant to work or exertion; disposed to idleness.
2. Slow-moving; sluggish: a lazy river.
3. Conducive to idleness or indolence: a lazy summer day.
4. Depicted as reclining or lying on its side. Used of a brand on livestock.
I don’t think modern obesity is caused by resistance to work or exertion as you mentioned. I believe that modern lifestyles emphasize a lack of movement. Spend all day in front of the computer, tv, etc. and you’re not exercising but it doesn’t mean you’re lazy. I spend all day in front of my computer for work. It doesn’t mean I’m lazy, just busy. There are probably people out there who don’t like exercise, but since around the early 80s we’ve been raised to say inside (in the US anyway).
And I totally agree with you that the US model is not worth following. That still doesn’t change my belief that Japanese uni’s need fixing. If anything, I believe that the German system should be used around the world. You’re automatically accepted and it’s free – essentially open source for education.
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You’re making pretty sizeist assumptions there Overthinker! The issue of obesity is a lot more complicated than sound bytes in the media tend to make it. Just eating less and exercising more has not always curbed weight in all individuals. There have also been at least one study that showed how dieting itself has larger risks of early death associated with it than just being overweight.
The thing that pisses me off the most though is to see people equating some kind of moral character quality with size. Fat people are constantly being pegged as lazy, weak, gluttonous, bad, stupid, etc… all the way from childhood into adulthood. The fact is there are some pretty hard-working and diligent fat people out there in the world. There are some very genius minded ones out there as well. There are many factors that might make them the way they are. While exercise and diet may play a role… sometimes it also just comes down to bad genetics (fat running in their family) and a slower metabolism.
On contrast, I knew one guy from school who was skinny as a stick, ate tons of junk, and didn’t really exercise that often. He was a nice guy… but wasn’t quite the sharpest stick in the pile.
In the end, I urge you to readjust your simple notions about obesity and fat people. Please try to avoid making blanket statements and pretending to know why they are the way they are. Especially try to avoid generalizations and moral judgments… and don’t hide behind that pathetic false-face of “looking out for national health” as an excuse to be a prejudiced bigot!
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Kevin – I don’t dispute for a moment that modern lifestyles emphasize (or allow) lack of movement. Working all day in front of a computer is one thing, though, and sitting in front of the TV, or driving three blocks instead of walking, is another. I’m not suggesting anything radical here – the point that Americans (in particular, partially as the “epidemic” seems so strong there, partially as a lot of what I read is American in origin) actively (!) avoid exercise is hardly new or unique.
I have no idea what happened to my reply to Dangomushi. Eaten by the system?
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It’s not like adults study English in their free-time and on the weekends. They don’t take certification exams for anything regarding work, especially in the IT, banking, and financial industries. It’s not like there are any sort of documentaries or trivia shows on Japanese television. It’s not like they have any sort of huge vocational school industry in the country. Japanese reports aren’t famous for including even the most miniscule details in their research. I agree, Japanese despise the act of learning. Any new information, they steer clear of, which is why they have such unsuccessful innovative industries.
You haven’t pointed out anything remarkable, except that the people from your own country, who you are indirectly comparing them to, are seemingly unsatisfied with their initial careers and go back to school to fix that.
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Wow. I can’t believe that you would actually think that Graduate school for a seasoned professional and a certification are the same. Graduate school entails going back to school for two to three years using experience that you’ve acquired in all aspects of your life to further your knowledge of a topic of your choice – NOT always related to your current job.
Does taking the test to be certified as a Microsoft System Engineer entail meeting with a mentor and writing a 40-50 pg. thesis?
I admit that I wasn’t really thinking in terms of certifications in regard to enjoyment of education, but going to graduate school isn’t something you take lightly or study on weekends.
You might want to do some more reading:
http://www.jsps.go.jp/english/about_us/ono_0412_e.html
(Quality of Researchers)
Now, let us turn to the qualitative aspect of Japanese researchers. Japan has 2.5 million university students, but has only 200,000 graduate students. The percentage of graduate students is 8.2%. This indicates that the percentage of Japanese researchers that have Master’s degrees or Ph.D. degrees is not high and that the quality of researchers in Japan requires improvement.
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But Japanese undergraduate university students write a thesis paper in order to graduate. (My wife, in her 3rd year now on her second degree, is already in the beginning process of research for her thesis paper) That wasn’t required of me to graduate from the University of California. The systems are different.
