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…