Throughout North America, the education debate is raging with renewed vigor. Much has been said in recent years about the need to change this continent's educational system to meet the realities of the twenty first century. The methods of change suggested are as varied as those making the suggestions: de-streaming, child-centred learning, holistic learning. An endless litany. Through all the arguments and all the proposals, one fact remains dazzlingly clear: reform of our educational system is desperately needed. Among the reformers are those who tout Japan's educational system as an example of educational excellence and go so far as to urge the adoption of such a system in the United States and Canada. But to do this would be a waste of time and money. The Japanese educational system wouldn't work in North America. How could it? It doesn't work in Japan.
Obviously, there are major differences in the ways Western and Eastern nations view things, including education. Putting these cultural differences aside, what takes place in Japanese schools cannot be considered education. Students are learning by rote, memorizing facts and figures to be regurgitated at exam time then to be forgotten. There is no opportunity for students to spread their wings intellectually. Creativity and individuality, even the idea of individual identity, are stifled. Conformity is the catchword in Japan, an aspect of that country's culture which has contributed greatly to the cohesiveness of Japanese society. Conformity is drilled into students, where else, at school. From their dark blue, military looking uniforms to (for the boys at least) their close-cropped skulls, students are taught to be but one of the many and not to celebrate being One. Should students deviate from the defined norm, they become victims of often-fatal ijime (bullying) at the hands of their peers and their teachers. This is hardly the fertile ground necessary to breed tomorrow's innovators.
Education cannot be equated with mere memorization or with a drive towards social regimentation. The goal of education is to teach people to think independently and to develop the ability to form original opinions and ideas and to analyze. This is not what is happening in Japan. Statistics state that in Japan, approximately 85% of classroom time is spent in teaching, compared to 60% to 65% in Canada and the United States. On the surface, an impressive figure. But a closer look reveals that the students are merely copying verbatim what the teacher is saying or writing on the blackboard. There is no discussion or interaction. Questions, the life blood of true learning, are forbidden. Students are expected to understand. Barring that, they are expected to memorize everything.
Statistics also focus on the fact that Japanese students do exceptionally well on tests of mathematics and sciences, subjects that can be learned by rote. If figures were gathered on subjects requiring more creative and independent thought, the numbers would be far different. Japanese high school students are weak in subjects like history, foreign languages, geography, etc. This weakness was underscored when a professor at Shizuoka university admitted he was forced to used comic books as background material so his students could cope with his course in modern history. In essence, he had to re-teach his students from scratch a subject they had studied throughout their years at junior high school and high school.
Another of the supposed strengths of the Japanese system is the length of its school year, 243 days; 63 days longer than in the U.S. and 57 longer than in Canada. Much of this longer year is made up of four hour sessions on Saturday during which students are involved in such intellectually uplifting activities as cleaning blackboards, sweeping the halls and picking up the garbage littering the school grounds, tasks which can't be done during the week. While arguably good exercises in character building, the students are studying nothing and, consequently, learning nothing. Parent have finally realized this. Saturday will no longer by the day to get young Hiroshi or Sachiko out of mother's hair for a few hours. Thanks to pressure from parents, the education ministry recently decreed that students must attend schools only two Saturdays a month.
And consider this: Hong Kong's school year is 195 days. Yet students in Hong Kong placed higher in 12th grade tests in advanced algebra, calculus and geometry than did Japanese students. Britons, with 193 school days, placed a close third.
Perhaps the strongest barometer of the deficiencies in the system is the recent boom in juku and yobiko, the famed and feared cram- and college-prep schools. Over the past decade the number of these schools has almost tripled. Many students have come to realize that at regular schools they aren't learning what they need to know to get into university or to deal with life in the job market. So more and more are dropping out and attending juku and yobiko, absorbing more there in a year than in two or three at high school. And it's not uncommon for students still attending day school to attend two or even three juku. In essence they are using large amounts of their own free time and their parents' money to study what they should have learned during regular school hours. This boom has been attributed to market pressures, with the consumers (i.e. the students) searching for alternatives to day schools. And, it seems, they have found a better one.
At the moment, Japan's educational system works well in one respect. With the long hours of study and work and the crushing amounts of mindless tedium they are forced to endure, Japanese students do learn early on to become accustomed to the life they are fated to lead - that of the typical salaried worker.
And if the Japanese educational system is such a model of excellence, why is Japan's educational ministry planning to completely overhaul it by early next century? Perhaps the ministry knows something many on this side of the Pacific have yet to realize.