The Japanese educational system equips almost every student with the
functional literacy and numeracy skills needed to become a useful worker
in an industrial society. Japanese primary and secondary education is touted
as the foundation on which Japan's spectacular economic success has been
built.
Japanese education is a 6334 system, i.e., 6 years of primary school, 3 years of middle school, 3 years of high school, and 4 years of university. This system, which was modelled on the U.S. system, was adopted in 1947 during the Allied Occupation following the end of World War II. The 6 years of primary school and the 3 years of middle school have been compulsory and free since then. As far as the years of schooling are concerned, Japan is no different from other developed and developing nations such as the United States, South Korea, and Taiwan. It is what goes on inside the system that distinguishes Japan from most other nations.
The Japanese educational philosophy can be summarized as follows. All children have the ability to learn what is taught at school, but they vary in levels of achievement mainly because they exert different amounts of effort, perseverance, and discipline. Any student can overcome his or her poor achievement by dint of effort, without the help of remedial teachers and counsellors. Reflecting this philosophy, the children advance to higher school grades automatically.
The physical setting of, and life in, a typical classroom in a Japanese school is Spartan with few frills: A stove with a chimney heats a room; children themselves clean their own classroom, scrubbing the floor on hands and knees. Lunch, provided by the school and paid for by the parents, is served by the children themselves and is eaten in the classroom, in the presence of their class teacher. Virtually everything about a classroom, except that lunch is now provided instead of being brought from home, is traditional and has not changed for some decades. The classroom has few frills, not because of lack of funds but because it is deliberately kept Spartan so that the children can concentrate on studying and developing character.
In contrast to the Spartan classroom setting, the educational facilities in Japanese schools are excellent. A typical primary school has a library, a science lab, a physical education room, an arts-and-crafts room, and a music room equipped with a piano and other musical instruments. Most public primary schools have swimming pools. Computers are easily available. Both primary and secondary schools take advantage of educational TV programs.
What are the fruits of the time and effort devoted to primary and secondary education in Japan? Japanese education provides almost all students with functional literacy, i.e., a level of reading, writing, and math skills adequate to allow them to function in an industrial society. It shapes "a whole population, workers as well as managers, to a standard inconceivable in the United States, where we are still trying to implement high school graduation competency tests that measure only minimal reading and computing skills" (Rohlen 1983: 322).
The psychologist Stevenson and his associates (1993) have carried out a cross-cultural comparison of the mathematical abilities and reading skills of children in Taipei in Taiwan, Sendai in Japan, and Minneapolis in the United States. The number of the children studied in each city was 240. The same children were tested three times: in 1980 when they were in Grade I; in 1984 when they were in Grade V; and in 1990 when they were in Grade XI. At Grade XI, 4,000 additional children who were not in the original study were included. In mathematics achievement, the Taiwanese children were at the top in each test, followed closely by the Japanese children; and the American children were far below the East Asian children. On the reading vocabulary test, the rank order from high to low scores was: Taiwanese, American, and Japanese in 1980 but Japanese, Taiwanese, and American in 1990. The achievement gap between East Asian children and American children is real and persistent.
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