Japan`s vaunted education system, which has helped create a society that is virtually 100 percent literate and which has prepared two generations of postwar Japanese to run the nation`s high-powered engines of commerce and industry, is under increasing attack by Japanese who say it violates basic human rights and crushes individual creativity.
Those assertions have received unusual public airings in the last few months as thousands of students, parents and critics have met in unprecedented ”education symposiums” throughout Japan. They charge that the nation`s public schools and their teachers physically mistreat and oppress students in violation of Japan`s constitution.
Contrary to descriptions in envy-laden reports on Japan`s education system issued periodically by American educators, Japanese schools are little more than ”sweatshop assembly lines” where students are slandered, bullied and sometimes beaten into rigid conformity, say those who have attended the symposiums.
Japanese schools have compiled a track record that American educators covet: a 92 percent graduation rate for high school students, compared to 73 percent in the United States; and scores on international education tests far above those of American students. The schools, however, are not all they are cracked up to be, say critics. And growing numbers of Japanese parents are refusing to obediently follow a system of education that they say turns their children into corporate robots.
After issuing a ”Declaration of Children`s Rights” during a symposium in Tokyo last spring, students and angry parents charged that Japanese teachers and school administrators are more concerned with enforcing rigid and archaic rules than with turning out young creative minds. They cited dress codes governing such things as the color of students` underwear and socks, the length of girls` skirts and the width of boys` belts.
”My school does not allow male students to have hair,” said 15-year-old junior high school student Takashi Kasahara, who attends school in Tochigi prefecture, north of Tokyo. ”We must shave our heads like Buddhist monks.”
When he refused to shave his head like approximately one-third of Japan`s junior high school students, Kasahara became the target of bullying by other students, who were encouraged by the school`s teachers and principal to taunt him. When Kasahara complained that the school had no right to force him to shave his head, the principal told him: ”School is not a part of general society. The rules are different here. You must learn to be like the others.” In Fukui and Aichi prefectures, west of Tokyo, at least one-third of the junior high schools check students` underwear to make sure it is white, a practice that Yoshifusa Saito, an attorney who edited the Japan Federation of Bar Associations` ”Handbook on Children`s Rights,” says is going too far.
”Schools have no legal authority to inspect underclothing,” said Saito. ”Article 13 of the Japanese constitution states that `All of the people shall be respected as individuals.` In personal matters Japanese citizens are guaranteed freedom of choice. Underwear is certainly personal, and teachers have absolutely no right to violate a student`s privacy.”
Japanese teachers and school administrators have consistently defended their unyielding and intrusive methodology by arguing that rigid conformity is a bulwark against juvenile delinquency and the kind of chaos and lack of discipline they say occurs in American schools. The American education system and specifically the poor performance of students in the schools of New York, Chicago and Los Angeles are often held up as warnings to parents who would abandon Japan`s system. Videotapes of American television series such as the
”Bronx Zoo” and exaggerated Hollywood films that depict uncontrollable and illiterate students dressed in everything from micro-mini skirts and war paint to medieval chain mail and Nazi jackboots are often used to demonstrate what lies ahead in Japan if the reformers get their way.
”Parents are confused,” said retired school teacher Miyoko Soga.
”Many don`t like the inflexible rules in the Japanese school system, but at the same time they are worried by what they fear might be the alternative- students who refuse to learn and who refuse to obey any rules at all.”
Since 1985, Japan`s Rinkyoshin, or the Ad Hoc Council on Education, appointed by former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone, has issued several proposals aimed at finding a happy medium for the Japanese educational system. This would continue to ensure that Japanese students are among the world`s best academic performers while encouraging greater individuality and creativity.
It has looked good on paper, say critics, but the council`s efforts have had little impact on the substance of Japanese education. Japan, they point out, has overhauled its education system just twice in the last 134 years, once when the nation was forced to open its doors to the west by American Naval ”Black Ships” in the 19th Century and again after World War II, when the country was occupied by conquering American troops.
The forces of change in Japan`s schools have always been external, critics continue. Japan has never successfully initiated education reform on its own. When the Ad Hoc council began issuing its series of reports and suggestions for refurbishing the Japanese system, some reformers were optimistic, but many others were disturbed.
”Japan is entering an era of internationalization where it cannot survive in isolation from the rest of the world,” said the council in its 1986 report. ”It is important for Japanese to learn how to deal with foreigners through increased people-to-people exchanges. . . education must be revitalized and brought up to international standards.”
On the surface, the council`s suggestions and comments look good, say critics, but underneath flows a dangerous current of nationalism and militarism. They point to proposals that would emphasize traditional Japanese culture such as budo (martial arts) and classical Japanese musical instruments and folk singing, not to mention such prominent symbols of Japan`s Imperial past as the mandatory singing of the Kimigayo (Emperor`s Reign) national anthem and the Hinomaru (Rising Sun) flag, which would fly over all public schools.
The Mainichi Shimbun, Japan`s 4th-largest daily newspaper, also condemned the council`s pro-Japanese leanings in a recent editorial.
”The revision,” the newspaper said, ”which would reduce world history studies while emphasizing Japanese traditions in all subjects, is out of balance.”
In its final report, issued in August, the council said: ”a liberal school atmosphere is necessary to nurture creative indi- viduals adept in applied sciences and to create the new breed of Japanese citizen needed in the world community.”
Despite the liberal tone of those words, Nikkyoso, the 677,300-member teachers union representing 70 percent of Japan`s teachers, condemned the council`s efforts, calling its recommendations ”reactionary” and contrary to the kind of outward-looking education system the council itself supposedly espoused.
