Japanese school grades.
- Thread starter God
- Start date
Ewok85
先輩
- 14 Nov 2003
- 2,401
- 44
I'm reading a book written by my uni lecturor (is there any easier way to kiss *** and cheat on an essay? 
) called "silence and resistance" in the Routledge Japanese Study series on Japanese High Schools (1998, Shoko Yoneyama).
So it focuses on 2 things, control and the response. Control being things like student-teacher relations, hidden curriculim (being graded on cooperation, interaction etc), discipline and punishment, school rules (uniform rules, hair, etc) and acheivment pressure. The respones being things like ijime (bullying, kids feeling that they have to be part of the group, extreme conformism), tokokyohi (a fear or refusal to attend).
It starts off talking about the 1997 school killer in Kobe. Just this year a young girl killed a peer in Kobe... weird.. anyway, they said the 2 disturbing things was the the students were sympathetic to the student who murdered 2 others (one girl was beaten to death and a boy was decapitated, his head left by the school gate and body elsewhere), they understood how he felt and it had been accuratly predicted around 10 years earlier. While Japan doesnt have unusally high suicide or violence rates compared to other countries they are more often "school related", not just acts of violence that happen to occur at school.
Its a good read anyway, although im drowning in the technicalities of the book, its got a huuuuge bibliography, she really did her research on this with just about every sentech having a reference to previous books, newspaper articles or journals on similar topics. It also has alot of data collected from Australian and Japanese students from questionaires and interviews.
) called "silence and resistance" in the Routledge Japanese Study series on Japanese High Schools (1998, Shoko Yoneyama).So it focuses on 2 things, control and the response. Control being things like student-teacher relations, hidden curriculim (being graded on cooperation, interaction etc), discipline and punishment, school rules (uniform rules, hair, etc) and acheivment pressure. The respones being things like ijime (bullying, kids feeling that they have to be part of the group, extreme conformism), tokokyohi (a fear or refusal to attend).
It starts off talking about the 1997 school killer in Kobe. Just this year a young girl killed a peer in Kobe... weird.. anyway, they said the 2 disturbing things was the the students were sympathetic to the student who murdered 2 others (one girl was beaten to death and a boy was decapitated, his head left by the school gate and body elsewhere), they understood how he felt and it had been accuratly predicted around 10 years earlier. While Japan doesnt have unusally high suicide or violence rates compared to other countries they are more often "school related", not just acts of violence that happen to occur at school.
Its a good read anyway, although im drowning in the technicalities of the book, its got a huuuuge bibliography, she really did her research on this with just about every sentech having a reference to previous books, newspaper articles or journals on similar topics. It also has alot of data collected from Australian and Japanese students from questionaires and interviews.
Keiichi
Hi
- 9 Mar 2003
- 1,023
- 19
I was just reading this book (I don't remember the name) with a section about Japanese Universities and about how simple it was, which was pretty interesting. I've heard from Japanese people that it's easy, but I've never got the details as to why it's that way. What I read was that as long as you get into a fairly well know University, you've pretty much increased your chances of getting a good job, as business picks out people from good Universities. What was interesting was that it said business doesn't look for grades, and because of this, the students are all laxed and just play around knowing they're in a safe zone already. Some interesting statistics I remembered from it was that 59% of University students do not study at all. A couple, 10% or so, studies about an hour a day. (This is for pretty basic studies, so stuff like Engineering does required hard work). People who do attend class just chat or sleep and play around. I've also read that only about 20% of the students attend class. Because of this, teachers just lectures without really giving a crap about it, give little to no homework, and make exams quite simple that an overnight cram can pretty much pass the test.
Keiichi
☝
Keiichi
☝
Are you the teacher? If so, お努めご苦労さまです。chiquiliquis said:
Yes, some prefectures still use relative socres on high school entrance exams, but I want to note that they are minority today (less than 20%) and they are special case during a transition period.chiquiliquis said:
That's true. Most of you may wonder why no placement by grades (or achievement ). The reason is that there have been a nuisance argument that placement by grades is a discrimination policy.chiquiliquis said:
This may be rather superficial. Although I don't know your definition of 'busy', Japanese students are not busy, they just waste much of their time.chiquiliquis said:
Actualy, students today have much less lessons in school than before.
