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Overview
Originally published in 1980.
The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780691643151 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Princeton University Press |
| Publication date: | 04/19/2016 |
| Series: | Princeton Legacy Library , #869 |
| Pages: | 324 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.30(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.20(d) |
Read an Excerpt
Education and Equality in Japan
By William K. Cummings
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 1980 Princeton University PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-10088-3
CHAPTER 1
TRANSFORMING SOCIETY BY EDUCATION
How can education promote egalitarian social change? Much of the current thinking on this matter is concerned with decreasing the impact of social background on academic and socioeconomic achievement. This conventional meritocratic approach assumes a continuation of the established inequalities between the powerful and the weak, the rich and the poor, the respected and the rest. The goal is to alter the conditions that determine who assumes these unequal positions. Based on the meritocratic value premise that the most able products of the schools should be selected for the most important positions in society, this conventional approach results in reforms to promote greater equality of opportunity.
The meritocratic approach is outdated. Its concern with reducing the impact of social background can be applauded, but it becomes increasingly difficult to assess progress in this effort as the schools receive the full cohort of young people and promote them, irrespective of performance, until the completion of high school. In school young people are tested and graded into "differential ability" groups for subsequent channeling into stratified educational careers. Compensatory educational programs are developed to improve the school performance of children from deprived backgrounds and elevate them to the higher educational tracks. These compensatory programs do not seem to work. But even if they did, would the improved school performance of these children do them much good? For in today's overeducated society we witness the anomaly of unemployed Ph.D.s and college graduates working as waiters, while high school educated electricians enjoy a princely life-style (Freedman, 1976). Children from lower class backgrounds may, thanks to the compensatory programs, do well in school only to find out that they are destined to do poorly in society.
In contrast with the meritocratic approach is the transformationist approach. It focuses first on structures rather than on the flow of people through these structures. The transformationist approach challenges the established hierarchies, urging that they be leveled. Rather than concern itself with reducing the effect of social background on individual learning, it attempts to realize a situation where all can learn; rather than have pupils learn those skills and knowledge that will help them to fit into the existing hierarchies, the transformationist approach urges that pupils develop a critical attitude to these hierarchies. Today's critical children will be tomorrow's adults, working in positions where they can level the hierarchies. As the hierarchies become more equal, so will the opportunities.
Neither Radical Nor Conservative
Current thinking about the transformationist approach is intimately related to the present politico-ideological debates. Most proponents of the meritocratic approach are political conservatives or liberals who believe egalitarian change can be achieved through working "within the system." Most proponents of the transformationist approach are political radicals who believe egalitarian change can be achieved only if the system is simultaneously changed. Radicals assume that the meritocratic approach is necessarily intertwined with liberal ideology, and liberals assume that the transformation approach is an expression of radical ideology. We believe that the approaches can be dissociated from these prevailing ideologies and maintain that the theory of transformation through education is neither radical nor conservative.
Indeed, in several of the recent cases where education has been used to transform society, politics was simultaneously pushing in the same direction. That is, a political revolution was carried out first by political elites, egalitarian social reforms were then introduced, and education was mobilized to support these reforms. The cases to which we refer are China, Cuba, and Tanzania. In these instances, it cannot be said that education acted as an independently transforming force but rather as one of several mutually reinforcing component forces. This empirical association between revolution and education as an agent of transformation leads the political radicals to theorize that there can be no other way.
We maintain that the radical "theoretical" position is too pessimistic. Propitious political developments may be necessary if education is to promote an egalitarian transformation, but we do not believe these events need be so momentous as to equal revolution. Only some arrangement whereby the educational system and educators achieve a degree of autonomy is required. We appreciate but are not convinced by Bourdieu and Passeron's (1977) contention that educational systems, even in revolutionary societies, enjoy considerable autonomy from the polity. Relative degree of autonomy cannot be theoretically deduced; it is an empirically verifiable variable. To the extent that an educational system is autonomous, its opportunities for promoting a transformation increase.
Postwar Japan As an Example
Looking to education to transform society is not a new approach. Aristotle, Rousseau, and Dewey are only three among many social thinkers who have looked to education as a transformative agent. But for over two decades the mainstream of American social thought has ignored this tradition, or at least viewed it as too Utopian for America. On the one hand, America's reformers have emphasized change within the framework of the meritocratic tradition. On the other hand, America's radicals have, especially recently, expressed a renewed interest in the transformationist approach, but they doubt its applicability to America or to any other advanced industrial capitalist society. Rather they are most appreciative of the utility of the transformationist approach for interpreting events in developing societies where the "system" is more changeable.
