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NOVEMBER 2005

Illuminating Parallels from Kyoto, Japan

By Ted Fish, Ed.D.

On a typical morning at the Kin Kaku elementary school in Kyoto, Japan, students line up in the stone courtyard outside while a teacher makes announcements for the day. When the announcements are finished, the children are directed inside, where they head to their classrooms after quietly slipping off their shoes.

Surely one morning spent visiting a single school cannot provide a comprehensive view about the state of education in an entire country. But it, along with an assortment of conversations with school and government officials, can provide a glimpse, and that glimpse was illuminating for its stark parallels with education in America.

Start, for example, with the pressures of keeping children safe. When asked what the biggest problems were that he faced as an educator, Mr. Ito, the first year principal of the school of 600, did not hesitate. “Security,” he announced through a translator. “We must worry about keeping our children safe.”

For Mr. Ito, safety concerns encompass getting children to and fro school (one Japanese district has pioneered the use of a student ID card that activates as soon as children file out of a gate, which via a link to a GPS system, allows parents to monitor progress home with their computers and cell phones), as well as keeping them secure from the threats of intruders when classes are in session.

School safety was a concern that surfaced in every conversation I had during my ten days in Japan. The highly publicized case of a 17 year old Osaka boy who had entered an elementary school with a knife, fatally stabbing one teacher and wounding many children, was just going to trial.

Mr. Ito’s second greatest concern was achievement. “We have one classroom teacher,” he explained, moving his arms at different heights to emphasize his point, “and so many children at different levels.”

A third concern was the increasing disparity of opportunities based on economic status. Two blocks away, a new private elementary school is set to open in a year. The annual tuition will be 1.5 million yen, which translates at current exchange rates, to approximately $14,500 per year. Only the children of the traditionally wealthy, or of doctors, lawyers, engineers and businesspeople are able to attend such schools.

And finally, he decried the erosion of traditional values that have been fundamental in Japan’s extraordinary educational and economic success in the past six decades. Although teachers still commonly work twelve-hour school days and students are exceedingly orderly by American standards, the students are no longer eager to automatically put forth the effort of their parent’s generation, and the school day has been reduced from 6 to 5 ½ days.

“We are slipping,” Mr. Ito said, sadly and earnestly, “not like America where everything is tops.”

A conversation with Muchiko Heida of the Japan Tourist Bureau reflected the same concerns about safety, diminishing work ethic, and the emergence of a two-tiered education system, separated by class.

In addition to independent day schools, concern about being admitted to top level universities has generated a thriving after school tutorial business, which, as a result of the price, is limited to the affluent.

Japan is not known as an egalitarian society. There is a strict social code that has long taken cues from position and age. Egalitarianism, at least with respect to educational opportunity, has been the hallmark of the United States. Perhaps that explains the surprise on Mr. Ito’s face when I assured him that “everything is no longer tops in America,” and that we, too are struggling with similar educational dilemmas.#<

Dr. Ted Fish is Founder of Philos Institute, an educational consulting firm in Santa Fe, NM that provides evaluation and training for schools in the areas of literacy and leadership.

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