Japanese schools deteriorating due mainly to bullying and bad teachers
Between the first and fifth of March this year, yet another survey that MyVoice conducted was into the matter of elementary and middle-school education, covering children between the ages of six and fifteen.
Demographics
15,765 members of their online community successfully completed the survey. 54% were female, 3% in their teens, 19% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 25% in their forties, and 14% in their fifites.
Looking back on my school days, I cannot really say there was much wrong with the, alhough I did grow up in a small town where there were not many social problems. In the present day, however, I could rattle off a million and one things that may be wrong in both my home country and Japan. However, bemoaning the behaviour of the younger generation has been a universal trait since the days of Socrates.
I am surprised that Q4 and Q5 did not have more options about perceived failures of parents to teach their children how to behave, which I feel (as a non-parent) is an important issue in the degradation of the education system. Disturbances in class is just a symptom, not the root cause.
How do English language teachers or those with children in Japanese schools find Japanese schools? How would you rate the problems?
Research results
Q1: Do you think the level of academic achievement in elementary and middle schools has dropped? (Sample size=15,765)
Strongly think so 33.3% Think so a little 40.2% Can’t say either way 22.0% Don’t really think so 3.8% Don’t think so at all 0.7% Q2: Do you think you got a solid education when you were in elementary and middle school? (Sample size=15,765)
Strongly think so 13.9% Think so a little 44.3% Can’t say either way 27.6% Don’t really think so 11.4% Don’t think so at all 2.8% Q3: When you were in elementary and middle school, which of the following do you think was a problem? (Sample size=15,765, multiple answer)
Bullying 38.6% Class sizes were too large 31.1% Poor teacher quality 18.7% Delinquency, in-school violence 18.7% Corporal punishment 18.4% Truancy 17.6% Under-age smoking and drinking 16.1% Disturbances in class 11.7% No repect for teachers 7.6% Lot of latecoming, leaving early 5.6% Poor safety, security 5.5% School leadership 5.5% Low academic performance 5.4% Education ministry, education board policies 4.4% Curriculum issues, overall education 2.6% Too expensive 1.7% Teacher shortage 1.6% Use of mobile phones in school 1.5% Parents not paying for school meals 0.9% School selection policies 0.7% Class sizes were too small 0.6% Other 2.9% No particular problem 23.3% No answer 0.2% Q4: In today’s elementary and middle schools, which of the following do you think is a problem? (Sample size=15,765, multiple answer)
Bullying 72.7% Low academic performance 58.2% Parents not paying for school meals 57.9% Poor teacher quality 50.8% Curriculum issues, overall education 49.4% Disturbances in class 49.4% No repect for teachers 49.9% Truancy 44.0% Education ministry, education board policies 40.2% Use of mobile phones in school 39.3% School leadership 27.4% Under-age smoking and drinking 25.9% Delinquency, in-school violence 25.0% Lot of latecoming, leaving early 16.4% Poor safety, security 12.7% Too expensive 11.0% Teacher shortage 10.5% Class sizes are too large 7.8% School selection policies 6.9% Corporal punishment 3.9% Class sizes are too small 3.5% Other 6.1% No particular problem 1.9% No answer 0.1% Q5: In today’s elementary and middle schools, what do you think is the biggest problem? (Sample size=15,765)
Bullying 29.9% Poor teacher quality 12.4% Education ministry, education board policies 8.7% Low academic performance 8.6% Curriculum issues, overall education 8.4% No repect for teachers 8.2% Parents not paying for school meals 7.4% Disturbances in class 4.9% School leadership 1.5% Truancy 1.2% Use of mobile phones in school 0.8% Class sizes are too large 0.7% Delinquency, in-school violence 0.6% Too expensive 0.5% Teacher shortage 0.5% Under-age smoking and drinking 0.3% Lot of latecoming, leaving early 0.2% Poor safety, security 0.2% School selection policies 0.2% Corporal punishment 0.1% Class sizes are too small 0.1% Other 2.5% No particular problem 2.0% No answer 0.3%
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Deas said,
April 15, 2007 @ 19:38
As a senior high school (assistant English) teacher, I’d be really interested to see what a poll about high schools would turn up. My short experience thus far seems to correlate somewhat with the results you’ve posted about elementary and middle schools. I wonder what the general Japanese population thinks about it.
