Brilliant education plan revealed: double textbook page counts

A government panel has come up with a creative solution to improve the quality of education in Japan:

The Japanese government panel on educational reconstruction proposed Thursday doubling the page counts of Japanese-language, science and English textbooks to enrich education.

In its report to Prime Minister Taro Aso, the panel said mathematics texts should include more practice exercises so students can study by themselves outside of class.

Japanese-language textbooks need to carry more excellent writing by great literary figures, while those of English should contain newspaper articles and masterly speeches, the panel said in the report.

At the very least, textbook publishers will be happy to charge more money for thicker textbooks. They might even be able to save some of the costs of adding new material by adjusting font sizes and adding more pictures to their books.

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Jerry

It would be better if they let the students leaqrn hands-on, like Co-op
stereo

“At the very least, textbook publishers will be happy to charge schools more money for thicker textbooks.”

Actually, the national government pays for the textbooks.
“義務教育諸学校の教科用図書の無償措置に関する法律”

Learning English from masterly speaches is a good idea. The problem is there are not many of them these days.

http://www.japanprobe.com James

Noted, but even if the national government pays for textbooks instead of local education budgets, the publishing companies will still be selling bigger books for a greater price.

Back when I did ALT work, I found that the existing English textbooks seemed long enough to keep the students busy. Personally, I’d rather see textbooks built around encouraging students to use English for practical communication instead of reading newspaper articles and speeches.
kermitose

The governments fund the schools who buy the books, they do not pay to produce them. If that were the case, then the government would be the publisher.

The Overthinker

I have heard that US textbooks, in history at least, tend to be rather chunky.

helical

I used to think those back-bending blunt instruments were the norm until I saw the flimsy Japanese ones.
It puzzled me that somehow, teachers could conjure up an entire year of classes from that thin booklet

somegirl

I agree with the first comment, why not learn more from experience instead of boring text. What child wants to read speeches and news articles as a second language. There are more practical ways of learning English as a second language then forcing it down their throats. I mean, how many Japanese that have gone through the education and actually remember all that they have learned (or even want to), not many that I know. The Education panel needs to change their way of thinking. I do agree with the math, the more exercise the better you learn (and I hate math but it’s true). Wouldn’t it be nice if they could just focus on making learning fun so kids have a desire to want to learn and see how what they learn effects them in the real life, the connections and practical use. Ok, that’s my rant for today.
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Brilliant education plan revealed: double textbook page counts

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