There have been long-term articles on the Internet about how Japanese primary school students are "excellent", "self-reliance", and "a few streets away from Chinese children". So what are the characteristics of Japanese primary school education, what are the advantages, and what are the exaggerations or even shortcomings? The reporter's children have been enrolled in Japanese primary schools for two years. Through the observations and experiences over the past two years, the reporter has had some thoughts on Japanese primary school education - relaxation, school (credit class), collective, and equality can become the keywords for summarizing Japanese primary school education.
Collective event competition at the Japanese primary school sports meeting (photo by Huayi)
No exams, attach importance to sports
00000000s, Japanese public primary schools are relatively relaxed, schools do not have midterm exams, final exams, class rankings, etc., and there is no Olympiad mathematics, and students are under less pressure in school.
However, this is already a situation of "loose education". In the early years, public education in Japan was more relaxed and was called "loose education". "Lose education" in a broad sense refers to the narrow sense of "Lose education" in the 1980s to around 2010 (the school began to implement a five-day school system per week), and the learning guidance principles that attach importance to "Lose education". The original intention of Japan to promote "loose education" is to reduce rote memorization in teaching and improve students' independent learning ability, thinking ability, problem-solving ability and life ability. A major feature of "loose education" is the reduction in school learning time, the average weekly class hours for primary and secondary school students are reduced by two hours, the Mandarin teaching time during the six years of primary school is reduced by more than 200 hours, and the "comprehensive learning" time outside of teaching is increased by about 400 hours. "Comprehensive Learning Time" can carry out various extracurricular activities and community activities instead of teaching textbook knowledge.
"Loose education" is mixed in Japan, and it is currently more of a reflection voice. The "loose education" in recent years shows that the Japanese government has corrected the "loose education" with the intention of once again enriching the content of public education and improving the quality of education. The most criticized thing about "loose education" is the decline in learning ability of Japanese students. According to the International Study Ability Survey, during the implementation of "loose education", the rankings of Japanese students' mathematical thinking and interpretation abilities have dropped significantly. A 2006 survey showed that Japanese students' mathematical ability fell to tenth and their scientific ability fell to fifth.
Putting aside a few private primary schools, since the education of public primary schools is relatively relaxed, Japanese children who do not attend or attend less cram school have more time to play. This is also the reason why Japanese children generally have good sports abilities. Moreover, Japan's sports facilities are relatively complete, and the school playground is also open after primary schools. You can often see that it is almost dark and there are children playing football on the playground. The playground of the primary school is also open during the weekend, and is mainly organized by parents to prepare the sports equipment kept in the school’s sports warehouse for students who come to play.
Schools are loose, cram school classes are popular,
Japan's basic education stages are mainly divided into public schools and private schools. Public primary schools do not require tuition or exams, and you can enter nearby. Private primary schools require exams, and private primary schools require one year tuition fee of about 100,000 yuan. The majority of families who choose public schools in primary school account for the vast majority, but in junior high school, in order to prepare for the college entrance examination, the proportion of families who choose to go to private middle schools has increased significantly. In primary school, many parents with conditions will send their children to training classes such as Mandarin, mathematics, English, and programming, and many people choose interest classes such as chess, calligraphy, painting, and dance.
contrasts with "loose education" with "loose education" the prosperity of extracurricular cram schools in Japan, which may also be an inevitable result of "loose education". According to statistics from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan, in 2014, there were 49,322 tutoring classrooms (learning school offices, a large company can have multiple offices), with about 329,000 employees. The annual turnover of Japan's national tutoring industry is 943.3 billion yen (about 56.2 billion yuan). The average annual turnover of each firm is 19.13 million yen (about 1.14 million yuan). Due to the problem of less birth, the number of students in Japan has been showing a downward trend, so the number of cram schools has also decreased year by year.
Although Japan reduces the importance of exams and grades in the teaching and learning of public schools and does not "rank" the seats based on grades, in a society where students are born in prestigious schools, the competition for students to enter prestigious schools has always existed, so students and parents turn their energy to cram schools, which further fuels the market for private schools and extracurricular cram schools in Japan. A 2015 survey showed that 65% of the University of Tokyo students attended various extracurricular cram schools since elementary school, while the proportion of those attended cram schools from junior high school to high school is even greater.
Japan Ministry of Culture, Science and Technology A survey on student study costs in 2014 showed that the total cost of going to national and public schools from kindergarten to university was about 12.13 million yen (about 720,000 yuan), while the total cost of going to private schools was about 27.49 million yen (about 1.62 million yuan). These do not include the cost of off-campus cram school. Many Japanese and Chinese parents believe that whether they go to public or private schools, if they want to get into prestigious universities, cram school is almost essential. A high school student may need millions of yen a year to attend an extracurricular cram school, while Japan's annual income is 4.2 million yen (about 250,000 yuan). The cost of extracurricular cram school is a huge expense for many Japanese families. For students with poor family conditions, the so-called "loose education" will obviously lower their competitiveness in going to school and strengthen their class solidification. The university admission rate in Japan in 2017 was 52.6%. Many students choose to enter vocational schools or work directly after graduating from high school. It can be said that "loose education" makes it more difficult for them to break through the ceiling of social classes.
Focus on the collective and pay attention to balance
In Japanese primary school education, special attention is paid to cultivating students' collective consciousness. At the school sports meeting every year, the students are divided into two groups of red and white. Each event is divided into two groups of confrontations and finally compares the total scores of the two groups, which makes each student feel that he belongs to a large group and should work hard for the group. Moreover, most competition events are group events or group performances, such as relay games, group pitching, group dribbling, stick grabbing (similar to tug of war), etc.
Another feature of primary education in Japan is equality. Public primary schools across the country, whether in cities or rural areas, have almost the same configuration - the same gymnasium, the same swimming pool, and the same meals. Almost all students enter school nearby, walking or taking the tram to school. Their daughter's school is only a few hundred meters away from home. They go to and from school alone every day. There is no private car to pick up and drop off children at the entrance of Japanese elementary school. Some schools with longer distances will organize students to form a team to go to and from school together.
In addition to the balance of hardware facilities, schools also pursue equality in teacher allocation. Primary school principals are rotated almost every year, and many teachers and staff often rotate between different primary schools in the same area, so as to ensure the homogeneity of public education as much as possible. But the difference from many Chinese schools is that the teachers in Japanese public schools are "all-round" and the third-grade class teacher Yasuda teaches them both Mandarin and mathematics, and also teaches sports, society, etc., "one major and multi-efficacy." Although school ended around 3 pm, the teachers' burden of preparing lessons and correcting homework is not easy. If we consider the teaching quality alone, the teaching quality of full-time teachers in many Chinese schools should be better than that of Japanese "all-round" teachers.
