Japanese education

ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES

by Thomas P. Rohlen

1. Contemporary Japan is about as developed and organized a society as one can find in the world today. It is a society where educational credentials and educated skills are central to employment, to

5 promotion,and to social status in general. It is not a society with a privileged traditional class, nor is it one divided between a small, educated elite and the masses. Rather, the modern sectors of Japan's economy require the skilled participation of nearly all Japanese. Furthermore, Ja­pan is a «meritocracy» shaped by an

10 educational competition that enrolls nearly everyone. And this is fitting, for Japan is a nation that, lacking natural resources, must live by its wits, by social discipline, and by plain hard work.

2.It is not surprising, therefore, to discover that during the last twenty years Japan has quietly been

15 establishing a new, higher set of educational standards for the world. On a whole raft of international tests of achievement in science and math, Japanese students outperform all others. Japan's newspaper readership

20 level is the world's highest. A considerably larger percentage of Japanese (90 percent) than Americans (75 percent) or Europeans (mostly below 50 percent) finish the twelfth grade, and greater proportion of males complete university B.A. degrees in Japan than in other countries. Japanese children attend school about

25 fifty more days each year than American students, which means that, by high-school graduation, they have been in school somewhere between three and four more years than their American counterparts. Added to this is the fact that requirements in all basic subjects are heavier in Japan and that elementary-level education in art and music is univer­sal and quite advanced. No one now denies that this is a most

30 impressive portrait of national achievement. Japan has suc­ceeded in holding very high standards for virtually its entire population, standards typical of elites in Western countries. It would not be an exaggeration to say that in many respects the upper half of Japan's graduating high-school students possess

35 a level of knowledge and the analytic skills equivalent to the average American graduating from college. Until several years ago, we hardly noted these accomplishments, and the Japa­nese themselves never

40 boasted of them but rather emphasized the costs incurred in achieving such success. One simple fact cannot be ignored: Japanese education to the college level has been made into an extraordinarily efficient engine for eco­nomic and social advancement. Japan's standards are becom­ing ours through the agency of free trade.

3.Consider the following sobering comparisons:

TOTAL EDUCATION EXPENDITURE AS A PERCENTAGE OF GNP   FOUR-YEAR-OLDS ATTENDING SCHOOL   STUDENTS GRADUATING FROM TWELFTH GRADE   AVERAGE DAILY HOURS OF HOMEWORK DURING HIGH SCHOOL   DAILY ABSENTEE RATE

JAPAN UNITED STATES   JAPAN UNITED STATES   JAPAN UNITED STATES   JAPAN UNITED STATES   JAPAN UNITED STATES

6% 7%   63% 32%   90% 77%   2.0 0.5   VERY LOW 9%

45 4.What explains this level of accomplishment? In the background most certainly are such things as the long-standing respect for education held by the Japanese and the traditional view that diligence in school is a path to greatness. It is also true that Japanese society contains fewer social problems of the kind that

50 make mass public education difficult. The country has few immigrants and few minorities. The divorce and unemployment rates are quite low. Drug problems are mini­mal, and juvenile delinquency is not as serious a problem as in this country. Such profound social differences raise the ques­tion of whether our schools and

53 teachers might not produce results equal to Japan's if only they had the same kind of student population. In my opinion, the gap in results between the Japanese and American system would shrink considerably. Acknowledging this, however, does not change the fact of Japan's challenge, nor does it remove from

60 serious consideration the question of whether there is much to be learned from Japan's approach.

5.Another explanation for the success of Japanese schools centers on the firm hand of the national

65 Ministry of Education in setting standards and curriculum for the country. Standards serve as foundations for the entire effort, and the standards applied are equivalent to those used for elite education in the United States and Europe. I will return to this topic when we consider what might be learned from Japan.

70 6.Very important, too, is the motivation that stems from the nation's very competitive university entrance exams. Pick up any of Japan's national newsmagazines in early spring, and you are certain to find the lead story to be about these exami­nations. For a brief time each year the ordeal of getting into college surpasses

75 political scandals, international economic problems, and gossip about entertainers as the matter most inter­esting and important to the reading public. Imagine Time and Newsweek each publishing thirty or so pages of statistics docu­menting the secondary school origins of new entrants to hun­dreds of universities, along

80 with details of the tests, competition ratios, and no table study techniques. All this attention (and anxiety) attests to the centrality of entrance examinations to Japanese society. Schooling is geared to it, jobs are based on it, and families are preoccupied with it. The obsession with entrance exams' is like a dark engine

85 powering the entire school system. High national standards and entrance exams combine with a great popular thirst for the benefits of education.

7.Economic prosperity has greatly bolstered the demand for education — and the level of

90 competitiveness — beyond the imagination of Americans. Accession rates to Japanese high schools and universities have increased rapidly over the last quarter century. In 1950, only 43 percent of all fifteen-year-olds were going on to high school, whereas by 1975 the figure had risen to 98 percent. In 1950, only 7

95 percent of college-age Japanese enrolled in higher education; today more than 40 percent are going on to universities or junior colleges. The university population has swollen from about half a million in 1950 to nearly two million. Universities are clearly overcrowded and the quality of education has suffered greatly.

