June 14-Sessions-Education Reform

This morning we had our first chance to try a Japanese breakfast. Some common breakfast dishes are fish, vegetables, miso soup and, of course, tea. I did try some of the Japanese breakfast offerings, but I think that I'll stick to "eating Japanese" for lunch and/or dinner. It would take me a long time to get used to fish for breakfast!

Today was a full day of seminars. The first speaker was Tsutomu Kimura, President of the National Institution for Academic Degrees. He spoke about Education Reform in Japan. He gave us a wealth of information about the performance of Japanese children and also about the problems that schools and families currently face.

Although Japanese children rank very high in academic performance in comparison with children in other countries, their rank has dropped in the last few decades. This concerns education officials.

Some of the current problems are:
--Japanese children are under stress and there is excessive competition in examinations to get into high school and universities.
--Japanese children have large amounts of knowledge, but are lacking in the ability to learn and think by themselves and to apply this knowledge.
--Kindness to others, respect of life and human rights are not significantly fostered, resulting in more incidences of school violence and bullying.

As a result, reforms are being implemented to nurture a "zest for living"in order to cope with an acutely changing society:
--the ability to identify problems for onself, learn by oneself, think for oneself, make independent judgements and actions and solve problems properly.
--to develop a rich sense of humanity to be capable of self-reliance, cooperation with others and compassion for others.
--to develop health and physical strength to live a vigorous life.

The future model for education also promotes more free time for children and liaison between schools, families and communities.

This is a very, very condensed version of Mr. Kimura's remarks!
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