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Briefing Report

Yutori Kyoiku and Problems Involved

Psychiatrist
Mr.Hideki Wada

[Society] April 19 , 2006

As my topic of discussion today, I have chosen yutori kyoiku [pressure-free education], the Japanese term used to refer to the new and more relaxed educational system that was introduced in 2002, as well as the current state of the scholastic abilities of Japanese children. I have chosen this topic due to my desire to explain the reality behind my belief that one of the impressions of Japan that I believe most people from other countries embrace is already crumbling. While this may be little more than my own personal assumption, it is my view that the image of Japanese children studying extremely hard, possessing extremely high academic abilities, and being extremely diligent and outstanding in their studies is particularly prevalent among foreigners and is held by many Japanese, too. On the one hand, this is a highly respectable impression, and I am flattered that so many people feel that we Japanese are diligent and outstanding in what we do. On the other hand, however, we also hear a lot of criticism that Japanese children are made to do nothing else but study.

The thinking that forcing children to study all the time is not a good idea gained a following in Japan as well, linked, for example, to the problems of juvenile delinquency, truancy, inability to keep up with the pace at school, children attending cram schools until late at night, and other trends. In the midst of such criticism, the idea of yutori kyoiku emerged from political circles as a means of halting the practice of making Japanese children study excessively all the time. Simply stated, yutori kyoiku refers to reductions in curriculum and class hours. As a result, though, the move to yutori kyoiku functioned to reduce study time despite the fact that Japanese children were actually not being forced to study as hard and as often as many people thought.

Japan maintains a set of national guidelines, known as the “Course of Study,” which determine the curriculums that all children should study in elementary, junior, and senior high school and how many hours they should spend in the classroom. In 2002, these guidelines underwent sweeping revisions, with curriculums slashed by 30 percent and class hours by 20 percent. Using the OECD Education Outlook of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD] as a reference, a comparison of annual classroom hours in various countries (with ninth graders as the target) shows that even prior to 2002, the level for Japan was by no means high in relation to those in North America and Europe. With instruction time then effectively reduced by about 20 percent from 2002, Japan became one of the lowest countries in this category among the industrialized nations, including those in North America, Europe, and Asia. This is especially true of the total class hours devoted to science and mathematics, a category in which Japan ranks lower than the Western nations; in particular, the Japanese level is not even half that of the United States and Australia.

Today, to give you an example of the degree to which curriculum content has been reduced, I want to look at arithmetic—a subject in which this change is said to be particularly striking. It is true that Japan was once a country with an extensive arithmetic curriculum. However, it is also a fact that the transition to yutori kyoiku in 2002 did not mark the first time that this curriculum was reduced. Cuts had already been made in 1977 and then again in 1989. Based on those changes, Japan’s arithmetic curriculum had already been pared down to a degree lower than its counterparts in Singapore or South Korea, with even further cutbacks implemented from 2002. The most conspicuous reductions were made in calculation drills. In Japan, the former practice was to teach children two-digit addition by the end of the first grade of elementary school. From 2002, however, the teaching schedule was reduced to cover only single-digit addition during that year.

In addition, the former approach was to teach four-digit addition and subtraction by the end of the third grade. Now, there is not enough time to learn those skills during the elementary school years at all, with some children instructed to perform such computations with a calculator. Anyone who has ever taken a taxi in Japan most likely has had the experience of paying a fare with a \5,000 or \10,000 bill and having the driver hand over the change without using any calculator. With the education now in force, though, many people will find themselves unable to handle such everyday transactions without the use of a calculator.

What’s more, children have stopped learning multiplication with three digits and more, and there have also been major reductions in decimal and fraction calculations. For instance, in the past Japanese students first learned how to add and subtract fractions in the third grade of elementary school. This has now been pushed back to the fourth grade. There is no teaching at all, furthermore, of how to add, subtract, and multiply to the second decimal point and beyond. As a result, while it cannot be said that students are not initially taught that the “pi” ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter is 3.14, or 3.1415, students are told to figure pi as “approximately 3” when actually calculating. The attitude behind teaching children to calculate in this way has been explained in terms of a reassessment of the conventional Japanese educational approach to instruct children only how to compute, with the change reportedly made to increase the number of problems designed to nurture the ability to think. However, although students were formerly taught about squares, rectangles, and right triangles by the end of the second grade, those lessons have now been delayed to the third grade. Diagrammatical congruence and symmetry, previously part of the fifth or sixth grades lessons, are not taught at all. So in this way, so-called “thinking problems” have also been reduced.

