KAZE, December 2020

We need educational reform for future generations
Konoe FUJIMURAIn the year 2020, the year of COVID-19, Japan, fortunately, saw fewer
typhoons. However, throughout the Anthropocene, excessive precipitation andresulting floods or landslides may occur anytime in the future. Or we may encounternew types of highly infectious diseases. We will need to be prepared for those crises
and redesign our ways of life/work. In other words, we have to revisit the roles ofsociety, politics, and the economy, aiming to achieve "green recovery" from theCOVID-19 and build a sustainable society.
Among numerous points to be reviewed, I would like to focus on education
because educated sound citizen forms a decent society. (By the way, I have been
wondering why Japanese people pay little attention to social issues like climatechange issues. Is it because of the Japanese school education where philosophy andpolitics are not part of the curriculum, and children do not learn how to become agood citizen? Many Japanese are only concerned about their short-term happiness<I am OK if I can earn money now, and I don't care what other people are doing>.
Is it the education they received that has led them to think that way?)
The COVID-19 pandemic revealed a substantial disparity in our society, notonly in employment but also in the level of school education. We even witnessed afearful movement of government controlling academia (Prime Minster Suga did notnominate some of the candidates for the Science Council of Japan without clarifying
the reason for his rejection). All pieces of evidence indicate that we are facing a kindof disruption of our educational system.
Education, a basis of a sound national, should be designed carefully with along-term perspective. However, our governments in the past decades used it justfor their short-term merits. It is time to drastically review our education for thefuture of society with a sense of ethics.

The education during the Edo-period focused on basic requirements as amember of the community. At community classes, children learned to behave
ethically based on Confucianism and Buddhism. They also practiced such practicalskills in reading/writing/arithmetics. However, the education introduced in theMeiji-era was primarily for becoming a wealthy and militarily strong country, which
continued for a long time. Even today, leaders do not doubt the need to control
education to generate human resources useful for national development (orbusiness needs).
Such controlled school education might have created observant Japanesenationals who prefer harmony/conformity rather than debate/argument. Facing theCOVID-19 pandemic, these people wear surgical masks without much struggle asrequested by the government. It is a positive aspect of the obedient Japanesepeople. However, these people rarely express themselves and somewhat reactive intheir social life. They tend to take group behavior rather than acting as an individual.
Many will not openly discuss various social issues nor take any specific action to
improve the situation. I must say that these attitudes never bring about any change
in society. When the world is becoming more uncertain with various risks like climatechanges, we need people who can learn, think, and act themselves. For this reason,
I think it is time to revisit our education system and its contents.
We can find an example of school education in Finland, ranking the happiest
nation in the past three years. There, school education is flexible in terms of thegraduation year and schedule. Each school follows the same curriculum, butteachers can decide what to learn. They read a lot. During the years of compulsory
education, about 20-30 students form one class. Finland spends 10% of the budgetof national and local governments on education. Students can learn without tuition.
Moreover, the government decided to provide school lunch free of charge. This way,Finland invests its nationals, compensating for the scarcity of its resources.
In contrast, the Japanese government strictly controls school education.
The standard number of students is 40 in one classroom. Teachers, with littlediscretion, follow the national guideline of school education using
government-inspected textbooks. Japan provides the least funds to educational
institutions, the lowest amount among the 34 OECD countries. According to theUNICEF report issued in September 2020, Japanese children enjoy the best physicalhealth while their spiritual welfare falls behind 36 counties out of 38 surveyedcountries. We cannot compare those countries under different conditions
straightforwardly. However, we can say that the Japanese government today does
not place much value on education.
In Japan, the Basic Act on Education aims to groom matured
personality and cultivate people qualified as members of a democratic andpeaceful state. In this regard, education and personal learning should takeplace not only at schools but at home and in each community or workplace.
However, parents are too busy to teach their children at home, so they put
their responsibility to schools. Then, at schools, teachers are too busy to spareenough time for teaching. At workplaces, employees under shorter-term
contracts have little opportunity of receiving vocational training or any otherchance of learning.
Facing the COVID-19 pandemic today, we should think of better ways
to cultivate people at various levels and timing, an essential to building asustainable society.