>>”This indicates that the percentage of Japanese researchers that have Master’s degrees or Ph.D. degrees is not high and that the quality of researchers in Japan requires improvement.”
It doesn’t indicate that at all. That’s your own, opinion-based assessment of the brief data you presented.
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Sorry, but this is what Motoyuki Ono, president of JSPS said. Not my words. Check the link I posted.
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[[Why do my comments keep getting eaten by the system? That's the third in two days that hasn't shown up. Is it because they contain URLs? ]]
Not all faculties require a thesis for the Bachelor’s degree, but it is common. I had to write one. It was a piece of steaming crap, mind you, or certainly seems that way now, but it did the job.
The quote you take exception to is not Kevin’s but from the President of the JSPS. He also says, however, that: “If one examines the number of researchers per population, Japan has the highest figures among the advanced nations. In the area of science and technology human resources, from a quantitative point of view, Japan ranks at the highest level.” The only way to make sense of these two quotes is to assume that many or most Japanese researchers only have a Bachelor’s degree….
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Overthinker:
It’s probably because they have links in them.
I used to go through the spam folder every day and manually recover comments that found their way in there, but the volume of spam is so high recently that it’s no longer an option.
I usually delete the spam folder once a day to keep the leftover spam at a size manageable-enough to perform a manual search/recover should a user e-mails me about comments not showing up. Unfortunately, I just found this comment now, so your previously missing comments are already gone.
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Kinda makes it hard to supply sources for arguments or data, unfortunately, if we can’t use links. Might just have to break them up or otherwise make them not seen as links.
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I’ve noticed that some posts just take longer than others. I’ve included a couple of links and they don’t seem to have any problems. All of my posts show up eventually but sometimes it takes about an hour or so…
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Kevin:
Some keywords flag posts for auto-moderation, which is different from being flagged as spam. In such cases, it usually e-mails me so I can approve comments as soon as I am able.
If either of you posts a comment that doesn’t show up for an hour or two, e-mail japanprobe at gmail dot com and I will fish it out of the spam filter for you. I hate the idea of so many comments never seeing the light of day.
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Everytime I use a blockquote tag, it gets held for moderation.
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This is really sad. My views aren’t as thought out as some of the other commentors, and I’m drunk, but this just reminds me of my students in Tokyo who, when asked what they will do during a vacation, smile and say “Sleep”.
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My wife and I operated a juku in Japan with 70 students, and employed four part-time instructors. We taught math and English test-taking skills to students with mild learning disabilities, as well as those preparing for high school entrance examinations
It was a lucrative and rewarding experience. Our setup was a little different than regular jukus in that we didn’t lecture but instead provided one-on-one tutoring.
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About that common observation that university life in the US is more demanding in terms of study and work. I have to disagree. The US university system is so huge and diversified that there are plenty of people who graduate without doing that much work. The US is also famous for graduating illiterate athletes who had other people do their academic work for them while they basically did professional sports and partied.
What Americans misperceive about non-elite universities in Japan goes back to their own misunderstanding of the American system. There is no one American system. If you go to a somewhat unselective or open admissions institution, the studies during your first two years are going to be a general education bootcamp brought to you by your elite professors, who think you are not ready for their high level of braininess and erudition.
In Japan, there were education reform movements and trends to make general education a good portion of the undergraduate’s training, but this has largely fallen to the wayside. And I find that students concentrate on what they need to graduate and what they need to get a job afterwards (remember, sometimes certification is required). So I think overall it is harder to put students here through any intensive study OUTSIDE their narrow majors run by specific departments. This is why, for example, General Education English is such a nationwide joke.
Now Japan is faced with the issue that they have to open up university slots to students who really do have less academic accomplishment and really don’t have very high scores on the subjects covered in the entrance exams. So the natural argument would be that the universities need to make general education–courses required outside of majors–more serious and better prepared and taught for students who have so far not achieved much academically.
However, the way university professors think is still essentially elitists. Most have no idea how to teach weak students, especially ones who don’t choose something in their area of expertise as their major.
So Japan higher education is failing this new type of student. I mean, not failing them as in flunking them out, but failing to educate them. The universities need people who can teach basics and who can move across disciplines. Given the narrow specialities most academics have been rewarded and subsidized to pursue, that’s an issue. The professors just don’t match up well with more and more of the students.
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