As my 6-year old son will be going to a Japanese public elementary school this April, I was searching the net for some information. I came across a study by the US Dept of Education on the Japanese education system. http://members.tripod.com/h_javora/jed1.htm
It�s quite interesting though lengthy. I found a lot of the information helpful though I cannot attest to its accuracy... yet. Other parents might find it useful, and maybe the more experienced parents can warn us where the study deviates from reality.

About the 5 day school week that just started (seems to me that it'll be hard on those parents who have to work on Saturdays!):
http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=shukan&id=109

Five-day school week: Good or bad?
japantoday > shukan post watcher

From April 1, a five-day school week went into effect at all public elementary and junior high schools in Japan. While the idea is to allow children and parents to spend more time together on weekends, some teachers say it will exacerbate two problems �Edisorganization of classes and a deterioration of children's scholastic abilities.
"The current situation in elementary schools is more terrible than parents imagine," said one female teacher at a public elementary school in Tokyo.
"When I took charge of a third grade class last year, it was almost impossible to get anything done on a Monday because most of my students didn't do homework on Sunday. They seemed so tired and didn't focus on the lesson. They would get out of their seats and talk with one another freely during the class. More often than not, the whole class was thrown into an uproar. Scolding them didn't work."
The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology introduced the five-day school week with the slogan, "relaxed education."
The curriculum will have 30% less general courses such as social studies, arithmetic and so on. The ministry has recommended that schools add two to three hours per week for general studies and increase field trips. While the ministry aims to encourage students to think more for themselves, the five-day week has caused dissent in the educational scene.
One male elementary school teacher said, "Indeed, we couldn't make a class schedule until just before school began. Because of decreased class hours, it's impossible to plan ahead since the contents of some classes have been cut. Also, teachers need to make a lot of preparation for general study classes. In reality, the new system may shift responsibility for a child's education from schools to the home."
The greatest apprehension is that there will be a serious decline in students' abilities.
"When I gave an arithmetic test, which was simple additions and subtractions for first to second grade students through to sixth grade students, about 10% of them failed to complete the test," said one male elementary school teacher in Kyoto. "We're getting a situation where sixth grade students are going through to high school with the mathematical ability of third grade level. They'll fail math tests for sure and find it hard to pass entrance exams for high schools."
"The entrance exams of private junior high schools have been changing drastically," said one cram schol teacher. "One famous private junior high school asks this question: Write down five occupations related to cars, other than car manufacturing. This kind of question is supposed to test a child's ability to think."
Educators say it is important for fathers to spend more time with their kids, talk to them about their jobs and various industries. "Fathers strongly influence their kids' abilities," said one cram school teacher.
Yoshimasa Nakasato, a psychology professor at Toyo University, says: "Probably, Japanese fathers think there is a certain mental distance between them and their kids. There still persists a high-handed attitude toward kids, which isn't good. I just wonder if this will change with the five-day school week."
Nakasato suggested that fathers go on trips with their kids and encourage them to help elderly people, as two ways to impart better values in their children.
The director of Japan Youth Research Institute, Tamotsu Sengoku, pointed out: "There are lots of ways parents can develop their children's mental abilities, such as going to art and science museums. Taking them to historical spots is another way. Going to ethnic restaurants can get kids interested in other countries is another way."
Of course, all this depends on fathers, tired from working all week, being willing to sacrifice their days off for their kids.
April 4, 2002
Volume 34 Number 15


Japan Today Discussion

Quality not quantity
Cider (Apr 5 2002 - 09:26)
So let me get this straight, teachers are complaining that their students are unruly with the 6-day a week system and are worried that the 5-day a week system will turn them into little delinquents? Too late! What do they expect? The kids are in a consequence free environment! Who wouldn't take advantage of that? At least the 5-day system won't waste everyone's time on a Saturday.

Again Japan is trying to fix a leak by making a different shaped hole. I think if they just made education the main point of school things might improve. And shouldn't the parents have a role in the upbringing and education of their children? Parents should parent and teachers should teach. That's 0 out of 2 so far!

Japans phobia of change
scottt (Apr 5 2002 - 22:41)
Japan cannot handle change.
A 5 day school week will be good for all involved hopefully more sport and increase school teaching efficentcy.

Tokyo Shimbun, Sunday, 14 April 2002

"Sekaito Nippon Dai Zukai Shirizu"
(The World and Japan Through Big Pictures Series?)
# 524

The subject was children refusing to attend school, "Futoko". Right now on average in all Japan 1 out of 279 elementary school students refuses to attend school and one out of 38 junior high school students. The total is 134,000 children. 13% drop out after Junior High School to do nothing (others who drop out go to work) and by age 20 (5 years later) 23% are doing nothing. A few of these are "Hikikomori", people who shut themselves in and refuse most human contact.

