Primary School in Japan

Self, Individuality and Learning in Elementary Education

Peter Cave

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781134064083
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

The balance between individual independence and social interdependence is a perennial debate in Japan. A series of educational reforms since 1990, including the implementation of a new curriculum in 2002, has been a source of fierce controversy. This book, based on an extended, detailed study of two primary schools in the Kinki district of Japan, discusses these debates, shows how reforms have been implemented at the school level, and explores how the balance between individuality and social interdependence is managed in practice. It discusses these complex issues in relation to personal identity within the class and within the school, in relation to gender issues, and in relation to the teaching of specific subjects, including language, literature and mathematics. The book concludes that, although recent reforms have tended to stress individuality and independence, teachers in primary schools continue to balance the encouragement of individuality and self-direction with the development of interdependence and empathy.

1
Education and individuality in Japan

The period since the mid-1980s has been a time of ferment for Japanese education. There have been frequent expressions of dissatisfaction with the educational system, and repeated calls for reform, in response to what are seen as new demands resulting from changes in Japanese society and the world economy. Debates have taken place in government, universities, and the media about what kinds of change are needed, and why. Reform programmes have been published, and reform measures implemented. As the foundation of Japanese schooling, primary education has been significantly affected by these developments. This educational ferment reveals much about the challenges facing Japan’s contemporary society, and provides a window on the different visions of Japan’s future that are being debated. Particularly important have been arguments about the extent to which education should develop individuality, and what this should mean in practice. Debate has centred on the issue of how to develop children who are not only creative individuals, but also well-socialized members of society. These debates cannot be adequately grasped without understanding discourses of selfhood in Japan, and in turn, the focus on developing individuality shows the need for a reappraisal of those discourses.

In this chapter, I will first describe key debates about education that have taken place in Japan since the late 1980s, along with the major reform measures implemented, particularly those affecting primary education. I will then analyse the discourse about ‘individuality’ (kosei), which has been a dominant motif in reform debates, and trace the history of this concept within Japanese education. The question of whether or not more individuality is needed in education is related to the issue of selfhood in Japan, which has often been seen as stressing the group over the individual. This chapter argues that analyses of selfhood in Japan have not sufficiently recognized the multiplicity of discourses of self in Japanese society. After outlining these discourses, I suggest that emphasis on individuality has grown with postwar social change.

Finally, I introduce recent educational research that illuminates the wider pedagogical significance of practices in Japanese primary schools. This work in sociocultural pedagogy has attracted wide interest among educational researchers, but has not yet been connected with the practices of Japanese teachers. The summary of this research in this chapter provides the foundation for more detailed analyses of practices in Japanese primary education later in the book.

Demands for reform in Japanese education

In the second half of the roaring eighties, with the Nikkei and the yen soaring, Mitsubishi buying New York’s Rockefeller Center, and Japan proclaimed ‘Number One’ by a Harvard professor (Vogel, 1979), Japan found itself the object of admiration, emulation, and envy throughout the world. Japanese society and culture were ardently scrutinized by overseas observers eager to discover the secrets behind Japan’s success. One of the most frequently identified causes of Japanese strength was education (Vogel, 1979:158–83; White, 1987), especially primary education (Cummings, 1980; Lewis, 1995). Yet while many abroad were praising Japan’s education system, within Japan itself there was concern about its perceived shortcomings. As Goodman (1990:91–4) noted, there was long-standing dissatisfaction about schools among various groups, including parents, business leaders, and commentators from across the political spectrum. Japanese education was seen as too uniform and rigid, too restrictive of children’s freedom, too focused on the goal of entrance examinations, and too concerned with inculcating knowledge at the expense of self-motivated inquiry and creative thought. Problems such as violence in schools (k

nai b

ryoku), bullying, and school refusal were blamed on the pressure that children allegedly felt as a result (White, 1987:165–78).

