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Striving For Academic
Excellence
Educational Perspectives
Japanese Education
Pamphlet Number 6.
By
Dr. Henry J. Gaskins

Educational Perspective pamphlet series is written to provide insights, information, and perception into the realm of education that will enhance the knowledge and understanding of everyone interested in the future educational development, growth, and academic achievement of our children.

And let us not be weary in well doing; for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not. (Galatians 6:9)

"Failure in people is caused more by lack of determination than lack of talent."

For students in Japan, job opportunities and future success are closely correlated with the status of the university they attend. Attending a good university means that the student must do well in the highly competitive college entrance examination system that was created to ensure that only the most intelligent students entered the top universities and thereby received the top jobs. Preparation for these entrance examinations begin in elementary school and the students entire school career is spent in an atmosphere of intense preparation and competition.

The following is an account of 15 years of teaching in both the private and public schools in Okinawa City, Japan. Susan Goya has reported the following facts about Japanese schooling.

Americans think a Japanese student must pass an entrance exam to attend high school, but it is a test of elimination. If there are 300 freshman slots available and 304 students apply, the test is given to eliminate four students. Passing scores can be as low as 5 percent.

On the other hand, competition for admission to universities and even to some prestigious high schools is truly fierce, because there are so few slots and so many applicants. Students preparing for a university entrance exam study not only academic material, but also statistics on the minimum passing score for each major in each college of interest to them - to determine where their best chances lie.

They do so because Japanese students are accepted for a certain major in a certain university. They may not change majors or transfer to another university without taking another entrance exam.

There are basically three kinds of high schools in Japan: academic, vocational, and commercial. They are wholly independent of one another and do not even share the same grounds.

Academic high schools prepare students for college entrance exams. When Americans read about Japanese high schools they are usually academic high schools. Studies comparing Japanese students with other students usually sample academic high schools. These are the same students who spent hours and money studying after school, often until midnight, in a private academic setting.
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Vocational high-schoolers are mostly male, and the academic program is much less rigorous. Students expect to graduate and work as skilled or semiskilled apprentices. These schools often field baseball teams that represent their prefecture at an annual all-Japan high school baseball tournament. High schools are generally chosen by the boys for their baseball teams reputation. Some of the best players have been seniors for more than one year.

Students at commercial high schools are, for the most part, female. They expect to graduate, work for a few years in an office, and then marry. Overall, their education is not academically rigorous.

Japanese students are tracked, not into different programs within one school, but into entirely different schools. Moreover, this tracking rigidly determines a students future career possibilities.

The fact is that Japanese public schools do a pathetic job of educating people. Virtually all public school graduates would fail college entrance exams if they depended on public schools alone to prepare them. A high school diploma is nothing more than a certificate of attendance. Nevertheless, the Japanese eventually emerge from schooling as one of the best-educated societies in the world. What makes the difference?

The secret of Japanese education is the juku - variously translated as tutoring school, cram school, college prep school, or after-school. Jukus are numerous, expensive, and indispensable to the Japanese system of education.

Jukus survive because public school educational quality is poor. Nearly all students who aspire to a national university must spend one to four years in a juku cramming for the tests. Many parents enroll their children in an academic juku as early as first or second grade. About one out of three primary school children is receiving supplementary lessons. The children usually attend juku after school throughout their primary and secondary years.

Since the expressed purpose of Japanese academic high school is to prepare students to pass exams, it is a national scandal that so few do. Since high school attendance is not compulsory, some students even drop out of high school to attend juku full-time. Others who fail college entrance exams as high school seniors spend up to three years in a college- prep juku, known as a yobiko. They take the exam every year until they passor give up.

Many other students may warm a seat in the public high school, but they have checked out mentally. They are getting their education at the juku, which usually operates late afternoons and evenings. Efforts to improve Japanese education are often blocked by parents. In Japan, equal education means every student anywhere in the country receives the same education regardless of individual differences.

The parent/teacher organization often opposes reforms that would take account of individual differences, such as compensatory education. Parents are unwilling to extend any extra benefits to other peoples children, while they spend a fortune on jukus to ensure that their own children can get ahead.

Jukus tend to be on the culling edge of education in Japan. They were first to use computer-assisted instructional technology on a daily basis, first to incorporate systems management into education, first to individualize and self-pace lessons.

Students not attending academic jukus often attend hobby jukus that specialize in tennis, piano, calligraphy, etc. Adult education is by and large provided by specialized jukus.

The Japanese people are always taking tests, and anyone studying almost any subject knows where he stands in comparison to every person in Japan. Therefore, jukus prosper because they meet public demand for passing tests.

Finally, students attend jukus because of profound dissatisfaction with public education and unrelenting pressure to succeed academically to scure a decent future. Americans need to pay more attention to the crucial, yet largely overlooked, role of the juku in providing Japanese people with their much-admired education.

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