I had the good fortune to take part last week in an international symposium hosted by Japan's National Institute for Educational Policy Research (NIER). The topic was "New Schools for the 21st Century." I was asked to talk about charter schools. Also present, besides several hundred Japanese educationists and policy types, were education analysts or officials from New Zealand, Denmark and Singapore.
Japan is in the throes of a major education reform effort called the Rainbow Plan. (See my earlier comment in the June 14, 2001 Gadfly) It was well explained to the Tokyo audience by education Vice Minister Ono Motoyuki and Ken Terawaki, who is deputy director-general of the Education Ministry and one of the principal architects of this set of changes, changes that commence next month, at the beginning of Japan's new school year.
Why is this happening? Mainly because the stagnation of Japan's economy has persuaded government and business leaders that they need to develop a different kind of human capital, people who are more creative, flexible and concerned about others.
The Rainbow Plan rests on seven pillars. Several make obvious sense, such as training teachers as "real professionals," creating "universities of international standard," dealing with disruptive students, and "making schools that can be trusted by parents and communities." (Under the latter heading comes "introducing new types of public schools, such as community schools," hence the interest in charters.)
There are also plans for a national assessment in core subjects at the elementary and junior high school levels-for the first time in forty years. The tests that Japan administered in the early 1960's were scrapped, reports The Daily Yomiuri, "after teachers unions and others filed a suit against the government, claiming such tests led to competition in classrooms and uniform ranking-based grading."
Other parts of the Rainbow Plan, however, suggest that Japanese policymakers have been spending too much time at the American Education Research Association, reading Dewey's daffier acolytes, and continuing to heed the teachers union. School classes are to be reduced to twenty students (from about 40) in core subjects, with many more teachers hired. There's to be new emphasis on community service and parent involvement. There's a call to make "the learning environment...enjoyable and free of worries." "Integrated studies" will foster "zest for living" via "hands-on activities."
Above all, there's been a vigorous round of "content reduction" and Japan's famously long school week has been shortened. Saturday classes are vanishing and the school curriculum is said to be lighter by 30 percent. This has caused a furor. Some parents aren't sure what to do with their little ones on Saturdays. Others note that the wealthy can afford "juku" (privately operated tutoring and enrichment programs) for their kids on weekends but the poor will suffer. More important, many people are concerned that Japanese children will simply end up learning less.
To me that seems likely. It was made especially vivid as I watched a brief film prepared by the government to explain the Rainbow Plan. (Because the film was in English, I also wondered about its domestic audience.) It contains many scenes of children and teachers cooking in home economics classes, playing volleyball, doing calligraphy, volunteering in a nursing home and suchlike. But the viewer got almost no hint that math, science, geography or literature will retain a place in the reformed education system. Content, it's pretty clear, will get shorter shrift in Japanese schools in the future than in the past.
Ministry officials said all the right emollient things: that they've eliminated curricular redundancy and obsolete knowledge, that classes will go deep rather than broad, and that added emphasis will be placed on higher-order skills, creativity and self-expression. No wonder the film offered many shots of U.S. educationists praising the Rainbow Plan. It's exactly the sort of thing they lap up.
From the buzz in the conference room and corridors, however, and the questions that the media asked, it appears that at least some Japanese sense that there's no pot of gold at the end of this rainbow, that they may, in fact, be headed for a new storm.
So, too, may some of their fellow Asians. Singapore has also been downsizing its curriculum. Hong Kong, reports The Economist, "is aiming to get away from its old system of learning by rote....The emphasis now is on encouraging pupils to think for themselves and to develop flexible learning skills."
Good luck to them all. Meanwhile, maybe the U.S. now has a chance of boosting its standing on the next international assessment of math and science!