There's much more of course. I tried to figure out the reporter's sources for these numbers (white box, lower right corner) and it was "various" including the "Mombu Kagakusho" (In 2001 the name was changed from "Mombusho") and "Somucho" (Prime Minister's Office).

I was especially shocked by the 23%. I wanted to try to figure out if that included only 20 year olds or all the kids between 15 and 20. My first impression was that there are an awful lot of very tolerant parents who allow their kids to stay at home and use up resources without getting a job and getting on with life!

I spoke to someone who has a friend whose oldest son is currently at 22 "doing nothing". Although he did barely graduate from a prestigious high school, he was unable to get into University. She spurned advice to seek psychiatric assistance. So my final intuitive conclusion is that these kids have real problems but because of the cultural restrictions against admitting any sort of mental illness, they are not getting the help they need. The stoicism code requires these problems to be solved or at least hidden within the immediate family. At any rate, regardless of why, this is a terrible waste of human resources.

If anyone out there still has last Sunday's Tokyo Shimbun and the ability to get more of it translated I would be really interested in more details.

Sunday 21 April 2002 The Japan Times (in English)

"A number of education boards began preparatory classes Saturday out of concern that children's education may suffer as a result of the introduction of the five-day school week later this month.
(continued)..."

"I cannot have a day off Saturday because I am preparing for an entrance exam. I cannot study at home, but I can do so with other students together at school," said a male junior high school student.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20020421a3.htm

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?ek20020503ag.htm
MATTER OF COURSE
The Japan Times: May 3, 2002
SCHOOL REFUSERS; When one-size-fits-all schooling doesn't fit

By ALICE GORDENKER

There's a boy in our building who doesn't go to school. Ever. Nine-year-old Kenji missed 40 days of school last year, then refused to go back at all after the spring break. He says that he "can't breathe" at school and that his stomach hurts whenever he's in the building. Staying home isn't easy for Kenji either. His older brother goes to school. His younger sister goes to school. Every other child in the neighborhood goes to school. "I'm no good," Kenji said to his mother the other day.
"Everyone goes to school but me."

Kenji may feel alone, but there are a lot of children like him. A growing number of Japanese children are unable or unwilling to attend school. The problem of toko kyohi (school refusal), or futoko (non-attendance), is confounding parents and educators, and may force small changes in the Japanese education system.

What makes a child refuse to go to school? It's almost always due to a problem at school rather than at home. Sometimes the child has been bullied. Sometimes the child has had trouble with friends or finds school too competitive. Sometimes there doesn't appear to be a good reason. One girl's school refusal started because she didn't like the school lunch.

Whatever the reasons, the number of children who refuse to go to school is growing. By official estimates, there are at least 26,000 elementary school children and 108,000 middle school students who refuse to go to school -- about 10 times as many as in 1978. Actual numbers are probably higher because school officials sometimes classify absences as medical to protect the child (or the school) from the stigma of school refusal.

High school is not part of compulsory education, so the Education Ministry doesn't keep figures for older students, but many students drop out of high school for the same reasons younger children refuse to attend.

"Some things have improved for school refusers in Japan in recent years," according to Keiko Okuchi, head of a parents' support organization and herself the mother of a former school refuser who is now an adult. "The Education Ministry has now recognized that school refusal is a societal problem rather than an individual problem. As a result, there is less pressure to force children to attend school when they aren't willing or able. And there are now more options, including 'free schools,' for children who can't or won't attend regular school.

"But what hasn't changed," she said, "is the attitude that it is normal for children to want to go to school and abnormal for them not to want to go to school. Children are still under tremendous pressure to be like everyone else and go to a regular school."

That certainly is the case for Kenji, the boy in our building. He has received free counseling from our ward and is enrolled in the tekiyokyoshitsu (flexible classroom) set up by our board of education especially for school refusers. But the goal of both programs is to help Kenji return to regular school.

Initially, Kenji's parents wanted nothing more than to have him go back to school. But after joining a futoko support group, they gradually came around to the idea that regular school may not suit Kenji. He is highly sensitive to noise, crumbles under pressure and doesn't like to conform. They are looking into other options, but there aren't many.

Like many school refusers, Kenji may end up at a free school, a private organization that offers (for a price, despite the name) a less structured learning environment. Usually, the students themselves decide what to study and how often they will attend.

But Kenji's parents have a number of concerns about alternative education. Most free schools are not accredited or recognized by the Education Ministry, so Kenji's parents are afraid that he won't be able to go to high school or university. They also worry that sending Kenji to a free school will not fulfill their legal obligation to educate him.

