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Competitor or Ally?: Japan’s Role in American Educational Debates PDF

184 Pages·1999·4.28 MB·English
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COMPETITOR OR ALLY? REFERENCE BOOKS IN INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION VOLUME 45 GARLAND REFERENCE LIBRARY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE VOLUME 1407 COMPETITOR OR ALLY? JAPAN'S ROLE IN AMERICAN EDUCATIONAL DEBATES EDITED BY GERALD K. LETENDRE I~ ~~ o~~~~n~~~up NewYork London FirstpublishedbyFalmerPress. Thiseditionpublished20II byRoutledge: Routledge Routledge Taylor& FrancisGroup Taylor& FrancisGroup 711ThirdAvenue 2ParkSquare,MiltonPark NewYork,NY10017 Abingdon,OxonOX144RN Copyright© 1999 by GeraldK.LeTendre All rights reserved LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationDataisavailableatthe Libraryof Congress Competitoror ally? :Japan'srole inAmerican educationaldebates / edited by GeraldK.LeTendre. Contents Tables andFigures vii Acknowledgments ix Introduction Merry White xi Chapter I:International Achievement Studies andMyths of Japan GeraldK. LeTendre 3 Chapter 2:ALookattheOtherSideofJapaneseEducation: Student Responsibility andLearning InekoTsuchidaand CatherineC.Lewis 25 Chapter3:Coping withDiversity:TheAchilles' Heelof Japanese Education? DavidMcConnell 47 Chapter 4:Individuality, Learning,andAchievement: Japanese Perspectives HidetadaShimizu 65 Chapter 5:Work RolesandNormsforTeachers inJapan and the UnitedStates Hua Yang 83 Chapter 6:"The DarkSideof.. .":Suicide,Violence and Drug UseinJapanese Schools KangminZengandGeraldLeTendre 103 v vi Conren~ Chapter7:International ComparisonsandEducational ResearchPolicy GeraldLeTendreandDavidBaker 123 Conclusion:ResilientMyths:AreOurMindsMadeUpAbout Japanese Education? CatherineC.Lewis 141 Glossary 149 References 151 ListofContributors 165 Index 169 Tables and Figures Fig.2-1. ManagementstatementsinJapanese and American classes 31 Fig. 2-2. Teacherencouragesstudents toexpress support, disagree orelaborate onother students' remarks 37 Fig.2-3. Teacherexternal reward statements 39 Fig.2-4. Teachers' lesson-framing statements 40 Table 5-1. Weekly Time AllocationsofJapaneseand U.S. Middle School Teachers 88 Table 5-2. Time DistributionforSpecific Academic Tasks by Japaneseand U.S.Middle School Teachers 89 Table 5-3. Time DistributionforSpecific Student Guidance/ActivityTasks byJapaneseand U.S. Middle School Teachers 90 Table 5-4. Staffing Patterns intheU.S.andJapaneseMiddle Schools 97 Table 6-1. Suicide Rates OverTime forJapanese Youth (per 100,000) byAge Ranges. 109 Table 6-2. Suicide Rates byGender inSelectiveNations. Death bySuicide per 100,000 Populationfor Youth Aged 15-24 109 Table 6-3. BullyinginJapan 114 vii Acknowledgments The process ofdeveloping abook from aset ofconference papers can bealong andconvoluted one.Wewouldlike tothankThomas Rohlen, Harold Stevenson and Nancy Sato for their input in developing this manuscript, and Cindy Fetters and Judy Harper who worked to type parts of the manuscript. Marie Ellen Larcada, formerly of Garland Press, provided direction for anearly draft of the manuscript. And we would especially like to thank Ed Beauchamp for his support and guidance. The idea for this book originated in the American Educational Research Association symposium "Comparison or Competition: The Use and Misuse of Japanese Educational Data in the American Context," in which the principle authors of this book took part as presenters and discussants. The overall conclusion of the symposium was that to a large degree discussion of Japanese education in the American research context isstillbelabored by stereotypical notions of the Japanese and Japanese society; is heavily biased in favor of quantitative studies, even those with widely acknowledged methodological flawssuchastheSIMS;andismoreandmore apolicy or political issue in which statistics,divorced from the social context, areusedas"evidence"inwaysthatpreventanaccuratepictureofJapan from emerging. ix Introduction Merry White Why do so many Americans seem to have something to say about Japanese children? From the NationalInquirer-gossipmonger of the supermarket checkout lines-which ran a story about Japanese education moms, to leading political satirist Gary Trudeau, everyone wants to