100 Only at the levels of higher and graduate education does our system stand out as comparatively strong.

8.Despite such problems, the ratio of candidates to open­ings at almost any Japanese university starts at 3 to I and rises to an average of 5 to I. Many private universities attract eight or nine candidates per opening,

105 and competition to gain entrance to departments that lead to degrees in medicine regu­larly reaches a ratio of 20 to 1. The national total of applicant, furthermore, annually exceeds the number of university open­ings by approximately 200,000. The competition has grown excessive.

110 9. Many who fail to enter the school of their choice decide to try again. They join a particular category of students who have graduated from high school but have not yet entered col­lege. The main occupation of

115 this group is cramming for the next annual round of entrance examinations. (As with the ancient Chinese exam system, there is no limit on how many times one may try and no age limit on applications). Known as ronin because they are akin to the wandering, disenfranchised warrior-heroes made familiar by samurai

120 movies, these stu­dents are very largely male and usually academically talented. Attracted to the best universities, they prefer to persevere even for several years rather than to accept a place at a lesser univer­sity. Their lonely pursuit of fame and glory is often romanti­cized, but, in fact, it is a dreary, expensive

125 existence. The annual ronin population is estimated at 140,000 young people, and approximately one in every five male high-school gradu­ates is fated to join this particular detour in the system. At the prestigious Tokyo University, roughly half of the successful applicants enter on the first try, one-third on the second,

130 and 10 percent after three or more tries. Each year someone succeeds on his sixth or seventh attempt.

10.What kinds of examinations are involved? Composed almost entirely of multiple-choice and short-answer questions, the exams are designed to test (1) the comprehension of math­ematical (highschool math

135 goes beyond trigonometry) and scientific principles (physics, chemistry, biology, and earth sci­ences are required), and (2) the mastery of enormous bodies of factual material. Economics, geography, history (European, Japanese, Chinese, and United States), and English (six years) are required subjects. Every

140 question has but one correct answer. Interpretive skills are not tested, but skills in math and science problem solving are important, and the degree of de­tailed knowledge required can be astounding. The level of fac­tual knowledge necessary in the history sections of the exams for the best universities would tax

145 American graduate students. In sum, the exams are of the kind for which a capacity to grind away for years in preparation makes a difference. Intelligence is quite necessary, but self-discipline and willpower are equally essential. Furthermore, only the exam results count toward admission. Highschool grades,

150 extracurricular activities, teachers' recommendations, and special talents play virtually no role, except in a very small percentags of experimental cases. It is hard to estimate just what percentage of all the energy ex­pended is wasted on useless cramming, but it is consequential.

155 11. Nothing better illustrates the pressure to begin preparations early than the popularity of cram schools, or juku, which today enroll one in three middle-school students and one in four upper-elementary-school students across Japan. In Tokyo and other large cities, fully two-thirds of all seventh, eighth, and ninth

160 graders are either attending cram schools or being tutored at home. Juku are privately run, after-school acad­emies designed to supplement public education. There are juku for slow students, juku for average students, and juku for bright students, in part because the public system has no gifted pro­grams, eschews

165 tracking within schools, and offers no individually paced learning. The typical tutoring establishment in­volves instruction for a couple of hours a few days a week, but the more aggressive and fast-paced cram schools hold classes more regularly, even on weekends and during vacations. Juku, like tactical weapons in

170 an escalating educational arms race, have become a booming growth industry complete with fran­chising and educational conglomerates. Private entrepreneur-ship, parental anxiety, and exam pressures combine to create an unprecedented phenomenon that critics feel threatens to make Japanese childhood nothing but a

175 tightly scheduled existence shuttling from home to school to juku, with no time for friends or play.

12.Is the effort to enter a top university worth it? Clearly, the extraordinary thirst for educational

180 success is based on the knowl­edge that good jobs and adult success hinge greatly on one's alma mater. What is crucial is getting in. In fact, most humanities and social science students, upon gaining entry to a university, take a one- or two-year holiday from serious study as a reward for com­pleting the entrance exam ordeal. No one flunks out.

185 13. Just how dominant the top schools have been in supplying the country's managerial elite can be seen from a few notable statistics. Tokyo University, which accounts for less than 3 per­cent of all university graduates, alone pro duces nearly a quarter of the presidents of Japan's leading companies. The picture of

190 elite dominance is even more pronounced in the upper level of the national bureaucracy, where Tokyo graduates have occupied the majority of jobs and nearly all the top positions during the last century. Much the same picture emerges from the nation's elected representatives. In the Lower House of the national Diet,

195 one in four is a Tokyo graduate. The point should be clear that success on entrance exams is associated with career success, and ulti­mately with power and status. Even if it takes a few extra years as ronin to finally enter a top school, the opportunities and ultimate rewards make the sacrifices worth the effort.

200 14.The powerful engine of exam preparation is fueled by this rather tight calibration between academic and career suc­cess. Those wishing to reform Japanese education realize that they must ease the tight relationship with employment before the exam system's hold will be weakened. Many privately fear,

205 however, that without future employment as the driving motive of entrance exam competition, students, parents, and schools would slacken their efforts, and the present high stan­dards in basic subjects would begin to fall.