In my opinion, people have lost sight of value of public educationchiquiliquis said:
I think that regarding children as stressful itself is the source of problems with education in Japan. Kids are simply spoiled. They are not trained well at home. Well trained kids usulally have no problem. The problem exist at home and it appear at school.chiquiliquis said:
Legato
後輩
- 31 Jul 2004
- 93
- 3
This is all very interesting, it completely destroyed my vision of the very strict Japanese school system, however I would like to add something despite the fact that I have no experience with education in Japan. Apparently kids are no longer stressed, at least not as much as they used to be, with school in Japan but it was not an exception, it only depends on the type of school, familly background and expectations and personality, for example in France the grandes ecoles (great schools) which are for elites have their share of suicides because of failure and in some dorms they even had to put bars on the windows to prevent students from jumping, I know it sounds like a joke but it can happen anywhere.
Ewok85
先輩
- 14 Nov 2003
- 2,401
- 44
Ok, I highly recommend this book as a read. Its like 1am and i have work so i'll keep this quick and you can have more tomorrow.
Its a little dated, dealing mainly with events from the lates 80's. Some of the points I'd highly agree with is the dehumanization of the teaching in Japan, where students can feel that they are not being treated like people and lack basic rights. This may be to overwhelming rules, sporadic punishment etc. Some examples given include a young boy beaten to death on a school trip after bringing an electric hair dryer by his teacher (who was given 3 years in prison for involuntary manslaughter), a 15yr girl who was crushed between the wall and a gate by an 'enthusiastic' teacher, who wasnt blamed as if the girl had been on time she wouldnt have been crushed and have died (she had never been previously late before). A 15yr old boy was beaten to death with a metal baseball bat by a teacher and several other students as punishment. In 1991 a 16yr old girl and 14yr old boy died after being locked in a railway container by a teacher in the height of summer for 44hrs straight.
Its not just grades that these kids have to put up with. They also have to deal with an ever increasing autocratic and nationalistic system, where they are silenced, forced to stop thinking for themselves and to criticize others. Theres some other examples that made me pale, one talking about PE teachers and club activities. A young girl who was a top ranked javalin thrower was hit, shouted at and lectured on several occasions at length for petty things such as not handing up a personal daily diary to the PE teacher (so he could keep track of her like outside of training, or lack of) and a junior club member not coming to training. The teacher also lectured her on her end-of-semester exam score and told her that she would not be allowed to continue her training or attend a training camp, she hung herself that evening.
Its a little dated, dealing mainly with events from the lates 80's. Some of the points I'd highly agree with is the dehumanization of the teaching in Japan, where students can feel that they are not being treated like people and lack basic rights. This may be to overwhelming rules, sporadic punishment etc. Some examples given include a young boy beaten to death on a school trip after bringing an electric hair dryer by his teacher (who was given 3 years in prison for involuntary manslaughter), a 15yr girl who was crushed between the wall and a gate by an 'enthusiastic' teacher, who wasnt blamed as if the girl had been on time she wouldnt have been crushed and have died (she had never been previously late before). A 15yr old boy was beaten to death with a metal baseball bat by a teacher and several other students as punishment. In 1991 a 16yr old girl and 14yr old boy died after being locked in a railway container by a teacher in the height of summer for 44hrs straight.
Its not just grades that these kids have to put up with. They also have to deal with an ever increasing autocratic and nationalistic system, where they are silenced, forced to stop thinking for themselves and to criticize others. Theres some other examples that made me pale, one talking about PE teachers and club activities. A young girl who was a top ranked javalin thrower was hit, shouted at and lectured on several occasions at length for petty things such as not handing up a personal daily diary to the PE teacher (so he could keep track of her like outside of training, or lack of) and a junior club member not coming to training. The teacher also lectured her on her end-of-semester exam score and told her that she would not be allowed to continue her training or attend a training camp, she hung herself that evening.