Japanese law is a bit fuzzy on this point. Parents must provide their child with an education, but the law doesn't specify that the education must take place at school. The assumption has long been that a child must be enrolled in an accredited school for the nine years of compulsory education.

Many parents of school refusers get around this problem by making an arrangement with their local public school. If the principal allows it, the child can officially register at the school while actually attending a free school. The child gets a recognized diploma this way, too.

Another problem is tuition. Kenji's parents can't really afford to pay for a free school. There are now several hundred free schools in Japan, but none of them receive government funding. Okuchi, who founded Tokyo Shure, one of Japan's oldest free schools, in 1985, believes that this is wrong. "Families whose children attend free schools should receive some government support to offset the cost of their education," she told me. Is that going to happen any time soon? Not likely, Okuchi concedes.

This is because Japan's modern education system was built on the democratic principle that every child should have the same educational opportunities. The policy has been that all schools should be the same so that every child gets the same education. A "one size fits all" mentality.

But this way of thinking is beginning to change. The Education Ministry is now encouraging schools, in a limited way, to develop their own characteristics. The board of education in Shinagawa Ward, Tokyo, allows parents to send their children to any school within the ward, instead of insisting that everyone attend the school closest to their home.

Why not go one step further and set up publicly funded alternative schools? Why not convert one school in a district into an alternative program to serve children who can't attend regular school as well as those seeking something different?

As the growing number of school refusers makes clear, not all children are best served by Japan's highly standardized public schools. One size doesn't fit all.

Alice Gordenker is a Tokyo-based writer and the mother of two American children attending Japanese public elementary school. Past columns can be accessed by clicking here:

More [Japanese] parents anxious over children's academic ability

Saturday, January 11, 2003
TOKYO �EMore parents are attaching importance on their children's academic abilities and feel a growing sense of urgency to send them to cram schools, survey results of an educational institution affiliated with Benesse Corp showed Saturday.

It indicated 44.9% of parents of elementary school pupils and 50.9% of junior high school students said they feel anxiety over their children's academic performance unless they study at cram schools, up 5.7 percentage points and 6.7 points, respectively, from the previous survey four years ago.

The survey was conducted last September around the Tokyo metropolitan area, with some 6,100 respondents.

Among all respondents, 55.5% expect their children to advance to the four-year college level, while less than half of them, down more than 10 percentage points, said they are satisfied with their children's academic abilities as long as they are able to lead ordinary lives in the future, it showed.

For comparison, the institute released data from rural area of Fukushima Prefecture and the city of Takamatsu. According to the data, 49.8% of the Fukushima parents and 33.3% of those in Takamatsu want their children to go to four-year colleges.

An official at the institute said, "An introduction of the five-day study week is said to bring about a decline in academic performance, leading the parents to have anxiety over their children's education." (Kyodo News)
______________________

My own thoughts are that people/parents always get increasingly worried during an extended economic slump. The economy has progressively worsened since 1992, so for about 11 years now mid- and year-end bonuses have decreased in many cases to zero. It's like a post-war mentality setting in, where you don't throw out the chicken bones but make soup, because you don't know how much worse it will get tomorrow. I suspect that the people trying to contain government spending are quite happy that they've been able to reduce school electric bills!

In English (Japanese links given down below):
Under government guidelines, students as young as 11 are being graded on 'their love for Japan'.
PATRIOT GAME: Love marks
The Asahi Shimbun
(Courtesy http://www.asahi.com/english/national/K2003050800188.html)

This is the first installment of a three-part series on freedom of speech and patriotism in Japan.

An elementary school student in Fukuoka brought home a report card boasting straight A's in social studies-except for one category. The lone blemish came because the student had not shown sufficient "love for Japan".

The student's uncle, a lawyer of Korean ancestry, noticed an explanation on the new topic in his nephew's first-term report card.

"In addition to having feelings of love for our nation and placing importance on history and traditions of the nation, an effort is made to possess a consciousness as a Japanese living with the hope for a peaceful world", the explanation read.

Boiled down, it basically means students are being graded on their level of patriotism.

Elementary school students at 172 public schools in 11 prefectures are now evaluated on this new category, according to a national survey of sixth-graders' report cards conducted by The Asahi Shimbun.

The patriotism category is apparently in response to new curriculum guidelines introduced in the 2002 school year that included the fostering of "feelings of love for one's country" as an objective for sixth-grade social
studies.

A mother in her 40s living in Maruoka, Fukui Prefecture, said she was stunned by the new report card brought home by her child.

"Why does 'love for one's nation' have to be included at this stage?," she asked. "If evaluating the feelings of children spreads without the knowledge of parents and even the children themselves, it would be a throwback to the days before World War II.

