In this volume, eight leading Japanese scholars present their research on profound and sensitive issues facing Japanese society, much of which has not been available to the English-speaking world. Traveling from Japan to engage in a unique forum at the University of California, they joined eminent professors Befu, DeVos, and Rohlen to bring over fifty leading scholars up to date on the global challenges facing Japan and how education has and will play into the reformulation of its identity. Chapters examine such topics as education policy changes, the education of minorities, including the Burakumin, the hegemony of college entrance examinations, social mobility and basic human rights, increased economic competition and global migration, political influences on educational reform, and the future of Japanese education.

This comprehensive study of the Japanese education system follows the Japanese child from the kindergarten, through the progressively more arduous and competitive environments of the elementary, middle and high schools, to the relative relaxation, even hedonism, of university life. Drawing on numerous surveys and on the author's personal experience, it provides a wealth of information on teaching methodologies, discipline, class sizes, the school day, assessment and the national curriculum. It also examines the role of the central Ministry of Education and the local boards in administering education throughout the country, and outlines and assesses the government's recent programs of educational reform. The behavior, attitudes and expectations of pupils and parents are discussed in detail, and placed within their political, social and historical context, revealing the complex cultural assumptions determining learning and socialization in Japan. This study thus contributes to the efforts of educators and sociologists to understand and evaluate different approaches to education in diverse cultures, increasingly important in the global information age. It shows how the American and Japanese education systems are based on fundamentally different concepts of society: democratic individualism and hierarchic collectivism respectively. While discussing the positive and negative effects of each extreme, it suggests that American educators might learn from a system in which truancy, insolence, violence and drug abuse are comparatively rare. However, the study shows how the traditional ideals of Japanese education - unquestioning acceptance, self-sacrifice, and respect for superiors - face serious challenges in a time of globalization, and moral, social and cultural change.

Compares United States elementary education practices with those in Asia and comes to some surprising conclusions.

The History of Modern Japanese Education is the first account in English of the construction of a national school system in Japan, as outlined in the 1872 document, the Gakusei. Divided into three parts tracing decades of change, the book begins by exploring the feudal background for the Gakusei during the Tokugawa era which produced the initial leaders of modern Japan. Next, Benjamin Duke traces the Ministry of Education's investigations of the 1870s to determine the best western model for Japan, including the decision to adopt American teaching methods. He then goes on to cover the eventual "reverse course" sparked by the Imperial Household protest that the western model overshadowed cherished Japanese traditions. Ultimately, the 1890 Imperial Rescript on Education integrated Confucian teachings of loyalty and filial piety with Imperial ideology, laying the moral basis for a western-style academic curriculum in the nation's schools.

In this dismantling of the myth of Japanese "quality education", McVeigh investigates the consequences of what happens when statistical and corporatist forces monopolize the purpose of schooling and the boundary between education and employment is blurred.

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.

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.