EDUCATION-JAPAN: Time for Lessons on Creativity

By Suvendrini Kakuchi Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Dec 15 1999 (IPS) - Japan is making sweeping changes to its education policy, driven by a desire to ease traditionally rigid structures that education experts say tend to constrain creativity and individual character.

“Post-war Japanese education focused equality, but now the direction is on individualism,” says Akira Hirayama of the Central Council for Education, a section in charge of educational reform at the Ministry of Education.

The new education thrust puts more emphasis on “moral education” toward building a more humane society as the world grows more consumer- oriented, he says.

Likewise, officials say there will be less emphasis on classroom activities to encourage freedom of choice and a more rounded education, in keeping with other developed countries.

Looking back at Japan’s history, the foundation of its education system is based on the principle of equal educational opportunity established after the Pacific War, explains a report released by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) Committee based in the education ministry.

The report for Japan is an end-of-decade assessment of its education policies and goals under the Education for All (EFA) initiative, launched by the world’s governments when they met in Thailand in 1990 to set new goals for improvement of education for children and adults.

Similar reports are being done by Asia-Pacific governments in the run-up to a January conference on “EFA 2000 Assessment”, to be held in Bangkok, to assess progress by countries in the region ahead of the World Education Forum in Senegal in April 2000.

Unlike most Asian developing countries which are still grappling with provision of basic education, Japan’s problems increasingly have to do with quality of education and worrisome signs in recent years that include violence on campus and dropouts by youth who simply do not want to go to school.

Hirayama says the goverment’s aim of making primary and secondary school mandatory decades ago, was to give every Japanese citizen, facing a bleak future in their war-ravaged country at the time, educational opportunities that would help them to improve their financial status and quality of life.

The results of that post-war effort, also a time of rapid growth and industrialisation, were astounding.

The UNESCO study reports that the proportion of lower secondary school students going on to upper secondary schools increased from the regular 42.5 percent, to 90 percent in 1948.

The proportion of high school students going into university, which was at 10 percent in the 1950s, rose to nearly 50 percent by 1998.

Such high academic levels in Japan are often considered the basis for its miracle economic growth in the post-war era, and which has made the country the second richest in the world next to the United States.

“Japan’s priority for education was made possible through high investment into the area, which in turn helped translate into a highly skilled workforce, a strategy that has paid off by making the nation rich and developing a higher quality of life for the people,” explains Ryo Watanabe, author of the UNESCO report and director of the department of international education at the National Institute for Education.

In 1955, Japan spent a total of 315 million yen (3 million U.S. dollars) on its school system. In 1998, the figure reached 14.448 billion yen (137.6 million dollars) according to the Education Ministry.

But these impressive standards have now reached a turning point.

Japanese themselves are taking a critical look at what kind of education its youth get amid observations that it too tied to the classrooms and tends to stifle critical thinking. Others say the traditional premium on conformity may also go to the extreme, stifling individuality.

Now, Watanabe explains, Japan is ready to move on to further drastic change.

In the budget policy is the introduction of a five-day school week, shortened from the current five and half day schedule.

The change is expected to decrease Japan’s labyrinthine academic curriculum, often criticised for forcing too much study hours and suppressing personal development.

The Education Ministry hopes the extra spare time will be used for activities that develop a challenging spirit or the artistic skills of children, aspects that have been neglected as a result of intensive study schedules and amid intense competition to get into prestigious schools and universities.

For this purpose, the Japanese government has also pledged to expand international exchange and cooperation in education, science, culture and sports.

“Perhaps the emphasis, till now, has been too much on the academic side with the view of gaining acceptance to universities and acquiring secure jobs. The 21st century challenge is to move away from this system,” explains Hirayama.

Watanabe also spells out the need to improve the standards of teaching by increasing the budget for special seminars as well as salaries in order to sustain Japan’s current high teaching standards.

“It is important to respect the needs of teachers if a high education standard is to be maintained,” he adds.

Private education analysts applaud the new reforms and point out the developments are pressing concerns for Japan, which is now facing classroom upheaval, bullying among students and increasing number of cases of school dropouts.

The regular system, while promising equality, indeed a noble standard, somehow did not work that way as Japan’s education has become competitive to an unhealthy extreme — and some say, neurotically so.

“Children are forced to study all the time to get into better universities, the necessary step for high paying jobs,” says Hiroko Nakamura, a high school teacher.

More than half of students in public secondary high schools attend cram school in a bid to get into prestigious high schools affiliated with the top universities, step into big companies and top-paying bureaucratic positions in what often become lifetime careers.

Now that Japan’s officials know what they want for the future, the big issue is how soon these reforms will be enacted, and how Japan can move from churning out well-educated company employees to developing a society with varied professions just like other international societies, she says.