Japanese "YUTORI EDUCATION"

T.K.
Sophomore
Tamagawa University

　

Here I'd like to show my thought on Japanese "YUTORI EDUCATION".　

First of all, please look at the table1(table１). This statistics surveyed by a former Management and Coordination shows the average of how long each student (aged 7-15) study after school a day comparing students all over the world. For example: International Average is 2.8 hours, Iran - 4 hr., Italy - 3.6 hr., Singapore - 3.5 hr., Hungary - 2.8 hr., U.S.A. - 2.1hr., Japan - 1.7hr., Korea - 1.6 hr. and Hong Kong - 1.6 hr.. I think you canﾕt over look that Japanese students study the third shortest out of the 38 countries. And it is 1.1 hour shorter than that of international average. In short, Japanese students have an extra hour for something, while foreign students are studying.

An hour may sound short, but it will be a very long time if you sum it up a year. It will be 365 hours. Simply if we look at Malaysia, Singapore, and Philippin, Japanese students study only half of the time. It seems Japanese children tend to study less and less nowadays. As a result, thereﾕs no wonder why Japanese academic achievement declined these days (Table2). This is a survey on academic achievement of high school students (second grade, 1,375 students from 11 schools in 2 prefectures) conducted by Prof. Takehiko Kariya, Tokyo University graduate school. The result shows 43.3% of students can't understand many subjects because contents of textbooks are too difficult in 1997,and it increased to 13.2% in1999. In addition, 44.1% of students say that they can't catch up school work because they think teaching is too fast in1997, while it was 37.3% in 1979.However I found it interesting that Korea and Japan, both countries are famous for its examination hell, showed that students study for only 1.6 and 1.7 hours respectively. These figures seem to be that Japan and Korea might have not included the hours studied at library or juku. Did students who go to juku consider "study hours at juku"as after school study? Or, is it only some groups of students who participate in the competitive entrance exam? Is that because the media emphasized it so much that we may have the illusion that Japanese and Korean students study a lot. So I am interested in how students think of after school study.

The ministry of education set a new educational slogan "YUTORI EDUCATION". The purpose of "YUTORI EDUCATION" is to revise Japanese education distorted by the examination hell that school curriculum became preparation for entrance examination and many students could not catch up and had to go to JUKU. The goal is to bottom up that all students will be able to understand contents of all classes. It is like a standard for the bottom line. And the course of study has revised since 2002, April.

Please look at the table 3. The length of the lesson has been shortened for students to master basic academic achievement. For example, math class for 3rd grade to 6th grade was reduced from 175 hours to 150 hours and English class for 7th grade to 9th grade was reduced from 105 hours from 135 hours. In addition, the special activity and the time for project-based learning called "SOUGOU GAKUSHU" have set to integrate various subjects. Ministry of education says that "YUTORI EDUCATION" will solve many school problems, such as ijime, school refusal, and so on. And it also expected that more and more children will be able to understand lesson and Japanese academic achievement will improve by focusing on basic and reducing the contents. But some experts point out that "YUTORI EDUCATION"accelerate low achievement and result in less academic interest. After the course of study was revised in 1989, the length of class has shortened. But over 40% of students still say that subject studies are too difficult and cannot understand, or the speed of teaching is too fast as it is showed in table 2.

Will YUTORI EDUCATION stop the low academic achievement in Japan? It seems difficult. But if many children will be able to feel happy to go to school or enjoy school lives, or students who can enjoy learning and become active learners, it seems better than students who do not enjoy learning but just be able to achieve high score, I think that is another aspect of educational success. Success of education may be measured differently. It depends on what measure you use. You cannot measure the quality of education just by paper and pencil test. So it is important to check the purpose of education and what we are trying to measure when we want to see the success of education.