From the Japan Times:

Takeshima Japanese, schools to be told
The education ministry plans to clearly state in a supplement of the government’s new educational guideline for junior high school students that a Seoul-controlled islet in the Sea of Japan is an “integral part of Japan,” officials said Monday.

Ask yourself this, how does learning this facilitate any given student’s education? Not a bit. It’s clear that the goal is not education … Sadly this can be said for a lot of the stuff they teach in school. This just happens to be a particularly odious example. This is why education curriculum should be handled more locally.

The Japan Times has an interesting article on homeschooling online today:

Home education has gained popularity in recent years in many parts of the world, as more families have looked for alternatives to school-based learning. But in Japan, it remains difficult for children to be educated outside the school system, with little government support for — or understanding of — the need to diversify children’s education, experts say.

Click here to continue reading.

I think homeschooling is a great option for the right parents and child. Here are some other useful links:

• Homeschooling in Japan (check out their FAQ)
• Otherwise Japan (in Japanese)
• Book: Between Individual and State (in Japanese)

Supposedly unreasonable demands from parents are a big problem for schools these days.

An article in the Asahi today says that in the Osaka school district there were 251 incidents of this. Here are some examples that are presented.

• The sports day festival was canceled because of rain, so please refund to us the money it cost our child’s grandparents to travel here with the intention of seeing it.
• On the way to school [with the other children] please adjust to our child’s personal rhythm.
• As our child will no longer be able to use his textbooks, please refund them.
• Please beware. Whether our child will follow the school rules or not is up to him [and not the school].

I’ve commented on this type of thing before.

I’m frustrated by the attitude of the teachers. They seem to want to create this crisis whereby they are being pushed too hard by the parents. Is the problem really that serious?

I’m equally frustrated by the incredible sense of entitlement some of these parents feel towards the public education system. Because they don’t actually pay for the schools (directly), they’ve little sense of proportion when making these requests.

I am going to present here the entire text of resolution 121 along with associated comments. I realize I am a day late and dollar too short on this topic. After all, the resolution is a done deal.

I am doing this for two reason. First and foremost, to explore the principles underlying the resolution, which in a sense are timeless. Second, because I’m not sure that people who have commented on my criticism have responded to arguments I have made against the resolution. In other words, I want to put my criticism of the resolution in a clearer light, so if nothing else detractors can understand my viewpoint.

Below I will present the resolution. I will insert my own comments, which will be in brownish-red.

Read the rest of this entry »

Why didn’t they have hybrid-half-study-guide-half-manga when I was a kid!

And that’s not all! According to Wire Magazine:

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Recent News:

• 10 teachers lose ‘Kimigayo’ lawsuit against Tokyo, The Japan Times; “The Tokyo District Court on Wednesday rejected a lawsuit by 10 high school teachers who were denied postretirement employment after they refused to sing the national anthem during graduation ceremonies in March 2004 … Presiding Judge Hiroyuki Samura ruled ‘the directive does not deny the plaintiffs’ rights.’
  Samura ruled that singing the national anthem in school ceremonies does not force reverence of a specific ideology because it is a ‘ritual practice.’ He also said the annulment of the teachers’ re-employment contracts was a ‘legitimate exercise of discretionary power” because the plaintiffs had committed a violation of their duty.’”

Opinion:

The judge has rejected the plaintiffs claim because singing the national anthem is a ritualistic activity. So it’s not an ideology. You know, in a kind of bizarro world like this, we can pretty much pick and choose whatever we want to be an ideology. How about if my child rearing philosophy precludes having my children engage in rituals? Especially those that promote group solidarity to a symbolic Emperor, who was in the not so distant past considered a God? Issues like this just can’t be solved so long as education is nationally centralized. While I go so far as to support home education, at a very minimum people in their local area need to decide this, not centralized bureaucrats with an obvious far right … well, ideology.

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• 2007/06/19 Ruling party lawmakers dispute ‘Rape of Nanking’ death toll, AP via IHT; “A group of about 100 lawmakers from Japan’s ruling party claimed Tuesday that after a monthslong review they have determined the number of people killed by Japanese troops during the infamous ‘Rape of Nanking’ has been grossly inflated.”