In considering the issue of the declining scholastic abilities of Japanese children, in addition to the types of curriculum cuts made in schools that I mentioned, I also want to touch upon the problem of the nation’s falling birthrate. Japan has experienced two different baby booms in modern times—the first coming soon after the end of World War II with the birth of a large number of children. Those baby boomers eventually grew up and had children of their own. This second boom, therefore, refers to children born between 1971 and 1974. When this second generation of baby boomers reached the age of 18, around the start of the 1990s, there was one year when the number of 18-year-olds in Japan numbered more than 2.02 million. At present, the age-18 population is about 1.3 million. Since no reduction has occurred in the quotas of students being accepted into schools, however, there has been a major easing in the fierceness of entrance exam competition.

When the members of the second baby boomer generation reached the age of 15 and took high school entrance exams under the Japanese educational system, it was the latter half of the 1980s. This was an era now described as being extremely tough for getting into the high school of choice, and Japan was also in the midst of the boom times of the “bubble economy.” The call went up to the effect, “Don’t disappoint children in the spring of their fifteenth year!” This meant, essentially, that junior high school graduates should not be forced to spend an extra year as ronin [studying for high school entrance exams after failing to get into a school the first time around]. With that, a tremendous number of new public high schools were built. After only another 10 years or so, however, the number of children of that age plummeted by 500,000 to 700,000. As a result, other than students determined to win acceptance into the very highest-ranked schools, all junior high school students found it possible to get into some high school regardless of how hard they studied for the entrance exams.

Let’s examine the specific impact of this situation. In my opinion, Japan was once a country in which junior high school students studied very hard. There was a time in Japan when almost every child worked hard at school, motivated by the desire to graduate from high school at the very least. Keeping this in mind, let’s refer to the results of the “Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study” [TIMSS], an international academic ability survey. According to the findings of this study for the average number of hours a day devoted to study by eighth graders, in 1999 the figure for Japanese children was 1.7 hours, against an international average of 2.8 hours. Compared to the results for 1995, this represented a drop in the figure for Japan of 0.6 hours. Thus, the number of hours studied by Japanese children in that age group dropped significantly in only four years.

Next, let’s consider the percentage of students who study outside of school—for example, at cram schools or doing homework at home. In 1999 the figure for Japan was only 59 percent. Conversely, this means that 41 percent of the children surveyed did not study at all once they went home from school. The international average for children studying in places other than school was 80 percent, which underscores just how many children are not studying outside of school in Japan. This was also a 13-percentage point increase over 1995. Again, this means that a mere four years has seen a truly significant percentage of Japanese junior high school students give up the idea of studying after regular school hours. Rather than the problems of the so-called yutori kyoiku, I believe that an even greater impact has most likely been generated by the fact that it is no longer necessary to study excessively hard for entrance exams. That is, students will be able to get into some high school even if they don’t study at all.

In 2007, furthermore, the number of applicants to Japanese colleges will fall to the same level as the available slots, with the openings then rising to exceed the number of applicants in the years thereafter. From 2007, therefore, almost all high school students will be able to get into college as long as they are not picky about which one they attend. Over the years, the greatest incentive for Japanese children to study has been the task of preparing for entrance exams. In view of that, there is now the fear that children who cannot get into high-ranked schools by virtue of their grades—in other words, children of average or lower ability—will no longer feel motivated to study.

Another major problem currently impacting Japan can be expressed in the phrase “social-class divergence.” This refers to the issue of greater divisions of social class than before based on parents’ social status, income, academic background, and other factors. In reality, this is a trend that has also been present for some time already. Here, let’s examine the results of a study by a group of educational sociologists, primarily from the University of Tokyo, that tracked the average number of hours studied by high school juniors in 1979 and 1997. According to these findings, children from families of higher social standing were studying harder than those from lower-ranked families even in 1979, with that gap found to have widened in 1997.

