A debate over constructivist versus traditional pedagogy seems to be brewing in Japan, of all places. In the 1990s, Japanese officials partially decentralized the nation's education system and began touting a teaching system that moved away from the drill-and-memorization approach that had marked Japanese education for decades. The new American-inspired system, called yutori kyoiku or "loose education," emphasized a reduced workload, fewer lectures, and more out-of-class learning projects. Not surprisingly, just as the new system was put into place, the academic achievement of Japanese schoolchildren began to slip. Now some Japanese educators are returning to the lecture, drill, and memorization methods of the past, with evident success. In the seaport town of Onomichi, elementary school principal Hideo Kageyama has instituted long division drills, poetry memorization, and immersion English programs in the schools he administers. Test scores have risen and half of his students have gone on to Japan's rigorous universities, twice the national acceptance rate. That success, plus declining scores nationwide, has sparked a backlash against "loose" education, with calls for a return to traditional instructional methods that made Japanese children among the highest academic achievers in the world.
"As test scores fall, Japanese schools get harsh lesson," by Martin Fackler, Wall Street Journal, November 3, 2004 (subscription required)