But is education's transformative potency necessarily tied to a society's level of economic development? To answer this question we can turn either to theory or to the real world. In this book we choose the latter strategy. Postwar Japan, we maintain, constitutes an example of a society that has been transformed by education. This book attempts to illustrate and explain how.
Immediately following World War II, extensive reforms were introduced in the Japanese educational system with the explicit hope that these would contribute to an egalitarian social transformation as the crucial background for a democratic form of government. But almost as soon as the reforms were introduced, a conservative political regime emerged, and under the circumstances few would have predicted that education might transform society.
The conservative regime worked to reverse the postwar reforms, but these efforts were stubbornly resisted by the Japan Teachers' Union (Nikkyoso). The union and apparently some elements in the government actually favored the "democratic" goals of the new education and worked for their realization, and gradually their efforts to gain acceptance for these goals acquired momentum. Over the postwar years increasing proportions of young people were exposed to an egalitarian educational routine with the result that cognitive achievements became more equal. Indeed, Japan's distribution of cognitive skills is probably more equal than that of any other contemporary society (see Chapter Six). At the same time, an egalitarian sentiment became more widely internalized.
As these youths passed from schools into society, they exerted egalitarian pressure on adult institutions, which inevitably had to introduce changes in order to accommodate them. For example, work places enriched work routines, delegated authority, and equalized pay. The result was a transformation of Japanese society so that it is today one of the world's most equal in terms of a wide variety of indicators (see Chapter Nine). That education is transforming the system of at least one advanced capitalist society implies that its potency is not deterred by level of socioeconomic complexity. It is conceivable that education, given favorable circumstances, could have similar transformative effects on the systems of other advanced societies, including America.
The Distinctive Characteristics of Japanese Education
Japan is an especially relevant case for Americans to examine, for the two nations have so much in common. Both are advanced capitalist societies with a democratic political system. Japan's population is slightly more than half of that of the United States with an adult educational level that is, as in the American case, comparatively high. Since World War II, the formal structure of the educational system has resembled that found in many American school districts, that is, a single track structure partitioned into a six-year primary school, a three-year middle school, a three-year high school, and a diverse program of post-secondary educational institutions centered in the university. Today, the Japanese system offers as great an opportunity to young people for post-secondary education as the American system.
However, Japan is markedly different. The nation is more centralized, more densely populated, and more racially homogeneous. Its cultural heritage is more complex, being based on diverse Asian traditions as well as on modern Western culture from which it has profusely borrowed over the last hundred years. Finally, there are a number of specific ways in which Japanese education differs from the United States. The following differences stand out as being of great importance in our effort to explain the success of Japanese education in transforming society.
1. Diverse interests in Japan are concerned with education. Japan, as a late developer, was one of the first societies to treat education as a tool for national development. The central governmental and business elites look upon education as a means for training a skilled labor force and highly qualified manpower, for identifying prospective elites, and for teaching a common culture.
Over the postwar period, the powerful Japan Teachers' Union has emerged to challenge the ruling elite's traditional educational policies. The union emphasizes the educational system's capacity for developing rich personalities and critical abilities; in alliance with progressive political parties, the union has repeatedly sought the support of rank-and-file teachers in political efforts aimed at toppling the ruling conservative regime. These battles at the central level, extensively covered by the mass media, serve to sharpen public understanding of education and its supposed consequences.
The public is disturbed by this highly competitive nature of postcompulsory education and tends to believe that government policies are responsible for this situation. Thus, there is considerable popular approval of the teachers' union with its emphasis on the humanistic and self-actualizing goals of education. At the same time, however, the public believes that individual success in education leads to personal advancement. Thus, families invest enormous amounts of time and energy in promoting the educational success of their own children. The responses to the educational system by its many participants are diverse and often contradictory. Yet out of this confusion emerges an impressive level of interest in education.
2. Japanese schools are inexpensive. Educational costs to the Japanese taxpayer are comparatively small in relation to the high standards it has achieved. In 1973, Japan's public expenditures for education comprised only 4.9 percent of the national income. In contrast, the expenditures relative to national income for the Soviet Union, the United States, and the United Kingdom were 8.3 percent, 7.0 percent, and 7.8 percent, respectively. Among the advanced societies, only France spent a smaller proportion (4.6 percent) of her national income on public education (Mombusho, 1975:145). Moreover, despite Japan's relatively small proportion of national income devoted to public education, a comparatively large proportion of actual expenditures were allotted for new buildings and equipment, while personnel expenditures were modest (see Table 1.1).
