Educational standards in Japan are the highest in the world. In this first comprehensive study of these standards Professor Richard Lynn concludes that Japanese teenagers are about two years ahead of their contemporaries in Europe and the United States.

On the basis of direct personal observation in the classroom, systematically gathered data, and extensive reading in primary sources, the author provides a rich description of how a society can be gradually transformed by the educational process in its schools. He then relates this process to the problems of the advanced industrial world. Originally published in 1980. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Educational standards in Japan are the highest in the world. In this first comprehensive study of these standards Professor Richard Lynn concludes that Japanese teenagers are about two years ahead of their contemporaries in Europe and the United States.

This book examines why Japan has one of the highest enrolment rates in cram schools and private tutoring worldwide. It sheds light on the causes of this high dependence on ‘shadow education’ and its implications for social inequalities. The book provides a deep and extensive understanding of the role of this kind of education in Japan. It shows new ways to theoretically and empirically address this issue, and offers a comprehensive perspective on the impact of shadow education on social inequality formation that is based on reliable and convincing empirical analyses. Contrary to earlier studies, the book shows that shadow education does not inevitably result in increasing or persisting inequalities, but also inherits the potential to let students overcome their status-specific disadvantages and contributes to more opportunities in education. Against the background of the continuous expansion and the convergence of shadow education systems across the globe, the findings of this book call for similar works in other national contexts, particularly Western societies without traditional large-scale shadow education markets. The book emphasizes the importance and urgency to deal with the modern excesses of educational expansion and education as an institution, in which the shadow education industry has made itself (seemingly) indispensable.

This book is an up-to-date critical examination of schooling in Japan by an expert in this field. It focuses on developments in the last two decades, with a particular interest in social justice. Japan has experienced slow economic growth, changed employment practices, population decline, an aging society, and an increasingly multi-ethnic population resulting from migration. It has faced a call to respond to the rhetoric of globalization and to concerns in childhood poverty in the perceived affluence. In education we have seen developments responding to these challenges in national and local educational policies, as well as in school-level practices. What are the most significant developments in schooling of the last two decades? Why have these developments emerged, and how will they affect youth and society as a whole? How can we best interpret social justice implications of these developments in terms of both distributive justice and the politics of difference? To what extent have the shifts advanced the interests of disadvantaged groups? This book shows that, compared to three decades ago, the system of education increasingly acknowledges the need to address student diversity of all kinds, and delivers options that are more varied and flexible. But interest in social justice in education has tended to centre on the distribution of education (who gets how much of schooling), with fewer questions raised about the content of schooling that continues to advantage the already advantaged. Written in a highly accessible style, and aimed at scholars and students in the fields of comparative education, sociology of education and Japanese studies, this book illuminates changing policies and cumulative adjustments in the daily practice of schooling, as well as how various groups in society make sense of these changes.

The fact that Japanese students consistently outperform other nationalities on international tests of educational achievement has made the Japanese educational system a leading topic for media attention and evaluative study. This volume is a collection of essays by Japanese and American scholars in the field of Japanese education that presents a current systematic overview of this system, its strengths, and its weaknesses. Topics ranging from the history of Japanese education and its recent reform campaign to the methods used to teach preschoolers and elementary students, women, teachers, and engineers are the primary focus of this study. Each contributor writes both within his or her own specialty and with a view to those political, social, and economic factors that affect the Japanese educational climate. A look to the future of Japanese higher education, as well as guidelines that can benefit educational systems in other countries, conclude the work.

Drawing on Japan's experiences with testing, overtesting, and recent reforms to relax educational pressures, Christopher Bjork sheds light on the best path forward for US schools. He asks a variety of questions related to testing and reform, and each draws direct parallels to issues that the schools currently face.

This open access edited volume is a comparative effort to discern the short-term educational impact of the covid-19 pandemic on students, teachers and systems in Brazil, Chile, Finland, Japan, Mexico, Norway, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, Spain, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States. One of the first academic comparative studies of the educational impact of the pandemic, the book explains how the interruption of in person instruction and the variable efficacy of alternative forms of education caused learning loss and disengagement with learning, especially for disadvantaged students. Other direct and indirect impacts of the pandemic diminished the ability of families to support children and youth in their education. For students, as well as for teachers and school staff, these included the economic shocks experienced by families, in some cases leading to food insecurity and in many more causing stress and anxiety and impacting mental health. Opportunity to learn was also diminished by the shocks and trauma experienced by those with a close relative infected by the virus, and by the constrains on learning resulting from students having to learn at home, where the demands of schoolwork had to be negotiated with other family necessities, often sharing limited space. Furthermore, the prolonged stress caused by the uncertainty over the resolution of the pandemic and resulting from the knowledge that anyone could be infected and potentially lose their lives, created a traumatic context for many that undermined the necessary focus and dedication to schoolwork. These individual effects were reinforced by community effects, particularly for students and teachers living in communities where the multifaceted negative impacts resulting from the pandemic were pervasive. This is an open access book.

This open access book offers a comparative study of eight ambitious national reforms that sought to create opportunities for students to gain the necessary breath of skills to thrive in a rapidly changing world. It examines how national governments transform education systems to provide students opportunities to develop such skills. It analyses comprehensive education reforms in Brazil, Finland, Japan, Mexico, Peru, Poland, Portugal and Russia and yields original and important insights on the process of educational change. The analysis of these 21st century skills reforms shows that reformers followed approaches which are based on the five perspectives: cultural, psychological, professional, institutional and political. Most reforms relied on institutional and political perspectives. They highlight the systemic nature of the process of educational change, and the need for alignment and coherence among the various elements of the system in order. They underscore the importance of addressing the interests of various stakeholders of the education system in obtaining the necessary impetus to initiate and sustain change. In contrast, as the book shows, the use of a cultural and psychological frame proved rarer, missing important opportunities to draw on systematic analysis of emerging demands for schools and on cognitive science to inform the changes in the organization of instruction. Drawing on a rich array of sources and evidence the book provides a careful account of how education reform works in practice. This work was published by Saint Philip Street Press pursuant to a Creative Commons license permitting commercial use. All rights not granted by the work's license are retained by the author or authors.