Education Reform and Social Class in Japan: The Emerging Incentive Divide by Takehiko Kariya

Author:Takehiko Kariya [Kariya, Takehiko]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9780415556873
Google: 5ny1W7MZc1kC
Goodreads: 7985355
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2011-10-27T00:00:00+00:00

5 Inequality of effort under the meritocracy

As the analyses in Chapter 4 showed, a tide of reform driven by critique of an ‘education solely for taking exams’ and based on demise of the pre-war ‘educational aristocracy’ washed over Japanese education in the 1990s. The problem addressed by these reforms, as reflected in calls for leaving children ‘room to grow’ (yutori ゆとり), was ‘excessive cramming’ due to ‘an overheating of exam education’ (juken kyōiku no kanetsu 受験教育の過熱). These demands for a ‘more relaxed educational style’ or a ‘liberal, flexible and comfortable school life’ as the term yutori no kyōiku ゆとりの教育 has been alternately paraphrased in English, were informed by the perception that ‘excessive examination competition’ had led to a ‘situation where students, including even elementary school children, are attending cram schools until late into the night’.1

How accurately did this understanding of the problem reflect educational realities? And what became of ‘excessive cramming’ in the wake of the education reforms, which had left the complex of class and education in a blind spot? This chapter will take a closer look at learning time outside school in high school students, and factors that influenced it during the 1990s, as the education reforms were discussed and implemented. Learning time outside school, apparently simple but comparatively objective data, which has of yet not been sufficiently investigated despite clearly being fundamental, will be used as an index, as it is apt to bring several problems connected to the post-war educational transformation of Japan into closer view. Special attention will be paid to the question of effort, since an emphasis on individual effort (as opposed to ability) is a distinctive feature of meritocracy in contemporary Japan, and on the question of how the education reforms have affected the latter.

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