Nariaki Nakayama an ex-education minister under Koizumi Junichiro and 100 other lawmakers have produced yet more evidence which shows the death toll at Nanking was no where near the 200,000 to 300,000 usually reported — and instead was more like 20,000. Their new source of evidence is a document submitted to the League of Nations by the nationalist Chinese government condemning the Nanking killings. This document places the number of those killed at 20,000.

Nariaki Nakayama is current head of the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform, an organization once headed by Shinzo Abe, that has continuously called for less masochistic history text books in Japanese schools.

This year marks the 70th year anniversary of the slaughter and several films are set for release concerning it.

As I write this, the Associated Press story concerning this has already appeared nine times at Google news (link). The story in Japanese, appears only once at Yahoo! Japan news. My guess is this story will get carried far and wide in the foreign press and then will get more air time in the Japanese press. The story in the Japanese press will mostly consist of the foreign reaction, and not the actual claims made. We’ll see how this develops.

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Education problem:

• 2007/06/19 Parents from hell give schools a hard time, the Yomiuri Shimbun; “Public primary and middle schools and boards of education across the country are agonizing over how to deal with parents who make unreasonable requests and complaints, according to the findings of a Yomiuri Shimbun survey.”

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To see Maya’s Koizumi’s risqué video on YouTube, which I refrained from putting directly into this blog, click here.

Wikipedia, Japanese edition, informs us that Maya Koizumi is a gurabia aidoru. This basically translates as gravure idol or print idol. Numerous blogs refer to her as a G-cup idol.

If you watch the video linked to above, she basically poses in a bikini and does various risqué poses. Apparently, jealous classmates complained to their parents, and their parents complained to the school. Maya was ultimately expelled, six months before graduating. Her parents are fighting the school’s decision.

The specific complaint was not in regards to any of her three modeling DVDs but instead focused on a book with photos of her, half of which showed her in swim wear.

Here’s part of what the Asahi reports:

Expelled model files suit against school
An 18-year-old girl has taken her former high school to court after being expelled for modeling swimwear. Maya Koizumi filed suit in December asking the Tokyo District Court’s Hachioji branch to nullify the school’s decision so she can return to classes and graduate. Maya was expelled from the the Toho Gakuen girls’ school in Chofu, western Tokyo, after the photo collection titled “Geneki Joshikosei” (High school girl student) hit stores last summer. In expelling her, the private school said publication of the photos had violated its regulations.

I suppose this needs to be taken in the context of the growing problem of pre-teens posing in thongs, but I believe Maya would have been about 17 when the photo shoot took place.

As the school didn’t have any official policy, they should have just left Maya alone. If they’d like to have a policy about this going into the future, they should put one into writing.

I was curious about this issue and tried to look around for more information in Japanese, what I came across was a mixture of soft porn sites and blogs discussing Maya’s bust size. So while whatever she is doing might be lucrative, it isn’t exactly … wholesome.

One blog stated that schools generally win in cases like this.

Links:

The Asahi Shimbun reports:

An Upper House special committee Friday passed a bill to set up a national referendum system–required to revise the Constitution–but did not include a minimum voter turnout limit.

Here are the main points of the bill:

• National referendums will only be held over constitutional revisions;
• The referendum voting age would be 18 or older;
• Central government bureaucrats would face legal restrictions on political activities on the referendum; and
• Bureaucrats and teachers would be prohibited from using their positions to campaign on issues covered in the referendum.

As I understand this the primary things that the DPJ had wanted when the debate arose in the lower house were:

• Allow referendums for other “important national issues” as well as constitutional reform.
• Minimum voting age should be 20 years old
• There should be a minimum voter turn out.

The LDP had offered as a sort of back room deal to add to the referendum bill the possibility to hold referendums over “issues concerning the nation’s system of governance; and issues relating to ethics concerning life science.” However, it would have still been primarily an LDP plan.

The DPJ wanted their version accepted and may have been a bit dogmatic on this point. Supposedly, because of the DPJ’s dogmatic stance, the LDP decided to wrap up the debate quickly. The DPJ were then upset and claimed that the issue never received a fair hearing. The bill passed the lower house [committee?] during a lot of theatrics.

To read the Yomiuri Shimbun’s fairly detailed take on this go here.

The notion to prohibit “Bureaucrats and teachers from using their positions to campaign on issues” is kind of interesting. It makes sense, but then again, perhaps if the educational system allowed for more private schools it’d make less sense. Teachers must teach without giving opinions on things that really matter? Have to think about that …