From: htakeda@Bonnie.ICS.UCI.EDU
Newsgroups: soc.culture.japan
Subject: Japanese School V
Date: 12 Nov 92 06:43:05 GMT
Article-I.D.: Bonnie.9211112242.aa17117


Well how are things in the world today.  Runnig a cold right now.
Well lets start before my memory turns to mush.


                             Japanese School V

                                 Classes

	Well the system used by schools in Japan is that just like in the
Elementary school in Canada, as far as I remember.  You have a different
schedule every day.  The teacher was usually the same except for a few
classes.  I remember Music was always a different teacher, and Kateika
"home make"(sp?).  Most of our classes were taught in the homeroom but
some were not.

        The classes were about 45 minutes.  We called them ichijikanme,
nijikanme, ... "1st period, 2nd period,..."  My schedule may have looked
like this:


  date->          M         T         W         T         F         S
  period
    |
    V
    1          kokugo      sansuu   kokugo   zukoo    shakai     kokugo


    2           Rika       shakai   kokugo   zukoo    sansuu     kokugo


    3           Rika       ongaku   shyuuji  taiku    sansuu     sansuu


    4           Taiku      sansuu   shyuuji  ongaku   kokugo     rika


                                   kyushoku (LUNCH)


    5           kurabu     rika     sansuu   kokugo   dootoku


    6           shyakai    hoomu    sansuu   rika     shyakai
                           ruumu


Ususally school ran from somewhere around 8 am.  It would start with an
asano kai and end with a kaeri no kai.  We would get out sometime past
3pm.  The different classes described above is:

Kokugo - "country language", in other words Japanese.  Your basic
home language class.  I really didn't see no really apparent difference
from Canada (remeber my elementary education did not include the USA)
But there was one difference.  I remember in Canada we were broken into
3 groups of about 10 students.  A high level group, a middle group and
then a low level group.  I even remember that the different groups used
different books.  The teacher would move from one group to another.
The students in groups that didn't have the teacher were either reading
or doing some exercises.  I look back on this and remember some negative
feelings that one had when not in the elite group.  They didn't tell
us which was the elite group but we basically knew.
In Japan we were all equals.  The whole class continued at the same
pace.  Your studies included vocabulary (I remember spending most of
my nights looking up words in the dictionary the first year there),
reading material (poems, stories), then also there were grammer sections.
Each section had a end where they explained a little about the author
and listed the new Kanji.  The Kanji was also included in Kokugo and
we spent hours at home praticing.  Most teachers gave tests as often
as daily.  they would assign 10 kanji a day and the same ten would be
on the test.  At the end of the quarter or chapter or week there was
usually a kanji fukushuu (review) test.
Roomaji is introduced in the 5th grade.  Some old texts such as
Japanese Kanbun was introduced in the 6th grade I believe.

Sansuu (math) - (this subject name is changed to Suugaku in middle
school)  Your basic math.  There may be the question "was math in
Japan advanced that you had trouble?"  The answer is no.  At the
third grade level I had no troubles adjusting.  As far as I have
seen the elementary level is pretty much the same.  There was a
toylike math help set called the "sansuu setto' (math set) with
little objects shaped in flowers, suns, baseballs, etc. used for
math in the 1st grade.  It was basically a toy to interest the early
grades in math.  My parents always complained about the price on
this thing.  We barely used it too.

Shakai (social science) - The first 4 grades is basically stuff
like 'What does a factory do?" or "How does farming work"  Later
on we got into stuff like inflation, and economics (Why farmers
destroy their crops).


gotta run.  please be patient.
continue next week
HIRO
htakeda@bonnie.ics.uci.edu