Other critics say that whatever reforms the council may have wanted already have been lost within Japan`s vast education bureaucracy, presided over by the Ministry of Education. They say teachers also are hindering real reform in Japanese schools because they oppose any reduction of their classroom authority, including taibatsu or corporal punishment, which is still practiced in many Japanese schools in violation of Japanese education codes.
Taibatsu took a fatal turn in 1985, when a 16-year-old junior high school student was beaten to death by a teacher for using a hair dryer in violation of school rules. Toshinao Takahashi had been on an overnight school outing with his classmates when he and three other students, one of them a girl, were discovered using hair dryers before leaving a hotel for Tokyo Disneyland.
The students were forced to sit seiza style, a rigidly erect position used during formal occasions on traditional tatami-mat floors in which the legs are folded under the body and the hands are held in the lap. After berating the students for their ”insolence” the teacher, 39-year-old Kazunori Amamori, kicked and beat them until Takahashi lost consciousness. He died a few hours later of shock after being admitted to a hospital. Amamori was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to four years in prison.
In other taibatsu incidents teachers have employed the old Imperial Japanese Army technique of ofukubinta, or slapping both ears of students simultaneously, a practice that has resulted in countless broken eardrums. Also common are cases of teachers beating students with bamboo rods and of encouraging students to beat and bully those who do not conform.
Students and parents often do not report incidents of corporal punishment for fear that school administrators and teachers will tamper with a student`s naishinsho, or confidential school recommendation records. Neither students nor parents are allowed to view the naishinsho, which are critical if a student is to gain entrance to a good high school or university. A few negative words in the naishinsho can scuttle an ambitious student`s years of work and study.
”Today`s Japanese school is like a black box,” said Ayako Nakajima.
”Parents can`t see what is going on inside.” Nakajima is one of several mothers who have battled local authorities in the port city of Kobe over the issue of marugari, or the mandatory shaving of students` heads. Of 78 Kobe junior high schools, 77 require boys to shave their heads, she said. ”The amount of power and control held by teachers and ad- ministrators in Japanese schools is excessive,” said Keiko Okuchi, a member of the 5-year-old Tokokyohi wo Kangairu-kai, or Committee For Students Refusing to Attend School.
”Students are crying for help,” she said. ”Eighty percent of those who drop out of school because of the punishment and rigid rules say they have either attempted to kill themselves or have thought about it.”
Despite the excess of physical and mental abuse, a recent survey of Japanese teachers by a major publisher in Japan revealed that 86 percent felt rules in the nation`s public schools were not too harsh or strict.
The 2,698 middle school teachers surveyed nationwide found that 95 percent thought that ”disorderly attire is a sign of mental disorder.”
Sixty-seven percent said ”hairstyles that don`t conform and delinquency are interrelated,” while 89 percent said school uniforms were ”necessary” and 68 percent said the color of a student`s socks and underwear should be regulated.
Spot checks of students` personal belongings also should be allowed, said 59 percent of the teachers; and 70 percent said that students` activities after school, such as playing video games, should be controlled by school rules.
”Japan is not America, and our society requires different rules if we are to survive,” said school teacher Takayuki Okubo. ”Unlike America, Japan does not have the luxury of turning out mediocre students who can`t distinguish between China and Japan and India on a map and who can barely read their own language. If Japan is to keep its lead in the world economy, our young people have to learn discipline and they have to be toughened for the rigors of competition.”
Such ideas are a far cry from the ”learning should be fun” philosophy often heard in the classrooms of American schools.
”Learning isn`t fun, it`s a duty,” said Akira Fujimoto, a 16-year-old Osaka student. ”If learning were fun, I wouldn`t mind going to school so much.”
Like millions of other Japanese students, Fujimoto attends school 10 to 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. Following 8 hours in his regular public junior high school, Fujimoto must contend with 2 to 4 more hours each afternoon and evening in one of Japan`s notorious private juku, or ”cram schools,” where the day`s public school lessons are reinforced with militarylike intensity.
”Because the juku is much harder than my regular school, I don`t study too much for my regular school,” said Goichi Okada, 13, a 6th-grader at Tokyo`s Kakio Elementary School. ”The classes of the juku are more important.”
Reformers say such comments indicate that the Japanese education system is out of control. ”Why is it necessary for a 13-year-old child to endure such pressure when he should be out playing and learning how to get along with children outside of the classroom?” asked retired teacher Soga. ”The Japanese school system may have a good record for producing good students, but it does poorly at producing well-rounded human beings.”
Indeed, while the International Association for Evaluation of Educational Achievement based in Stockholm issued a recent report that placed Japanese 10- year-olds at the head of the class in knowledge of science and math, it neglected to mention the casualties of Japan`s school system, the thousands of dropouts every year and those who commit suicide because they fail to pass entrance examinations to high schools affiliated with prestigious
universities.
In Tokyo alone, 2,467 public junior high school students, many citing
”pressure” and ”harsh rules,” refused to attend school in 1987, a 200 percent increase from 10 years ago, according to a Tokyo Metropolitan Education Bureau report. In addition, 500 elementary school children refused to attend school for similar reasons, a 37.7 percent increase from 1977. Nationwide the figures for students refusing to attend school hit a record 33,000 in 1987, triple the number in 1977.
”Our educational system has changed little in the last century,” wrote Yasuhiro Saito, an education editor for Japan`s largest daily newspaper, the Yomiuri Shimbun. ”It is woefully ill-equipped to meet the needs of the new information-oriented society. Except for a few model schools, primary and secondary institutions are parochial, have outdated curricula, enforce strict dress and behavior codes and discourage creative thinking.”
Adds junior high school student Fujimoto: ”When I see films of American children my age going to school and actually enjoying it, I am envious. My teachers say those children are not learning very much. But it seems to me they are learning to enjoy life, and that`s something few Japanese, including my parents, have learned to do.”
