Education in Japan
In the last lesson we covered the history of premodern Japan and begin now our discussion of contemporary post-World War II Japan. As you know, the loss of World War II had a devastating effect on Japanese institutions and society. As we begin our discussion of the postwar period, we will examine the particular way that Japan reconstructed itself and its identity in the postwar period. Before we begin, I would like to briefly lay out the larger themes that characterize postwar Japan.
I. General Themes of Postwar Japan
A. Contemporary Japan has its own changing dynamic, its own historicity. By looking at the shape of modern schools and families, we may have a tendency to see these institutions as timeless, but they are most definitely not. In the last lesson, we concentrated on what has happened historically, prior to the 20 th century, with a focus on change and dynamism. We focused on situating certain key traditions or legacies in the past and how they are in constant change and flux. The same sense of change is true for the 20 th and now 21 st century.
B. It is not enough to say things are always changing. Japan has gone through a particular projectory of change in the postwar period. This change took shape in the 1950s, matured in the 1960s, weathered challenges in the 70s and 80s and began coming apart in the 90s and this decade.
C. You will hear me use the expression, the “New Middle Class Japan” to describe the institutions of the postwar period in Japan. This is not to imply homogeneity, but rather to illustrate how certain forms have taken shape. That there is a logic of how the institutions of education, work and family fit in relation to one another.
D. Remember that while Japan is diverse but the diversity in Japan is NOT random. Rather it is a “structured diversity.” If you recall our earlier discussion of culture as conformity, conflict and change, we will examine the ways in which lives and individual choices are not entirely contained by institutions and ideals, but rather are constrained!! In this class, we will focus on this logic of idealized behavior, structured choices and managed diversity, that is the institutions that shape the lives of individuals (not entirely, but to a certain degree). We will also look at the ways in which individuals reject or challenge this management. Always keep in mind this tension between structure and agency, or institutional control and individual choice.
II. The New Middle Class Ideology
There are three distinct institutions along which we can track the reconstruction and transformation of Japan since WWII. The combination of economic growth and political stability (the LDP party was in power for decades) has brought about a consensus about the mainstream consciousness or lack of class in Japan. The stratified class structure of prewar Japan (rooted in the hierarchy of samurai through merchants in the Tokugawa period as mentioned in the last lesson) shifted to an image the Japan is 90% middle class. Where does the government and popular consciousness come up with this statistic? A survey run by the prime minister’s office in 1968 asked people to rank their life situation against others. It was not a survey about class per say, but every year 85-90% of respondents would place themselves in the middle three categories and every year officials would interpret the population as mostly middle class. Remember because this survey asked people to reflect upon their own class situation as compared to people they knew, the results gave information about about perceptions and wishes and self-characterizations, not necessarily reality. In the past fifty years, class structure is seen to have disappeared as people’s life choices have become increasingly homogenized. This survey has generated an enormous amount of controversy as some seem to take it as gospel, while others say it hides a gross disparity. The “90% middle class” idea is meaningful as it points to the convergence of ideals regarding school, work and family since the 1960s. But what are these ideals?
A. “Education-credential society”: In postwar Japan, education became the way by which merit is measured. Education values and valorizes certain kinds of learning and authority. The education system in Japan is based on the idea that if one just applies oneself and studies diligently, one will be successful. Success in high school is measured by a high score on the college entrance exams. A purely meritocratic education system offers the promise of social mobility and success through individual merit. This is true to a degree in the U.S., but even more so in Japan.
B. “Japan Inc.” workplace: The ideal Japanese workplace is one that promises lifetime employment, bottom-up recruitment and a promotion and pay system based on years of service.
C. Stay-at-home housewife and rice-winning husband: The ideal family model is characterized by a gainfully employed husband who can afford to enable his wife to stay at home and raise the children.
BUT DO THESE NEW MIDDLE CLASS IDEALS DESCRIBE REALITY IN JAPAN? NO, NO, NO!
