The Japanese Education System

This comprehensive study of the Japanese education system follows the Japanese child from the kindergarten through the progressively more arduous and competitive environments of the elementary middle and high schools to the relative relaxation even hedonism of university life. Drawing on numerous surveys and on the authors personal experience it provides a wealth of information on teaching methodologies discipline class sizes the school day assessment and the national curriculum. It also examines the role of the central Ministry of Education and the local boards in administering education throughout the country and outlines and assesses the governments recent programs of educational reform. The behavior attitudes and expectations of pupils and parents are discussed in detail and placed within their political social and historical context revealing the complex cultural assumptions determining learning and socialization in Japan.This study thus contributes to the efforts of educators and sociologists to understand and evaluate different approaches to education in diverse cultures increasingly important in the global information age. It shows how the American and Japanese education systems are based on fundamentally different concepts of society: democratic individualism and hierarchic collectivism respectively. While discussing the positive and negative effects of each extreme it suggests that American educators might learn from a system in which truancy insolence violence and drug abuse are comparatively rare. However the study shows how the traditional ideals of Japanese education - unquestioning acceptance self-sacrifice and respect for superiors - face serious challenges in a time of globalization and moral social and cultural change.