Another way Japan gets kids to be more serious about their studies is the juken or "entrance exam" system, which requires students to prepare for a year or more for a single test that will determine what university they go to...or what high school. Yes, since high school is not compulsory in Japan, the high school system acts like a miniature version of the university system, with students competing to get into different high schools depending on their academic level and personal goals. My son has set his sights on a science-centric high school which is quite difficult for him, which means he'll be studying his butt off to prepare for the test next February. It's actually quite a big change for our family, as I almost never get to see my son (who is just 14) any more, plus we have to drive 30 km to the neighboring city to pick him up. While I'm proud of him for setting a goal for himself and working towards it, I'm kind of sad that I can't do fun stuff with my son as much. When students go off to take their important tests, mothers will give them a box of Kit Kat, which sounds similar to kitto katsu, which means "you will surely win" in Japanese.
Nestle's Kit Kat has become the official snack of test-takers in Japan, which the company is all too happy to exploit.
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More accurately, most public schools publish the ranking openly and more private schools let the parent and the student know his own rank, e.g. my son is #1 in science, #2 in English and so on and we can figure out other students' ranking, although we don't know for sure.
If High School isn't compulsory, at what age can you opt out of education in Japan? I'm interested because it has always seemed strange to me that a country (England, but lots of other countries as well) which offers free education up to age 16 also has to have a law to enforce people to take advantage of it. If ecucation is all that marvellous surely everyone would want to take part?
Maybe education isn't all that marvellous when you take it for granted that your students have to be there.
Anyone can opt out of school after the third year of junior high, which is where compulsory ends. Of course most people don't because there's a huge stigma against it -- the word is 中卒 (chuusotsu) meaning "only graduated from junior high school" which is the epitome of baka (stupid). I gather in very rural parts of Japan like Aomori (at the top of the main island of Honshu) a lot of kids just start working at age 15-16 and don't go to high school, but in cities like Tokyo there's a lot more education.
High school isn't ever free, I think that even municipal schools charge $100 a month or so. My daughter's school is private and it's like $300 a month, no that bad but most Americans would not understand the idea since private schools are quite rare, at least in California.
I love the woman´s face in that picture.
She is like : "thank you for helping me be succeed chocolate-san!"
This is funny, yesterday my son was working on an essay for school til midnight and fell asleep at his computer. I personally let him know that I was proud of him for setting high goals but that he didn't need to feel any pressure from me, but he is doing this all on his own, so I'll support him even if it means driving to Maebashi to pick him up three times a week at night.
I've always been puzzled by the idea of competition in Japan. Within a society that says, "The nail that sticks up shall be pounded down", isn't the act of doing better than your rival tantamount to trying to become the nail that sticks up? How does the Japanese society reconcile this apparent paradox? Is it required of the better rival to be that much more self effacing, and to attribute his or her success to something like "good luck", rather than admitting that they are proud of themselves for working so hard? If that is the case, does the better rival ever really get to experience a sense of satisfaction, or do they just end up feeling guilty that they have somehow made everyone else in the group look bad by their own success? What do you say, Peter? By the way, best wishes to your son. Also, it sounds like you're being a great dad.
Interesting. In the UK we had a similar system until about 40 years ago (now it only works in a few areas). There was an exam called "11 Plus" which you took at the end of your primary school education, and the results of that test decided whether you went to a Grammar School (which took the top 15-20% of kids) or a Secondary Modern (which took the rest) There were sometimes also Technical Schools - and many of the Grammar Schools were single-sex.
These split schools were eventually replaced with a single "Comprehensive" school in many regions - though the Grammar/Secondary split remains in some. I went to a boys-only Grammar school in the 80s - and got a really good education (a number of us got to Oxford or Cambridge) as a result - though the split was undoubtedly socially divisive, as you stopped seeing good friends from school every day.
Always gotta take a jab at the U.S huh Peter? and what are you talking about? There are private schools all over the U.S and many of them are quite expensive. It is indeed a paradox Deedubb but I think that only applies to people trying to standout from society and Japans insistance that they keep their heads down and not disrupt the status quo. Just another way Japans wonderfully repressive, inflexible society keeps it's citizens in a borg-like mentality.
Steve, thanks for the comments.
Dennis, didn't mean to make a stab at America, I'm just most familiar with it and tend to compare my own experiences. Yes, there are a lot of private schools although it's largely (it seems to me anyway) an East Coast thing more than it is a Southern California thing. Hence, I made sure to add "at least more than I observed growing up in California" to qualify it. I never knew a single person who went to private school or who had their kids in private school, just to give my own experiences again. My point was that it's interesting to see the mechanisms (not all good by any means) that kids are encouraged to study instead of (as would happen in San Diego) sitting out on on the power transformer with friends doing nothing, or starting work at part-time jobs at the age of 16, or doing something else that might be less beneficial to their lives (including drugs, to a certain extent).
It's also interesting that my son is mature enough at the age of 14 to make decisions like, I want to go to this high school which is super-hard meaning I have to study til 10 pm three nights a week to get in. Oh and that also means I have to break up with my girlfriend (yes, my son has a girlfriend, making me a failure as a geek dad ^_^) since she will be going to a different school. I know I didn't have that much maturity at that age, and hell, I almost transferred college to be with a girl I was seeing, that would have been a disaster.
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