The same survey also investigated the share of children who were content with whatever grades they earned as long as they didn’t fail. At all ranks of society, the percentages of children of this mindset were found to have increased in 1997, while the gaps in social class had also widened for that year’s statistics. Next, the survey looked at the percentage of children who said that they were “satisfied with their current grades”—in other words, students content with performing at their current level. In this category, we find an extremely high number of children in lower social levels who were not studying and had poor grades. Examining the share of students who felt “motivated by schoolwork to learn more about the subjects,” a high percentage of children in higher social classes expressed higher levels of curiosity, while the curiosity figures for those in lower classes were low. The 1997 figures show that the gap widened in this category as well. As this indicates, with curiosity and volition tending to run high among children in upper social classes and low among those in lower classes, the conditions make it easy for this gap to widen.

Another problem is that parents of children with low grades—in other words, parents in lower social ranks—are finding it increasingly difficult to allot money to their children’s education. Based on the percentages of children who attended cram schools in 1994, 1996, and 1998, contrary to the widespread impression that all Japanese children attend such after-school study programs, in fact the percentage of children taking part in such extra study sessions is sinking. Despite the fact that children’s academic abilities are in decline and the number of students who say they just “don’t understand” is rising, fewer children are attending cram schools. So in this way, at the lower levels of society children have no inquisitiveness about their studies, while the parents are reluctant to put money into education and tend to give up because they see nothing to be gained from having their children study so hard. I feel that this situation poses a serious dilemma for present-day Japan. What’s more, since it is now possible to attend high school and even go on to college without studying all that much, there is the concern that children in the lower halves of their peer groups in terms of academic ability and social class will come to study even less frequently.

To get a better idea of what this all means, I wish to refer to the results of the TIMSS survey on “seventh grader mathematics achievement.” In 1981 Japanese children led the world in math achievement by a decisive margin. In the 1995 TIMSS survey, however, Japan finished behind Hong Kong and Singapore, and in 1999 it was also outstripped by Taiwan and Belgium. In the 2003 survey of “junior high school mathematics scores,” the reading comprehension of Japanese junior high school students was ranked fourteenth (at 498 points). This ranking was weighted with 500 points as the average, showing that Japanese children fail to even qualify as run of the mill. While the scores were somewhat higher for mathematical literacy (534 points), Japan ranked below Hong Kong and South Korea in this category as well. When we consider that the only Asian countries participating in the OECD survey are Hong Kong, South Korea, and Japan, this means Japan is now bottom in the Asian ranking. In the TIMSS survey on “eighth grader mathematics achievement” as well, while in 2003 Japan ranked fourth in the world (570 points), it was last in Asia.

There is the further problem of the academic abilities of Japanese university students. We subjected students from various universities to a simple math test containing a mix of 25 problems ranging from the elementary school to the high school level. For your information, math is not included in the entrance examinations for the humanities departments of private universities in Japan. Among the elementary school–level questions, this particular test contained computation of fractions. At Waseda, Keio, and other renowned universities, about 20 percent of the students taking the test were unable to compute fractions. Seventy percent couldn’t handle the type of quadratic equations learned at the junior high school level. This clearly shows that failure to study math when preparing for entrance exams leads to a conspicuous decline in mathematical ability.

With 95.65 percent of a block of students from a certain university receiving perfect scores on this 25-problem test, it is clear that these questions were not truly difficult by any means. Let me add, however, that this university was not a Japanese institution. Rather, the block of students scoring that high level of perfect on the test were in the philosophy department of a certain university in China. In contrast, only 45 percent of the students in the economics department of a certain Japanese university earned perfect scores on the test. Then again, this was the top mark attained by any group of Japanese humanities university students. To continue to obtain their cooperation in this study survey, we promised to keep the names of the participating universities secret. However, in view of this precious opportunity to address you here today, I want to reveal some of the facts. The Japanese university that earned the highest score on this test was the University of Tokyo, my own alma mater. Next came Kyoto University (22.92 percent), followed by Keio University (4.70 percent) and Waseda University (1.89 percent). As this shows, not only is the academic ability level of Japanese junior high school students the lowest in Asia, but the math abilities of university students, and particularly those of students in humanities programs, are dreadful as well. Moreover, these are students from departments of economics, a field in which math is obviously of keen importance today.