15. Competition requires equal opportunity to be inclusive. Up to high school, the Japanese system

210 offers a greater basic equality than American reformers have dreamed possible. This is accomplished primarily by a system of prefectural and na­tional financing that equalizes salaries and facilities. Schools are not tracked by ability, and the number of private schools is small. At the point of high-school entrance,

215 however, the separation of students by ability begins in earnest. High schools, like universities, are entered by examinations. This produces and perpetuates a system of school ranking that is more thor­ough than anything in American public education. The ques­tion of where the ablest students go, where the least able

220 go, and all of the fine shadings in between can be recounted by any student or parent of the region, for each city or prefecture has a single totem pole. In a number of areas, private schools have risen to the top as a result of the greater latitude they enjoy in collecting the best students and gearing singlemindedly to

225 success on the university exams, yet in most areas public schools remain very strong. Successful applicants to Tokyo University are now equally divided between public and private schools. After nine years of equal

230 opportunity, the system is differentiated and competition produces an elaborate hierarchy. The system has the character of a true meritocracy.

16.The ranking of schools becomes a sensitive yardstick to measure the degree to which family

235 background factors influ­ence educational outcomes. My own studies reveal a trend toward a greater role for family factors in educational out-235 comes. Entrants to the elite national Japanese universities in the early sixties came from a broad cross section of the popu­lation with little relationship between income and success. Private universities (more expensive and easier to enter), on the other hand, were filled primarily

240 by students from families in the upper half of the income scale. By the mid-1970s, a significant shift was perceptible, with fewer and fewer students from poor families entering the elite universities. A major rea­son, I think, is the rising significance of privately purchased advantages in the preparation process

245 namely, juku and elite private high schools.

17. I recently investigated five Kobe high schools chosen as representative of five distinct levels in that city's hierarchy of secondary schools. So that the reader can better appreciate the quality represented by

250 each of the five schools, let me add that the private elite school I studied sends more than one hundred of its two hundred and fifty graduates to Tokyo University each year, whereas the second and third-rank public academic high schools (each considered quite good locally) send but a handful of their students to

255 any national university. Very few vocational school students go on to higher education at all. Dropout rates for the night school are about 25 percent. The results of my study indicate a number of very strong associations between school rank (and, therefore, academic achieve­ment as measured by entrance exams) and a host of such family background factors as parents' education and occupation, the number of siblings,

260 and family income. Family qualities may be influential from an early point in the child's schooling, but only with high school entrance does the overt sorting take place. Japan, like the United States, has a school

265 system that partially replicates the status and class system of its adults, but it does this without residential segregation.

18. Not only does the school system at the high-school level reflect difference of family backgrounds,

270 but, by its very organi­zation, it undoubtedly extends and elaborates these differences through the creation of distinct, stratified school sub-cultures. Delinquency rates, for example, correlate closely with the aca­demic rank of high schools. Entrance exams thus serve some­thing of an analogous function to residential

275 segregation in the United States. Japanese cities remain residentially heterogeneous, but the competitive entrance-exam system (and its parasite — the cram system) supersedes residential location (and thus housing expenditures) as the key to climbing the social ladder.

19.The issue of inequality between the sexes is also very interesting. Slightly more women than men

280 now enter institutions of higher learning, but this is explained largely by the rapid growth of junior colleges whose enrollments are 90 per­cent female. The percentage of women enrolled in four-year universities did increase from 16.2 percent in 1965 to 21.2 percent in 1975, yet the fact remains that in higher education

285 three of every five females are atten ding a junior college, whereas nine of every ten males in higher education are in four-year universities. Furthermore, in Japan's top universities the per­centage of women has remained very small. Only about 6 per­cent of those accepted to Tokyo University are women. None of

290 this, it must be emphasized, stems from overt discrimina­tion in the admission process. The simple fact is that many fewer women apply. In 1975, only 17 percent of the women graduating from high school applied

295 to universities, whereas 52 percent of the men applied. Only an understanding of the cultural attitudes prevalent in Japanese families can explain this pattern.

Let me summarize what I see to be the advantages and disadvantages in the above portrait. What

300 distinguishes Japa­nese education is a very high average level of accomplishment. This seems to stem above all from diligence and organization, from an orderly single-mindedness, and an exceptional educa­tion «fever» centering on exams — the very same qualities that characterize Japanese industrial process. Initial

305 equality and well-organized and well-supported schools are followed by a competitively determined sorting process that, by our stan­dards, comes early. Preparing for exams creates a narrowness of focus in learning and emphasizes rote processes. The meritocratic process has few exceptions and offers too few sec­ond

310 chances. It is tough to be a loser. As we might expect, education and society share some of the same deficiencies. To us Japan seems like an anthill, busy, well-organized, and com­petitive, but unable to foster individual expression or to sup­port idiosyncratic or uncommon talents. Both society and edu­cation suffer

315 from very rapid growth and from an obsessive preoccupation with success as measured by rather mechanical «output» standards. Their very efficiencies mask problems of unattended spiritual values and national identity.

From: The American Scholar. 1986.

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