III. The reality that conflicts with the New Middle Class Ideals
A. In reality, despite the idea that the school system does not discriminate against individuals and is standardized and meritocratic in theory, as we will examine, different types of students with unique hopes, dreams, and prospects go to a variety of schools in Japan. Only ½ of all high schools graduates go to college and only a very small percentage of these take the high pressure college entrance exams.
B. Contrary to the idea that the majority of Japanese employees work in full-time, life-time employment in corporations, a full 60-70% of the Japanese population do not.
C. Complicating the idea of family in Japan, over 50% of all married women work.
There is a gap between aspirations and attainment that is what is expected to occur and what actually does. This gap is fascinating for anthropological investigation.
IV. Preschool
A. Sharp separation of school and home
As noted above, when we think of education in Japan, we think of a highly stressful pressure cooker that revolves around entrance exams, but we do not think of the preschool experience, which as I will explain, is the exact opposite of high school. There is a sharp separation of the teachings of Japanese preschools and that which is taught in the home. Japanese parents and teachers do not perceive the family as carrying the primary responsibility for training school-related social behavior. Teachers do not expect students to arrive at school with either a well-developed set of social and interpersonal skills, nor a good understanding of appropriate behavior. They do not even expect the children to be potty-trained! Similarly, mothers do not believe it to be their duty to manage the child’s behavior at home according to rules similar to those the child will experience in the classroom. The home and the school are distinct. The reasons behind this distinction are that one of the main goals of preschool is to teach group living (shudan seikatsu), while the home is the place to allow a child’s selfish desires to be indulged. At school, students learn that their own desires and goals are secondary to those of the group. Selfishness or excessive assertion of independent desires is discouraged in this setting. Once alone or at home again, the person or child can relax and let his/her real feelings show. Children are indulged at home and regulated at school (boys have more trouble adjusting to the school environment, because they are encouraged to be truly selfish at home).
1. At preschool, students are taught practical life skills, such as changing their shoes and clothes and proper toileting. It is here that children learn from their peers the unselfish and mature interpersonal relationships that are necessary to survive in a society that privileges group living. These skills include obedience, courtesy, cooperation and responsibility.
2. Neither mothers nor teachers have the goal to achieve consistency in children’s behavior between the home and the school.
3. To encourage this group living, the schools intentionally keep very few toys in the classroom and have very large class sizes, so that children are encouraged to play with one another, rather than toys or the teacher.
4. Fights between children are seen as positive indications of the gradual maturation of social interaction and genuine interpersonal involvement. A problem child is NOT one who fights, but one who chooses to play alone.
B. Other characteristics of Japanese preschools
1. Focus on the whole child, not simply the academic or intelligent side. 60% of time in preschools is dedicated to non-academic instruction, including fieldtrips and festivals.
2. Emphasize caring and stable relationships among students and between students and teachers. The teachers eat with the students, visit them at their homes and teach the same group of children for a number of years as they move through the grades.
3. Foster family-like small groups. The preschools may divide students into small groups to facilitate social skills but they never track according to ability. All students are thought to have the same innate ability whether or not they choose to apply themselves.
4. Soft authority by the teachers, who try to encourage children to solve their own problems. The teachers are very reluctant to impose solutions or even discipline, as you will see in the film “Preschools in Three Cultures.”
To sum up: Japanese preschools can be characterized by an emphasis on teaching students the skills to get along well with others. This is accomplished through implementing small family-like groups among the students, downplaying teacher authority, and focusing on social skills in addition to academic preparation.
II. Junior High Schools
In the Japanese education system, there is a dramatic transition from the whole child/egalitarian/fun/child-centered approach of preschool and elementary school (which has the same character as preschool) to that of the academic driven, exam-orientated, passive learning style that characterizes junior high school and high school.
A. In particular, junior high schools serve as a transition from elementary to high school—from the fun times of active participation of elementary school and preschool, to the extremely difficult crunch period of high school.
B. In junior high school there is a tension between lifestyle guidance and academic lecturing.
1. Junior high school gives instruction in both whole lifestyle learning as well as academic subjects taught in uninspiring ways. Classroom style is characterized by teacher lectures and passive textbook study for academic subjects, where students to memorize and master the topics and reproduce them in exams. The material taught is often not relevant or entertaining (recall Rohlen’s description in the coursepack, where he claims that he can’t even bear to sit through the classes). Teachers stand the whole time and teach from the book and do not ask for input from the students.
