Week Beginning Monday, June 20,2006 - general impressions of School Life and Education in Japan

Week Beginning Monday, June 20, 2006
General Impressions of School Life and Education


This was the real beginning to our week of visiting the prefecture in our official capacities as American educators, and it began officially enough with our visit to Kanazawa University, particularly with members of the School of Education staff and faculty. Kanazawa U, I must admit, made me think of Whatsamatta U where Bullwinkle the Moose went, but this was a decidedly different place. The protocol for this visit was to be repeated more or less the same way for all of our official visits throughout the week. First, members of the panel spoke and introduced themselves. Then, we in turn, introduced ourselves in Japanese, something we got pretty good at doing. Then some one from their side would give a speech, then one us would give a speech. Then the session or visit or Q and A (called “Q and A” always) would begin. Before we’d left Tokyo, we’d signed up for making speeches at different places. We’d also had a discussion with our guide as to the best name to use with officials and with students. In official situations, I would introduce myself to adults as Jean Beebe, but with kids I would introduce myself as Beebe. My colleagues took to calling me Beebe-san all the time, officially or not. I would walk through the hotel lobby and someone from the group would say, “ Hey Beebe-san,” which usually would get a bow from me. I have been given good marks on my bowing I will say which I think truthfully has to do with musical performance – bow low with your hands roughly at your knees and from your waist with a straight back. It’s respectful and nearly always appropriate and appreciated. Because of performance bowing, I really didn’t feel very self-conscious about it. There were a lot of photographs taken of the group too, so I had to work on the Professional Smile, which is very hard for me yet.

We learned that “sensei” is an honorific, something that you earn; you do not call yourself “sensei”, although in a general sense it means “teacher.” But like the word “lao shi” in Chinese, it means someone old, someone who’s lived long enough to have seen a lot and be wise. In the schools we visited, kids called their teacher “sensei”, I don’t think I heard them call their teacher using a name.

JFMF has a main agenda which is for us to visit the schools and different prefectures in Japan. This is the surface agenda. I am still thinking about the deeper agenda. In Japan, there are many, many layers to things. We are in this country as guests of the Japanese government, not merely to sight see, although we have had some opportunity to do that. Certainly one of the main foci has to do with bringing back the impressions of Japan we have received to our own country. A follow up essay to all of this would naturally be “What I learned in Japan This Summer.” My reinforcement of the Japanese history I need to study for my teacher exam and future position as well as my turning back towards Buddhism is only part of the story, though, as the Japanese way is not about individual quests, but group experiences.


In many of the schools we visited, we heard some of the same basic information and concerns about education repeated. Like our own country, concerns about students’ lack of social skills due to their use of the internet and so less face to face interaction with others was mentioned. We also heard again about the ills of a declining birthrate. When there were 3 or 4 children in a family, the mother’s had less time for each child. (The father’s role in this was not discussed. ) Now children are used to more of mother’s attention and they get demanding and impatient. As one speaker put it, “We think parents and children need to be more independent from one another.” Lack of independence leads to an “impatience” caused by an inability to delay gratification; this in turn can help to breed violence. Also there has been an increase of violent crimes in cities in particular and this is blamed on “virtual reality” - video games and the internet, including things like chat rooms. I actually agree with this, particularly the independence part.

Like in our own classrooms in the US, Japanese students are not all that interested in school. The people we met with acknowledge the increasing need to be entertainers and comedians. I like what they said though, which was that we as educators “need to teach them that reality is joyful…[We] need to tell them the importance of what they have learned as well..” I want to ponder the need to teach our students that “reality is joyful”. I think this is an important charge. How can we do this?


It is the Japanese government policy to educate everyone at the same level; there are national standards each school is supposed to follow. However, one panel told us that they are beginning to see students with “different characters” which might warrant a change in how they are educated. While there is currently a figure of 6.3% of students in all public schools with some sort of “learning disability” including ADHD, many parents do not tell the schools ahead of time that their students have any issues, so it just makes it that much harder to meet their needs. Most classrooms have approximately 40 students in them. The only classes with an additional teacher are Math. The Ministry of Education is currently trying to modify laws to accommodate the needs of the LD and ADHD students. Another sidebar I would add here is: Isn’t it interesting that they put LD and students with ADHD in the same boat? I wonder if the occurrence of ADHD isn’t a problem in Japanese society particularly because of their need to keep people on the straight and narrow. We were reminded of the Japanese saying, “If a nail sticks up, it needs to be hammered down.” People with ADHD sure do stick up sometimes, I guess.

In the last 14-15 years, most Komatsu Elementary schools have phased out the “uniform (i.e. clothing) system” for a variety of reasons given by parents, some of them practical ones: kids outgrow them and they are difficult to maintain. All jr. and sr. high schools in the country have their students wear uniforms. School is compulsory through jr. high. Uniforms are currently compulsory nationwide from jr. high through high school. “Compulsory” was a term used fairly frequently, as in “compulsory education”, a term which in its nature allows no equivocating, itself yet another interesting piece of clarity in the Japanese view of things. “System” was another term that cropped up constantly. I have more to say on this, I think.