Dissatisfaction with education continued through the 1990s, though the sources of discontent differed. Some on the Right wanted more stress on patriotism, ‘Japanese tradition’, and moral education; business leaders wanted more emphasis on creativity; teachers’ unions wanted smaller class sizes and more resources; and some on the Left wanted the opportunity of high school education for all and the end of high school entrance exams. Nonetheless, a mainstream consensus did emerge in the discourse on education, partly due to its reiteration by successive high-profile governmental advisory committees such as the Ad Hoc Committee on Education (Rinky

shin) in the late 1980s, and the Central Council for Education (Ch

ky

shin) in the 1990s.¹ The pronouncements of such committees both reflected and shaped widely held public views about Japan’s education and its ‘problems’.

This mainstream discourse levelled two major complaints at Japanese education. First, schools were criticized for allegedly cramming children with knowledge, yet stifling their ability to think creatively and independently. Fujita (2000:46) has divided these criticisms into a ‘functionalist’ strand, more concerned about how Japan could cope with a postmodern society in a globalized world, and a ‘progressivist’ strand, more focused on schools’ damaging effects on children. In practice, the two strands often overlapped, at least superficially. Business leaders argued that too much emphasis was being placed on students’ equal progress and on the inculcation of knowledge, and too little on developing the individual thinking needed for Japan to compete in the information age (Goodman, 1990:92; Nakatani, 1996:245–52; Keizai Dantai Reng

kai [Keidanren], 1996). Concerns about the need for creative thinking and communicative abilities were voiced by Tokyo University’s Sat

Manabu (Sat

, 1999:33), an educationalist usually associated with the liberal Left, and similar misgivings were voiced in the Final Report of the 21st Century Vision Committee of the largest teachers’ union, Nikky

so:

The conventional Japanese education system…has forced ‘mass-production’ educational methods…on children or people who by nature have diverse personalities and abilities and grow differently…. At the level of elementary and early secondary education, the scholastic ability of Japanese children is reportedly high with regard to international standards. Their ability to think and create, however, is open to question.

(Japan Teachers’ Union, 1995:2–3)

At the educational grassroots, one primary school teacher succinctly summed up this view to me with the words, ‘We need more people like Bill Gates.’

A second focus of discontent was anti-social and asocial behaviour by children and young people, inside and outside school. This took various forms; violence in schools (k

nai b

ryoku) in the early 1980s, bullying in the mid-1980s and mid-1990s, classroom indiscipline (gakky

h

kai) and social withdrawal (hikikomori) in the late 1990s, and steadily rising levels of school refusal through the entire period.² Though it is hard to gauge the seriousness of these problems, especially in an international comparative perspective (Okano and Tsuchiya, 1999:195–207; Lewis, 1995:178–9; Wray, 1999:25–6), intense media coverage certainly created the impression within Japan of an educational crisis, epitomized by book titles such as A Hard Age for Children (Sukemune, 1996) and the bestselling School Collapse (Kawakami, 1999). Behavioural problems were frequently blamed on children’s allegedly decreasing social interaction, together with the pressures resulting from a rigid and exam-centred education system. The educational role of the family and local community (chiiki shakai) was seen as having declined compared to thirty or forty years before, when children had acquired much of their moral and social education informally—from parents, grandparents, and neighbours, and from playing with other neighbourhood children.³ Children in the 1980s and 1990s were thought to spend less time playing together outside, because of increased pressure to study, more organized enrichment activities (o-keikogoto), and the rise of indoor, sedentary activities such as television and computer games. Meanwhile, it was claimed that the trend for both parents to work...

Table of contents

• Japan Anthropology Workshop Series
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• Note on conventions
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 Education and individuality in Japan
• 2 Groups and individuals at primary school
• 3 Stories of the self
• 4 Mathematical relationships
• 5 Learning gender
• 6 Ceremonial creations
• 7 The next stage—2002 and all that
• Conclusion
• Glossary of Japanese terms
• Bibliography
• Index