"I am worried that the children will not speak out because of concerns that criticizing the central government or those in authority would lead to a lower grade", she said.

The lawyer in Fukuoka questioned how it was possible to evaluate 11- and 12-year-olds on their love for their nation. The schools don't seem to have a clear answer.

The lawyer asked the principal of the Fukuoka elementary school to eliminate the wording about patriotism, but the principal refused, saying the wording followed the education ministry's guidelines.

The nephew's "B" grade in patriotism was based on an overall evaluation of his interest and eagerness, according to the principal.

Sixty-three elementary schools in Fukuoka, or almost half of all that exist in the city, included a mark for "love for one's nation" in their report cards. One teacher in charge of a sixth-grade class did not notice the
peculiar wording of the new report card during a staff meeting when the draft of the report card was discussed.

But after the teacher realized what the draft report card meant, discussions were held with fellow sixth-grade teachers. They concluded that since it was impossible to grade the patriotism of students, everyone would be given a "B".

At other Fukuoka schools, efforts have been made to establish evaluation standards.

One elementary school in central Fukuoka is considered a model for others. The school set up an experimental class in social studies last June and allowed principals and teachers from other schools to observe. The topic of the class was the attempted Mongol invasions of Japan in the 13th century.

One student brought up the example of the Koryo dynasty in Korea and said that fighting to protect what was important was better than becoming a vassal state. Others said the problem could have been resolved through diplomatic negotiations.

The 37-year-old teacher wrapped up the talks by saying, "Regardless of whether you are in favor of or opposed to war, you all had the same feeling of wanting to protect Japan from invasion by a foreign nation". Therefore, the teacher said, all students had feelings of love for Japan.

Grading on the category could be done by observing the students' attitude, comments made and classroom notes, the teacher said.

The teacher also said that "feelings of love for one's nation" could be fostered through research into the history and traditions of Japan, and that such love was similar to the love of the community and region where one was raised.

That line is similar to those espoused by Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers and education ministers, who have argued that current legislation contains "no provisions on love of country and respect for tradition and culture".

The Central Council for Education in March called for such provisions to be included in the Fundamental Law of Education.

Teachers and parents, however, argued the government is simply trying to push through nationalistic reforms without thorough debate. Although the revisions have yet to be made, opponents fear it is already too late, considering the implementation of the curriculum guidelines.

The education board of Gyoda, Saitama Prefecture, created a committee that, together with teachers, came up with a revised report card that included "love for one's nation" for all 15 elementary schools.

Another sixth-grade teacher who did not realize the change in the wording until after the draft was approved felt the patriotism reference should be eliminated, but said raising the subject a year after it was implemented is next to impossible.

In the spring of 2002, teachers from the three elementary schools in Ujitawara in Kyoto Prefecture met to compile a new report card. A principal at the meeting said: "If any change is made to education ministry guidelines, we will be held responsible for explaining why the change was made. Therefore, no change in the guidelines was attempted".

(IHT/Asahi: May 8,2003)

http://www.asahi.com/edu/news/OSK200305020035.html
was the original one in Japanese

Also have a look at
http://www.mainichi.co.jp/life/kyoiku/edumail/archive/04/200301/20-02.html
http://www.mainichi.co.jp/news/selection/archive/
200210/17/20021018k0000m040060001c.html
http://www.unityflag.co.jp/doc/762/0762_08a.html
http://www.chikuho-net.co.jp/~safe/sokai4.html
http://member.nifty.ne.jp/eduosk/hukuoka-nakane.htm

Regarding the mention of Tokyo Shure above in the May 2002 post by Sandy, here is their web site and location:

http://www.shure.or.jp/info/english.html

Tokyo Shure Free School
1-9-19 Kishimachi Kita Tokyo Japan
TEL: +81(0)3-5993-3135, FAX: +81(0)3-5993-3137
E-mail: info[at]shure.or.jp

There is a list of resources for "un-schooling" or home-schooling that includes links already mentioned on this site and also a few new ones I haven't seen before at

http://www.gomilpitas.com/homeschooling/regional/Japan.htm

19,000 foreign kids need Japanese language education

Thursday, March 25, 2004 at 05:57 JST
TOKYO �EThe education ministry said Wednesday 19,042 foreign students at public schools in Japan need special Japanese-language education as of Sept 1 last year.

Aichi Prefecture, where many foreign workers are employed at automobile plants, had the largest number at 2,776, followed by Kanagawa at 1,897 and Shizuoka at 1,767. Of all the students, 35.6% said their mother tongue was Portuguese, 25.8% said Chinese and 14% Spanish. (Kyodo News)

The proper link to the English page of Tokyo Shure mentioned above is:

http://www.shure.or.jp/english.html