School Curriculum

　In Japan, the most common schools are elementary school, junior high school, high school, and university. All Japanese students must go to elementary school and junior high school. It is a 9 years program and starts when they are 6 years old. High school is also a common school which has after junior high. It is 3 years program and high school students can think about their future with teachers and parents. At last, there are many universities in Japan. University is the place to get knowledge for future job.

Public school and Private school

　In Japan, there are two kinds of school in Japan, public school and private school. Tuition of public school is cheaper than a private school, so many children go to public elementary and junior high school. However, if you can’t choose the school which you’ll go if you go to public school. How about the private school. As I wrote, tuition is about 5-7 times more expensive than a public school. Schools are not divided by district, you can attend the school of your choice, but you need to pass the entrance exam. These are the features of school in Japan.

Increasing Absenteeism and Bullying

　Japan’s education system is in critical condition. For example, a 2019 survey by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT) found that there were more than 540,000　cases of bullying at schools, a year-on-year rise of 31%. Furthermore, there are students who went to school but studied separately from their classmates and those who only attended for part of the day. In other words, some 440,000 junior high school students—one-eighth of the total—are not leading a normal school life.

The problem of Japanese study system

　The reason of problems such as absenteeism and bullying is simple. Japanese traditional education system has a problem. Students are grouped uniformly by age into classes in which they learn the same content in the same way and at the same pace. They study the questions and answers in ready-made textbooks for each subject and progressing together from one grade level to the next. It is like a conveyor-Belt.

Conveyor-Belt Education

　This system was developed in Britain during the nineteenth century, and Everyone believed that applying the standardized mass-production approach to education would give an immediate boost to the nation’s education levels. And in a sense, it was certainly successful.

　Now, However, this system causes many problems. First, if everybody studies the same content at the same pace, a student who stumbles along the way and fails to learn some part of the curriculum is liable to be left behind. As a result, the students like this are just going to school for an suffered experience. We can think an opposite case. Even though the students already fully understand the content of the class lessons, they can’t move on ahead, because everybody is expected to progress together. They lose interest in classes and come to dislike school. Both issues are related less to individual ability than to structural problems in the present education system.

Japanese education and Diversity

　One in seven lives in relative poverty in Japan. It is now widely known that such economic disparities are closely linked to differences in academic performance. It is now widely known that such economic disparities are closely linked to differences in academic performance. In addition, there are an increasing number of children with developmental disabilities. According to a 2012 MEXT survey found that 6.5% of elementary and junior high school students may have had a developmental disability; this means two or three students are developmental disabilities in every class. In the other word, that there are many variations of problems among children in terms of economic, academic, and other factors. Schools should switch to a system under which they are able to respond to these problems among the children they are teaching. In fact, however, many schools don’t allow diversity and variety problems of children.

Organization trying to solve this problem

　There’s a certified NPO organization ‘3keys’ to decrease children who has trouble about education in Japan. They held seminars for adults to think about these problems of children. Also they are running a website called ‘Mex’. It contains information of governments and NPOs that are supporting activities. This information helps children to find some organization to help them. This is one of the example and there are many organization to solve this problems in Japan. However, it is not solved yet.

Things we can do

　Do you know the way to donate for children? For example, we can donate by books that you have read. It is more sustainable than donate money, because you may throw books away. If you have books you won’t read, please search with ‘charibon’ on google. Also, There are many ways to donate by something except money. So, if you interested, search it to help developing Japanese education.

Thank you for reading!

Citation
・Tomano Ittoku(2020).「Transforming Japan’s Conformist Education System」.『Nippon.com』.https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-topics/g00831/(2023)
・「Charibon」(n.d.).『Charibon by value book』.https://www.charibon.jp/(2023)
・「3keys」(n.d.).『3keys official cite』.https://3keys.jp/(2023)