Thoughts on Japanese education
Author: Lance LindleyPublished on: Jun 1, 2000
The modern (post-WWII) education system in Japan was designed by the Allied Occupation Forces and enacted by two laws in 1947. These reforms completely altered education in Japan, and established an open-to-all, public education system consisting of six years of elementary school, three each of middle and high schools and four years of university. Attendance through the end of middle school is mandatory, though nearly 95% of students who finish middle school go on to high school.
Perhaps because of strong American influence regarding equal opportunity for all students during the educational reforms of 1947, the modern Japanese education system seems to embrace the philosophy that nobody should fail a class for any reason. In Japanese society, for the most part all students -- and later in life, all employees -- advance with their peers as a group.
Now, the Japanese education itself tends toward rote memorization for the sole purpose of passing tests. The case has often been made that no practical, functional knowledge is actually retained by the students. A perfect case in point is the mandatory study of English for 6 years. All Japanese who went to school since the occupation have studied 6 years of English, and yet very few can actually communicate in English, much less converse.
This does not mean that Japanese schools are "easy" in the Western sense. I mean, states like California have experimented with the "no grades, no failures" system, but they put a lot of other "no negative feedback" happy-happy-joy-joy stuff in there, too. Japanese schools are somewhat infamous -- within Japan -- for having the sort of strict, violence-backed control over students that would make English boarding schools look like California new-age kindergartens. For example, in the 1980s, a male high school student was beaten to death by his teacher, in front of his classmates, for bringing a hair dryer on a school field trip in violation of the rules (read "Shogun's Ghost" by Ken Schoolland for more on that incident). Studies have indicated that most Japanese students have been struck by teachers, or have witnessed the striking of another student by a teacher, either with a fist, open palm, or any object that is at hand, from ashtrays to books to baseball bats. My wife, for example, reported to me matter-of-factly that her junior high softball coach hit her in the head with a baseball bat in front of the other students because she took a called third strike during a game.
My wife defends her teacher's actions. "I had made a mistake," she said. "It made me think harder about being more aggressive at the plate from then on." Westerners might believe that instead of improving her performance, putting this kind of fear into her mind would make it harder for her to relax at the plate. Even in the West, though, coaches have long said to players, "Don't think, you'll only hurt the team."
What it says to students outside the sports arena, however, is, "you are neither qualified nor authorized to have an opinion. Do what I say." Some might argue that this style of teaching stifles creativity. Detractors have pointed to Japan's corporations as fantastic implementors but below-average innovators and also to the shocking nature of Japan's occasional sensational crimes as evidence that their education system leads to a nation of robots at best and psychotic mass murderers at worst.
Corporal punishment is officially outlawed in Japanese schools. But reasearch does seem to indicate that it goes on quite a lot, and not just by the teachers. Far more deaths (many of them suicides) have come about as a result of student-to-student bullying, called iijime. Iijime is a serious problem in Japan. Just how serious depends alot on who you talk to, but the raw statistics on the number of iijime-related deaths do seem to indicate that it is worthy of attention. of course, iijime is not exactly sanctioned by school authorities, but they do very little to stop it, and arguably a lot to encourage it.
If this sounds inconceivable, we don't have to look far to find similar examples in Eurocentric cultures. Consider the sneering English school teacher in Pink Floyd's The Wall, shaming the student in front of the entire class for writing poems during class. Consider the boot camp drill instructor who tells the recruit that because of his screw-up, the entire platoon will be punished. Recruits -- and schoolchildren -- pick up on the signal quite clearly: "It's up to us to hammer some conformity into this guy. It's not only OK, it's what the authorities want us to do."
Some iijime is just the result of gangs (don't think of them like 1990s urban U.S. gangs, think of them more like 1950s bullies) who want to take somebody's lunch money, or they're dishing out what they themselves took in junior high. But more often, students are singled out for being different. Different in what way? Pick one: dirty, small, fat, not athletic, too smart, too stupid, too loud, too quiet, mixed race, etc. It happens among kids (who are we kidding? Adults do it, too) in any society, but it can be particularly severe and damaging in group-oriented Japan.
Since the 90's, however, incidents of bullying have declined, giving way instead to attacks on teachers and -- most recently -- "thrill kill" murders of bystanders by 17-year-olds. For more on this disturbing trend, read the article entitled the Dark Side.
Above and beyond the pressure to conform, there is the crushing weight of the entrance exams.
I mentioned before that almost all students will move into the next grade with their peers, regardless of their grades, so this might leave you wondering how there could be exam pressure. The students move along into the next grade, but after junior high, they might not get into the schools they want, and in Japan, what you do in junior high not only can, but most likely WILL determine where you work for the rest of your life. This concept is called gakureki shakai, which means "credential society." Because of Japan's virtual racial homogeneity and relatively equal distribution of wealth (a result of the devastation of WWII), social and occupational status is not based on wealth and race to nearly the degree that it is in Western countries. Instead, a person is often judged by the level of their job and the prestige of their company, which is determined in a large part by the level of their education and the prestige of their university.
This filters all the way down to middle school. High school, remember, is optional, and high schools are segregated by entrance exams. If you don't get into the pipeline for a smart high school, you're not going to a smart college. No smart college, no job with a good company. And Japan boasts of lifetime employment, so where you end up working after college is where you're going to work until retirement -- and beyond. (See the business article for more on post-retirement employment.) The result is, that after long school weeks -- often including Saturdays, and long terms (Japanese students only get one month off for summer vacation), students in middle school and high school often go to evening "cram schools," called yobiko or juku.
Once a student finally reaches college, however, most of the pressure is off. They are in the pipeline and can ride the swell all the way into the company position they have earned by virtue of the college they got into. As a result, college is often the polar opposite of grade school in terms of strictness. College students are often unruly and undisciplined, and the teachers are low-key and long-suffering. Teachers and administrators -- all too willing to ruin a child's life in junior high -- are not willing to damage a student's future after he has made it this far. It is the students' payback for having survived those grueling school years until high school graduation. College, then, is a time for cementing friendships (partying until your eyes bubble), and joining the handful of all-important clubs -- anything from athletic clubs for the "tough" guys to clubs devoted to studying the minutiae of a particular pop idol. As my wife puts it, the typical Japanese college is "hard to get into, easy to get out of."
College is the lone respite from the pressure, however, for hard on college's heels is the lifelong corporate pressure cooker that is Japanese business.