Japan News for April 16, 2007 » Japan Probe said,
April 16, 2007 @ 07:38
[…] Japan’s schools are deteriorating due mainly to bullying and bad teachers, according to a survey of Japanese internet users conducted by MyVoice. [Link] […]
Mark said,
December 24, 2007 @ 11:10
I’ve been a MEXT licensed professional teacher at a private Japanese junior and senior high school for three years as well as an ALT in the public schools for three years beforehand. The problem with these kinds of polls regarding the quality of education is that they tend to focus only on symptoms of an underlying problem, which then in turn limits the responses to the problem by applying temporary solutions to the symptom - with the overall result of accomplishing nothing other than the belief that “something has been done.”
At the base level is a refusal by most parents to take an active part in their children’s education, often expecting the teachers (especially the homeroom teacher) to essentially become the child’s legal guardian - responsible for rearing the child as well as educating him. However, despite this expectation the teachers are not granted the authority to act in a manner similar to a parent (including discipline) which makes them a joke in the eyes of the children if they are conscious of the responsibility dumped on the teacher.
In addition to this, schooling is defined as compulsory up to the end of the junior high level with the idea that “every child has a right to an education.” Unfortunately this has been interpreted as “every child has the right to be present in a classroom” - regardless of behavior or ability level (as classes split on ability level are rare in the Japanese system). What this means is that there are always a number of students in every school that must be integrated into classrooms where they cannot keep up or are not sufficiently challenged, where they may not be able to integrate due to behavioral/mental imbalances, and where they will most likely be preyed upon by bullies for not fitting in (by either being “too smart,” “too slow,” or just “different”). I have seen children from both extreme sides of the spectrum act up in class due to either being bored due to the simplicity of the class assignment (necessary due to the majority of the students being a low level) or frustrated due to the complexity of the class assignment (necessary due to the majority of students being of a higher level). In either case, the teacher is expected to act as the student’s psudo-parent - essentially stopping class and spending the rest of the teaching period to console them and tutor them individually at the expense of the others. In some cases, such students will not respect the teacher’s authority at all and may even act out in a manner similar to a wild animal by throwing desks and chairs and jumping out windows.
Finally, the system of testing in the Japanese system has completely destroyed the purpose of the classroom in educating the children. Any concept of intellectual curiosity has been stifled in favor of “teaching for the test.” However the concept is degraded even further by the fact that one cannot “teach for the test” if the material to be taught in the classroom must in many cases be simplified to the level of the student with the lowest academic ability (because if it is not, the teaching period would be spent consoling/controlling the children of least ability). Because of this, the majority of students go to Juku to be taught what they need for the test and only attend school to get their recommendation letters by not getting suspended for serious behavioral issues and generally not having too many absences in a row. The issue of grades now being completely irrelevant, most students feel they have no incentive to do anything at all in class other than not being violent or too disruptive (ex. setting fire to a pile of desks or playing full contact rugby in the classroom). Adding to this, the vast majority of schools have followed suit by lowering the standards for their grades by making 30% a passing mark (equaling a “C” by western standards) so that the school’s vital statistics don’t look too awful in comparison to others that have done the same. The school I happen to work at has their lowest mark set at 40%, but the results are not much better since the students are quite content with achieving exactly that score.
How can this problem be solved? Technically it already has, but the system has been rejected in the mainstream because it is considered unsuitable to making the next generation’s construction worker, hira, and OL ranks. Jiyu Gajuen (free schools) are a surprisingly progressive alternative to the currently enforced system of education, considering the concept was developed and implemented as far back as the Taisho Era. Granted, a number of these schools were subverted in the 1930’s into copies of “Adolf Hitler Schools” by the Imperial Japanese government, but those surviving today have reverted to the original intent of providing a balanced and well-rounded education meant to foster personal responsibility and intellectual curiosity to create lifelong scholars. Details can be found on this webpage here:
http://www.education-in-japan.info/sub204.html
Sadly, these schools have only had recent notoriety because they have become a dumping ground for students that have been deemed “unsuitable” to the orthodox Japanese schooling methods or shut-ins of the hikkikomori ilk. At the same time, they are not very attractive to the majority of Japanese parents because they require the parents to have a fairly high degree of interaction with their child on a daily basis since this type of school only meets four days out of the week. This tends to rile up the conservative types since the belief that only forced study hours are valid (the more the better), but they tend to ignore that by creating a system where learning is attractive to children the concept of “study hours” is technically every waking hour that the child has per day…