talk about Japanese students.But, at the same time that some writers are exalting Japanese educational values, others in the same popular media write lurid stories about bullying, juvenile suicide, robotized mindsandstifledimaginations. American andJapanese writersoverthepast25yearshave offered models, mirrors and cautionary tales of Japanese childhood and schooling.The Japanese classroom hasbeenafocus,evenanobsession of commentators associating education with national security. This obsession has equally affected cartoonists, supermarket tabloids and, more recently itappears, someleading educational researchjournalsin which, forexample,theresultsoftheThirdInternational Math-Science Study are debated using reference to U.S. and Japanese cultural parameters. The contradictory and inflammatory views that typify coverage of Japanese students or schools reflect American divisions and confusion over educational priorities and goals. These views also demonstrate how research data can be (and often has been) used and misused inthediscourses onbothJapanese andAmerican education to promote a range of reform agendas. American attention to Japan has reflected our international and domestic concerns about global competition and the frustrations ofa generation of young workers who willnotdobetterthantheirparents.Buttheseconcernsweresometimes buried under an overarching feverish attention to the success of xi xii Introduction children in a country that is just about as far away from the United States (culturallyandgeographically)asyoucanget. Of course, these cycles of attention and concern have not always been characterized bydistortion, projection or denial of appropriate priorities.There arecertain giveaways whichcancue thereader to the presence ofbiasedreporting:theuseofabsolutes suchas"all Japanese children," unsubstantiated claims orcorrelations such as"examination pressurehascausedariseinjuvenile suicides,"referencestoamythical idealorarchetypal norminonesocietythatiscontrastedwithdown-to earth realities in the other.Ineach ofthe three waves ofengagement I will discuss below, there have also been clear, well-researched pieces on Japanese realities which critically assess the constructions which American researchers and policy makers tend to place on Japanese schoolsandstudents. Withproper acknowledgmentofthecomplexity andcontradictions thatany serious treatment willgenerate, letuscall these three types or stages of reaction to Japanese education the "wow!", "uh-oh" and as Joseph Tobin notes, "yes, but .. . " reactions. "Wow" refers to the gape-mouthed amazement with which stories of exceIIence in test results, classroom management, and family-school cooperation were received in the United States in the 1970s when Japan's economic "miracle" firstcametocenterstageintheinternationalmedia."Uh-oh" describes the reaction of those concerned with American competitiveness in the face of apparent Japanese superiority. Finally, "yes, but..." allows for thepositive aspects,putting them incontext as weII as noting downsides-an admiring but qualified response. These three periods roughly correspond to the three decades in which Japanese education has developed a high profile in America, in the seventies,eightiesandnineties. Japaneseeducationhasstimulatedenvy,fearandpityinAmericans for some time: wartime propaganda tended to focus on fear (Japanese adolescents training to be kamikaze pilots) and postwar reports often focused on pity (children packed 50 to a classroom in half-bombed buildings). Since the take-off of the Japanese economy in the 1970s, envy appeared inthe"wow!" stories ofJapanese schoolsuccess.These tended to focus positively onclassroom order, high test scores and on the moral value and political priority given to education in Japanese society. Openly curious, the writers of these stories asked if this centrality could be attributed to the traditional Confucian equation of

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In this book the authors systematically address the most common stereotypes or myths about Japanese education that are currently being circulated in the popular press, teaching magazines and educational research journals. The authors show how arguments about Japan are used to further political ends
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