Education for mainstream modernity: Quality versus equality
I. The central place of formal education in Japan
A. Why is formal schooling so important?
- Schooling is the long corridor from childhood to adulthood.
- The school hierarchy is tightly linked to the work hierarchy.
- A belief in education underpins commitment to mainstream modernity.
B. Japan’s mainstream modernity as a “school credential society” (gakureki shakai or 学歴社会)
1. What was the logic?
Socio-economic achievement > merit > education > school reputation > entrance exam > cram school
2. What were the key folk terms?
- juken jigoku = entrance exam hell
- juku = cram school
- kyōiku mama = education mother (= Tiger Mom?)
C. Dual tensions in Japan’s schooling
1. Why does a state educate? To broadly train a national population and to rigorously select the successful
2. Which is more important for school success: talent or effort?
II. What’s the report card on Japanese education?
A. The critics cite too much rote learning and too much pressure on students, parents, and schools.
B. The supporters cite the rigor and quality of the instruction; the uniform curriculum; and the equitable funding of the overwhelmingly public education.
III. A life cycle of learning
A. Early education: day care and kindergarten
B. Elementary school
C. Junior high school
D. High school
E. Tertiary choices: university—junior college—trade school
F. In-company training: new employee orientation; on-the-job skill training; special seminars; etc.
G. Adult “continuing” education: Community Culture Centers and Senior Citizen Universities
IV. Kindergarten: How does it shape the transition from home to school?
A. Catherine Lewis: From individual indulgence to group interdependence
B. Making “education mothers”
V. Life and lessons in elementary school: What is whole-child education?
A. Focusing on the whole child
B. Emphasizing caring, stable relationships among students and between students and teacher
C. Fostering family-like small groups: enduring, mixed ability, and cross-curricular
D. Requiring considerable student involvement in classroom management
E. Encouraging continual reflection (hansei): “the glue that holds the system together”
F. Teaching a highly standardized curriculum that nonetheless encourages children’s active participation
VI. Junior high school: How does it get from whole child to exam warrior?
A. Compartmentalizing pedagogy: academic lecturing versus “lifestyle guidance” (seikatsu shidō)
B. Guiding “lifestyle” and disciplining misbehavior
C. Outsourcing exam preparation to after-school cram academies
D. Rebecca Fukuzawa: Is this guidance or is it surveillance?
VII. Making the grade in high school: How does it sort citizens and workers?
A. A finely-graded hierarchy of schools in a large district
B. The pros and cons of “examination hell”
C. The cram schools
D. Suicides, dropouts, bullying, and the “left-behinds” (ochikobore)
Andy Owens was a student in Anthro 254 back in 1996 and graduated from Yale College in 1998. He went to Japan after graduation to teach in the JET program, and in an email to me on November 3, 1999, he described his experience teaching some under-achieving students in Chiba Prefecture.
VIII. Tertiary education: Reaching the top or taking a break?
A. The sorry state of university education–largely private, poorly funded, overcrowded–but does it matter?
B. Gender-tracking in higher education
C. The underdevelopment of graduate and professional school education
IX. Schooling and mainstream modernity
A. What are the lessons of schooling?
1. What we learn: Knowledge, specific and general
2. Where we learn: Credentials and the tight links between school success and job opportunity
3. How we learn: Socialization and the implicit lessons of the “hidden curriculum”
i. shūdan seikatsu: learning to live in a group
ii. kejime: learning the distinctions between formal and informal settings
iii. hansei: reflecting on present results and future effort
iv. seishin: tempering the spirit to get results through effort
B. What are the parallels and reinforcements between the pedagogy of schools and later learning experiences?
C. At what point does socialization become indoctrination?
D. Did the “educational arms race” (Thomas Rohlen) finally erode mainstream consciousness?