It is also well known that the English-language abilities of the Japanese are extremely low. Examining the average scores of Japanese taking the Test of English as a Foreign Language [TOEFL], from 1998 Japan has come in with the lowest scores in Asia. In the case of TOEFL, of course, there are countries where only children with higher abilities take the exam and others where anyone can take it. This creates difficulties in comparing the average scores. Nevertheless, with some 170,000 Japanese and 110,000 South Koreans taking the test, despite the fact that more Koreans are being tested as a percentage of the population, Japan has finished below South Korea in the average score column.

With Japanese, or shall we say Japanese students, able to read and write English but having low speaking and listening skills, Japan is moving to change the focus of English education to stress the importance of oral work. The TOEFL speaking test is scheduled to begin from this year, which means that it has not been administered in the past. Limiting the analysis to TOEFL scores, it is true that Japan also ranks lower than other Asian countries in listening comprehension. Japan finishes even worse, however, in writing and reading comprehension skills. Therefore, we really cannot claim that the Japanese are “skilled at reading and writing but have trouble with speaking and listening.” Rather, it would be more accurate to say that “while the Japanese have poor speaking and listening skills, they are even less proficient in reading and writing.” In this regard, I believe that many of you have probably noticed that few, if any, Japanese university students read English-language newspapers.

As I have described, academic abilities are in decline on all fronts in Japan. But what I particularly want to bring to your attention today is the miserable academic achievements of children in the lower social classes. At Kawai Educational Institute, the largest cram school in Japan where students failing their university entrance exams study to retake those tests the following year, incoming students are given a test with the same set of problems in April of each year. We have a graph that distributes these results by the relative performance from last year (that is, whether students finished at the upper, upper-middle, middle, or lower levels as high school seniors), to indicate the numerical decline in the percentage of correct answers. These are strictly statistical figures, and let me add that in Japan we use the term “deviation value” to refer to academic level in relation to a certain standard. The general average marks for the upper-ranked category, therefore, are defined as a deviation value of 65 or more, while the middle-rank deviation value runs from 45 to 55.

Comparing the results of 1995 with those of 1999, in the case of science courses, the upper-ranked children declined slightly from 84.1 to 81.5 points. For the middle-ranked children, however, there was a broad drop from 57.0 to 41.7 points. For the average child, this means that in only four years’ time the number of correct answers per five problems slipped from three to two. For the lower-ranked children, the score went from 37.2 to 21.5 points during the same time—that is, from getting two of five problems correct to only about one right. Furthermore, this refers to high school graduates who want to go college even if they have to enroll at a cram school and study to pass the entrance exams to do so. This does not include the 41 percent of children that I described earlier who either enter universities without taking an entrance exam or fail to devote any time whatsoever to studies once they get home from high school.

Today, I have addressed the theme of the “decline in academic ability.” In the case of Japan, based on the sympathy felt for children who are forced to study extremely hard, and the thinking that being forced to study in this fashion is a sad plight, both the mass media and the national educational policy have supported the move to reduce the school curriculum. At the same time, linked to the problem of Japan’s declining birthrate, the level of competition at the entrance examination stage has become quite easy. In my view, a striking characteristic of Japan has been that while there may be few extremely superior elite members of society, the academic abilities of the Japanese people as a whole are high. This, I am convinced, is what has truly supported Japan over the years. However, as I explained previously, academic ability in Japan has already fallen to the lowest level in Asia. What’s more, some 40 percent of children, and probably around 50 percent if we surveyed them today, devote absolutely no time to studies once they get out of school each day. My point, therefore, is that the myth of how “diligent” the Japanese are in their school studies has largely collapsed.