2. In compensation for this horrifyingly boring and monotonous teaching style, the non-academic subjects are quite entertaining. In areas such as homeroom, special days, events, clubs, team activities, sports or field trips, teachers compensate through teaching what I call lifestyle guidance. There is a real interest on the part of the teachers to soften the thrust of the boring lectures. The teachers have home visits, manage the non-academic subjects to maintain order and have the students write self reflective essays often, to keep track of what goes on with the children at home.
C. Is this guidance or surveillance? Junior high school teachers play a tremendous role in counseling the students in terms of which high school exams to sit for. As Rohlen’s article illustrates, although junior high schools are generally based on residence, attendance in high school is determined by success on the highly rigorous entrance exams. The students take very difficult exams for the best national or public high schools, so the teachers must not only steer them in the right direction, but they must also get the children psychologically ready for taking the exams and to accept the results. The teachers need to know as much as possible about the kids to make sure that they make the correct decisions, but also to ensure that they will be able to handle the outcome of the decisions. Lifestyle guidance supports the lecture style approach that relies on quiet, passive learning, directed by an authority figure. The teaching style in junior high schools begin to get the children used to a new style of handling their bodies and voices in the classroom. Picture the images of the chaotic playing in the preschool and then picture the dramatic transition to junior high.Ask yourselves the question: are the teachers guiding or are they disciplining and controlling?
III. High school—making the grade; sorting citizens and workers.
As Rohlen’s article explained, there are numerous types of high schools that track students into specific educational and career paths. The variety of high schools include: commercial, vocational, and different levels of academic high schools (private, prefectural public, city public, national public). Academic high schools are dedicated to college entrance exam preparation, although all schools teach the exact same curriculum as vividly described by Rohlen. Let me repeat that: Even though it is only the students to attend academic high schools who have any chance of attending a highly regarded Japanese university, ALL high schools, including commercial and vocational use the same textbooks and teach to the entrance exams!! There is a saying in Japan: “sleep four hours pass, sleep five, fail.” What do you think this means? Even though only about half of the high school students sit for college entrance exams, this ideology governs all.
A. Types and characteristics of high schools
I refer you to Rohlen’s article, which although was written in the 1970s is still relevant today. He describes the sorting of students into educational and career tracks and this remains a feature of high schools in Japan today. Unlike in the U.S., the public as opposed to the private high schools are regarded as the most prestigious. The key themes in his article include:
1. Finely graded hierarchy
Nada High school (elite private)
Okada High school (academically-oriented prefectural-public)
Otani High school (academically-oriented city-public)
Yama Commercial high school (city-public vocational)
Sakura Technical high school (city-public night school)
2. A correlation of academic achievement, school order, and student morale
B. Examination Hell:The dreaded entrance exams (given for both high school and college)
1. Characteristics of the exams
a. Cost $50 to take each exam.
a. There are different exams given by each individual school or university. There is no one universal exam accepted by all, like our SAT exam, so students must calculate carefully which exam to sit for. In fact, many schools give their exams on the same day so students have to weight where they want to go with where they think they can get in. Because of the cost and timing of the exams, it is difficult to have “safety schools.”
b. Exams are administered only once a year, so if you fail you have to wait for the next year.
c. The exams are given at the school of application, so if you want to enter a college in Tokyo, hotels are booked months in advance of the test date in February.
d. These tests are achievement tests, not aptitude tests. This means that they test a specific body of concrete knowledge in Japanese language, history, math, science and English. Unlike our aptitude tests which ostensibly measure critical thinking and intelligence skills, these exams test the ability to memorize massive amounts of material.
Here’s a sample exam question. See if you can answer any of the fill-in-the-blank questions:
The philosophy that arose in ancient Greece had an enormous influence on subsequent human thought. The earliest form, _____________ philosophy, arose in the ____________ century in the ___________ region. Liberating itself from the mythological approach to natural phenomena, this philosophy aimed to explain the fundaments of nature in a rational manner. _________, who explained the origin of things to be water, and ___________, who treated the basis of matter mathematically were representative scholars of the age.