Higher student-teacher ratios are part of the explanation for the modest proportion of Japanese educational expenditures devoted to personnel. In addition, it should be noted that Japanese schools hire relatively few auxiliary personnel. Students and teachers perform services that are likely to be discharged by specialized personnel in other societies. Regular teachers perform many of the clerical and counseling activities that are handled by specialists in the United States. Students deliver and serve lunches, clean the classrooms and grounds, and operate school facilities such as the library and public address system. This unpaid labor significantly cuts down on costs. Consequently, Japanese schools have relatively more money available for plant investment.
3. Japanese schools are equal. The postwar public concern with education has placed pressure on the central government to reduce inequalities in educational expenditures per student. Today, at the compulsory level, there is virtually no variation between prefectures in annual operating expenditures per student. While some areas lead and others lag in the introduction of the latest educational technology, such as color televisions, language laboratories, and the like, remarkable equality in distribution has been established with respect to the essentials. Similarly, teachers tend universally to have similar qualifications; the major exceptions are those prefectures that have lost population to the large cities. In these prefectures few new teachers have been hired for several years and, hence, the teacher age distribution is older.
Some of the government's equalizing measures are directed at disadvantaged social groups. For example, one law subsidizes children from low income families to pay for school lunches, excursions, and other regular activities. Another law includes provisions aimed at equalizing the educational conditions of children in remote areas: the law provides transport subsidies to enable children living on small islands to ride boats to mainland schools, and it authorizes hardship salary supplements so as to induce skilled teachers to take positions in these areas (Ministry of Education, 1971:92-109). Recently, the government began to put additional funds into the schools that receive children from the "outcaste" burakimin community.
As these outcaste children traditionally have done poorly in schools, the supplements are used to pay for tutoring after school and other compensatory programs. The programs are so intensive that expenditures per student for outcaste children are three times as great as the expenditures for the other children.
The system of finance for Japanese education greatly facilitates the realization of equal expenditures. Japanese school boards are not dependent on local property taxes as are their American counter-parts. School districts in Japan tend to be much larger, which facilitates access to a wide variety of local tax sources. Moreover, for most categories of educational expenditures such as salaries, texts, and lunches, the central government is required by law to pay up to half of the expenses required to realize the national standard. The national laws on educational expenditures also include equalizing measures to help prefectures that, due to special features of geography, population structure, or industrial composition, experience difficulty in collecting sufficient tax revenues.
4. Japanese schools are demanding. The central government's role in providing a large share of educational revenues enables it to exert considerable leverage over certain aspects of the educational process.
The central government drafts a detailed course of study prescribing the contents of the curriculum and inspects commercial texts to insure that they conform to the official standard. One virtue of this procedure is that children throughout the nation are exposed to a common body of knowledge in an identical sequence.
At the same time, the curriculum is demanding. It covers a wider range of subjects and pursues these in greater depth than is the case for the curriculum of a typical U.S. school district. The differences are evident from the first grade of primary school. Young Japanese pupils spend a larger proportion of their time in subjects such as art, music, and physical education than do American students (Ministry of Education, 1971:56-63). Whereas many American schools do not offer a science curriculum at the primary school level, this is offered in Japan from the first grade. In arithmetic, a subject central to both the Japanese and American curricula, the Japanese texts move faster than a typical American text.
In order to cover the demanding curriculum, the government requires each school to operate an educational program for at least 240 days each year, in contrast with 180 days for American schools. In most cases, this means that children attend school six days a week for over forty weeks. School occupies a very central place in the lives of Japanese children.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Education and Equality in Japan by William K. Cummings. Copyright © 1980 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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Table of Contents
- FrontMatter, pg. i
- Contents, pg. vii
- List of Tables, pg. ix
- List of Figures, pg. xi
- Preface and Acknowledgments, pg. xiii
- One. Transforming Society by Education, pg. 1
- Two. The Background for Change, pg. 16
- Three. The Government and the Teachers' Union, pg. 40
- Four. The Importance of Class and Family, pg. 77
- Five. Egalitarian Education, pg. 104
- Six. Cognitive Equality, pg. 146
- Appendix to Chapter Six, pg. 172
- Seven. The Development of the Egalitarian Sentiment, pg. 177
- Eight. The Examination Competition, pg. 206
- Nine. Equalizing Society, pg. 235
- Ten. The Lessons of Japanese Education, pg. 264
- Bibliography, pg. 289
- Index, pg. 303