The final point I want to make concerns the problem that the people at the lower levels of Japanese society are not sending their children to cram schools and otherwise choosing not to spend money on education. In view of this, in moving to rebuild the state of Japanese education, I would like to propose that we give up the conventional approach of using only entrance exams as the incentive. Rather, as was advocated in the United States by former President Bill Clinton, I suggest that studies be conducted into the potential for introducing “graduation exams” at the elementary, junior high, and senior high school levels. Or, in a method that has become a matter of course in North America and Europe, rather than reducing the contents of curriculums, we should reduce the size of classes and educate children in a more hands-on format that elevates their abilities to study and learn. You may not be aware of the fact that Japan’s spending on education as a percentage of its gross domestic product may very well be lower than in North America or any of the developed nations of Europe. Compensating for this lack of public support has been the educational zeal of parents in sending their children to cram schools or otherwise investing money in learning. With the exception of the upper echelons of society, however, this structure has also largely collapsed. As a Japanese, therefore, I favor the urgent introduction of measures to rebuild the nation’s public education, and I hope that education in general in Japan can be revived at the same time.

I also wanted to address the issue of truancy and various other problems here today. To briefly comment on such areas, the truth is that truancy, classroom violence, juvenile suicide, and other problems have increased hand in hand with the trend for children not to study as hard and by no means have been caused by any so-called practice of forcing children to study day and night.

Today, I have spoken with the hope of spreading the plain truth about the current state of Japanese education to people of other countries. I encourage the members of the press to understand and write about this situation and do their best to play a role in encouraging Japan’s politicians to take some action to improve the situation.


QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

Q: You have discussed the various harmful influences of yutori kyoiku. Though the original purpose of the Japanese government in introducing this more relaxed approach to education was to encourage more liberal thinking on the part of children, the results have produced a wide range of problems. Have there been any positive aspects stemming from the introduction of yutori kyoiku, and if so, what might they be?
A: One of the motivations in advancing yutori kyoiku can be found in the desire to do something about the increasing sense of alienation that children feel with regard to their studies, along with the growing number of children unable to keep up with their schoolwork. But as you mentioned, another reason for adopting such an educational policy was the desire for all children, including those with solid academic abilities, to have the opportunity to think more liberally about a wide range of subjects. The scheme adopted toward that end was the introduction of comprehensive learning, as opposed to curriculum-based studies. Within that approach, individuals with established careers or otherwise successful in society were invited to teach students about the linkage between studies and society. It is my understanding that there are schools at which this method has proved to be highly successful. However, because of the shoddy guidelines provided by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology on how to administer such programs, the percentage of schools charting such successes has been extremely low.
Another problem, which I touched upon previously, is the increase in the number of children, particularly those in the lower levels of society, who are lacking in volition and curiosity. Such students are unlikely to respond positively even if attempts are made to offer learning that is supposedly more enjoyable. Because of this, I don’t feel that the results have been very favorable in the quest to ensure, at the very least, that 80 percent to 90 percent of the Japanese people develop the minimum necessary academic abilities. In that sense, if the Japanese government truly believes that it is acceptable to effectively abandon such unmotivated children as long as there is an increase in the number of creative-thinking children, and despite the fact that there may be some significance in such an approach, I do not find the current method acceptable as an educational policy aimed at maintaining the academic abilities of the majority of the children in this country. Another matter is the presence of the teachers’ union in Japan, and the desire of that union’s members to have a five-day workweek, which is also a factor behind the reduced teaching hours. I feel the situation might have been salvaged to some degree by having such creative class time added to the regular curriculum. At the very least, as I mentioned before, classroom time in Japan has become the lowest of any of the OECD countries.