And it goes on and on in a similar vein.
As you can see from the above question, in order to be able to perform well on this type of exam, students must essentially memorize their textbooks, and that is indeed what they do.
f. Given the intensity of these exams, you can see the lure of the so-called “escalator schools” described in Condon’s article
2. Supporters of these exams argue:
1. These exams are useful because they are highly predictable. All students, universities, and employers know what the criteria for selection to a university are. It is a transparent system. The day after the exam is given, all questions and answers are published so students know exactly how they did and how to prepare the next time.
2. These exams put teachers, parents, and schools on the side of the students. Students don’t really have to compete because everyone in a high school or junior high school wants as many students to get into the best schools as possible because it improves the schools reputation.
3. Many feel that these intense exams motivate students to a high standard.
4. Because these exams require hours and hours of hard work, innate talent and intelligence has to be applied. These exams prepare students to work in an industrial society where hard work that produces results is rewarded.
3. Cram schools: In the last thirty years, there have been calls to reform the system but there is little prospect of an overhaul. This examination hell has led to the growth and enormous economic success of the cram school industry.
a. What is a cram school? Essentially it is a supplemental examination preparatory school. In other words, it is school after school! These highly commercial and profitable schools run the gamut from tutoring programs to huge chains. The functions include:
1. to supplement public school subjects that are on the exams
2. to prepare students psychologically
3. to counsel students and channel their ambition
b. There are two types:
1. Juku: programs that students go to after school or on the weekends.
2. Yobiko: full-time exam preparation programs for students who have failed the entrance exams once or multiple times. As they have already graduated from high school, they attend these cram schools full-time for a year to prepare to take the exam again.
c. There are actually entrance exams for some of the top juku as well, because they don’t want to dilute the success of their placement of students in the top schools. They want to be able to keep their success rates high.
4. Lifestyles in high school: Although dominated by studying, it is important to remember that it is the high school students that drive many of the national trends in fashion and popular culture. Although most do not work in part time jobs, their parents tend to support them as much as they can as long as they study hard. As seen in the picture below, the big, bulky socks were very popular in Japan during the nineties. These socks, or ruzu in Japanese, were worn by almost every school girl with her uniform.
IV. Higher education
After the tremendous hard work of high school, colleges in Japan are sites of leisurely relaxation as seen in Condon’s article. Japan spends much more money on primary and secondary education that all over the world, but much less on university education. Unlike secondary schools, ¾ of all universities are private. The government allowed lax standards for private schools to pick up the high number of students wanting to go to college. Therefore the private colleges have become the shock absorbers to take on expanding enrollment. Does it really matter if these colleges and universities are more leisure oriented than work oriented? Not really because:
A. New college graduates rely on company training to teach them skills. Students and companies treat university as an earned break, as students have proven themselves to be diligent and hard-working just by the sheer fact of admission.
B. The universities emphasize valuable social skills that may have been neglected during the exam-oriented high school years. There is the perception that clubs and teams serve as positive templates for developing future corporate ties. College offers a unique opportunity to socialize with the opposite sex.
C. This period is the first time that students are able to gain work experience by working in part-time jobs. Japanese service industries are filled with junior college students.
V. Transition to the Workplace
The lessons taught within school experience are repeated and reinforced in the later experiences of working adults. In other words, there are parallels and reinforcements between the pedagogy of schools and the later learning experience in the workplace. (Think about what is learned in the US schools and how it is useful for our adult life—academically, socially, and psychologically) The following school lessons are the ways in which children’s experiences are connected to the adult experience:
A. The discipline needed to learn the Japanese language is equally useful for success in the workplace.
B. The cooperative relationship between student and school is related to the view of companies as allies rather than adversaries
C. The emphasis on small work groups in preschool and elementary school is drawn upon in the work groups in corporations.
D. Both schools and companies walk a fine line between fostering cooperation and stimulating competition.
