National curriculum issues in Japan
This is a rather short but still interesting survey from goo Research, conducted in conjunction with the Mainichi Shimbun, into the proposed reforms to the national curriculum, particularly with regard to elementary school education.
Demographics
Over the 29th of February and the 1st of March 2008 1,069 members of the goo Research online monitor group aged 20 or older were randomly-selected and completed a private internet-based questionnaire. More detailed demographics were not given.
Some of the reforms proposed are outlined in this article from the Japan Times.
These changes are to address the drop in academic level in international tests (or is it that other countries are improving, or a mix of both?) by studying more. Looking at the league leader Finland, it can be seen that there are neither long school hours nor much pressure, whereas Japan’s solution seems to be adding more hours and more pressures. I’ve seen television programmes investigating Japanese education, and the problem teachers identify is too much overtime for them to be able to prepare for lessons or to be at their best when teaching. Overtime has indeed steadily increased over the decades, so more hours in classes and a new curriculum to learn is not going to fix that.
Most foreigners I know who teach in schools also highlight the lack of classroom dicipline and too many events (sports day, culture days, etc), the preparation for which disrupt teaching schedules for both teachers and students.
The teaching of pi equals three is actually true to a certain extent. In the current guidelines, teachers should use 3.14, but in certain circumstances (what circumstances, the curriculum guidelines do not say) three may be used.
Research results
Q1: Do you approve of the recent reform of the national curriculum? (Sample size=1,069)
Yes (to SQ1) 78.7% No (to SQ2) 21.3% Q1SQ1: Why do you approve of the recent reform of the national curriculum? (Sample size=841)
Will foster the ability to think 41.9% Will increase knowledge 38.3% Will learn about morals 18.6% Will be useful for examinations 1.2% Q1SQ2: Why do you not approve of the recent reform of the national curriculum? (Sample size=228)
Will not foster the ability to think 63.9% Teaches morals, patroitism 20.3% Will only increase knowledge 8.8% Will not be useful for examinations 7.0% Q2: What do you think about teaching English from 5th grade of elementary school? (Sample size=1,069)
Too soon 19.6% About right 49.2% Too late 31.2% Q3: What do you think with reforming teaching so that a pi value of 3.14 is used? (Sample size=1,069)
Agree 92.7% Disagree 7.3%
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed, or check out my weekly newsletter. Thanks for visiting!
Read more on: education,goo research
Subscribe to feed
Send to mobile
Subscribe to 世論 What Japan Thinks newsletter
TokyoDevil said,
March 13, 2008 @ 19:21
Hmm … Be nice to have a breakdown of why people think 5th grade is too early, just right or too late. From a physiological standpoint — i.e. the manner in which language is processed in the human brain — study of a second language should begin by age 3. I believe this has to do with the way brains process grammar. Since Japanese and English grammar are significantly different, study of English should be undertaken when brains are still quite malleable (yeah, yeah, I know). By the time children have reached age 11-12 (5th grade), Japanese grammar is firmly established as the template upon which language is learned, making it more of a challenge to get the brain to accept English grammar.
Nice to see that people want to go back to 3.14.
As for teacher quality … my children are enrolled in Japanese elementary school, and the teaching staff is crap. Good news for the juku industry, bad news for everyone else.
Charles Jannuzi said,
May 10, 2008 @ 13:39
They ought not to ask anyone what they think of such things EXCEPT students now in school and their teachers. And in the case of 5th graders, let them have one session of pair practice in English with a textbook called Fuzzy from Gondwanaland (or something like that from one of the ELT publi$her$), and then let them decide if they really want to learn English at that age.
If you add the too early negatives with the too late negatives, you can see most respondents could be said to be against English at the elementary schools.