Q: I have three questions. The first concerns the thinking known as “emotional intelligence.” I would like to hear your opinion on the possibility of using this philosophy to generate creativity. The second question relates to your previous mention of the OECD countries. Under that comparison, it appears that there has been a decline in academic abilities in Japan. However, couldn’t it be said, for example, that Japanese kanji characters or other aspects of the very process of writing in the Japanese language render it difficult to obtain knowledge from the outset? My third question concerns the fact that you disclosed the names of certain Japanese universities. I noticed that Hitotsubashi University wasn’t among them. Why is that?
A: To answer your first question, regarding emotional intelligence, which is also known as the emotional quotient [EQ], I also believe that this is an important form of education. Compared to the past, parent-child relationships, the fathoming of other people’s feelings, and other aspects of the overall climate of Japanese society are in a state of breakdown. In the midst of such changes, I feel that EQ education is necessary in Japan as well. However, in moving to offer EQ education in Japan, as I have stated, I see no need to cut back on normal learning time. For EQ, meanwhile, there are five essential elements that are said to play a part: (1) knowing your own emotions; (2) controlling your own emotions; (3) motivating yourself; (4) understanding the feelings of others; and (5) maintaining good human relations with others. In regard to this, first of all, advances in brain research in recent years show that doing arithmetic problems serves to stimulate the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that controls emotions.
Secondly, and this is my own arbitrary conclusion, I also feel there is the aspect in which devoting yourself to demanding studies helps develop the ability to manage emotions. Besides this, I think that almost all Japanese students preparing for entrance exams engage in some sort of self-motivational training. With regard to human relations, there is widespread criticism that relationships with other people are worsened by entrance exam studies. For myself, though, as someone who attended a high school that sends many students to the University of Tokyo, when friends helped out and taught each other in the preparation process, overall performance seemed to improve. In Japan, there is the problem of certain teachers who tell their students that everyone around them is an “opponent.” I feel that the dilemma in this area can be resolved through efforts to teach students that mutual help is actually more effective in getting into college than embracing such feelings of hostility.
In responding to your second question, I have no clear-cut conclusion. My impression however, is that while the Japanese people tend to be weak in foreign languages, our considerably complicated character system and complex phrasing is beneficial in supporting versatile thinking. During the Edo period [1603–1868] of Japanese history, for example, although hardly anyone in Japan studied foreign languages and only learned kanji characters for the most part, the Japanese were known for having outstanding abilities in learning foreign languages when they went to America or Europe.
For your third question, regarding Hitotsubashi University, I feel that Hitotsubashi is indeed a very good university. I have personally had several occasions to engage in discussions with professors from Hitotsubashi, and they have told me that there is no policy in force of not administering mathematics tests at the department of economics. In other words, students cannot be admitted to the Hitotsubashi economics department without being tested in math. I am currently teaching medical economics, and there are many highly motivated professors at Hitotsubashi who teach classes in comparatively new fields of economics. Among the many universities in Japan, therefore, Hitotsubashi is one school that I highly recommend.

Q: You have mentioned various problems with Japanese education today. What do you see as the single most effective countermeasure for these issues? For instance, do you think the best approach would be to return to the pre-2002 education system before yutori kyoiku was introduced?
A: In terms of curriculum contents, cuts were made long before 2002—namely, in both 1977 and in 1989, as I mentioned. So at the very least, I would say that there is a need to return to the curriculum that existed before 2002. But the single greatest problem right now is that regardless of how skillfully the schools teach their curriculums, it is possible to get into high school without studying for the entrance exams. As a result, around half of Japanese children no longer feel motivated to study. In the final analysis, therefore, I believe that an era has arrived in which we need to introduce testing along the lines of graduation exams at the junior and senior high school level.
One other serious problem in Japan today is the social-class divergence that is taking place. I am actually a psychiatrist by trade, and just yesterday I gave a talk about a single mother who found herself unable to work because of depression. Because her child is low in academic ability, the mother wanted to send that child to cram school. But she said that she was unable to pay for such studies with her welfare benefits. Therefore, I sincerely believe that the need exists to expand scholarship systems for parents who want to have their children study harder and for children who are motivated to learn. This should include cram schools and extend beyond providing such benefits through grants to offering the opportunity to take out loans as well.

(END)

Given on April 19, 2006, at the Foreign Press Center/Japan. This paper is reserved for internal use; any reproduction or quotation is forbidden without prior permission from the FPCJ. ©FPCJ 2006