by Bruce Feiler
In an effort to make sense of my conflicting feelings, I searched for a new way to evaluate schools, one that would look beyond the standardized test scores and consider more than the “Three R’s” of reading, writing, and arithmetic. What I settled on was a broader standard, based on what I call the “Four C’s”: curriculum, communication, character, and citizenship.
Curriculum. One of the undisputed strengths of the Japanese school system is its ability to teach children cognitive skills, particularly in math and science. All public schools in Japan follow a curriculum established by the Ministry of Education in Tokyo, ensuring that all students are taught the same information at roughly the same time of year. While the Western philosophy of education is based primarily on the dialogue, in which the teacher and the students exchange information, the Japanese system is based on the monologue, in which the teacher speaks and the students receive. This style, with its stress on lectures and rote memorization, is particularly suited to teaching math and science skills, especially at an early age. Every major international study of the last fifteen years has shown that Japanese children consistently outperform their Western counterparts in these two areas.
But while the Japanese clearly excel in teaching cognitive skills, they lag far behind in teaching creative thinking. The same monolithic teaching methods that work wonders in teaching mathematical formulas and scientific data are less successful in encouraging children to interpret historical trends and express themselves in a foreign language. A Japanese friend who studied with an American university professor in Osaka once asked me to help him with an English essay on the causes of the Second World War. My friend had written a three-page essay outlining the opinions of eminent historians on various sides of the issue. His analysis was very thorough, but at the end he stopped short of weighing the assorted ideas and stating his own opinion.
“Which side do you agree with?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he replied. “I didn’t think about it.”
“The professor will be interested to know your view on this issue. He wants you to express your opinion.”
“But I am just a student,” he said. “I am not supposed to have an opinion.”
Of course Japanese children can be creative, but in school they are taught to bring their thinking into line with that of others, rather than to draw conclusions for themselves. In art classes at Sano Junior High, for example, the teacher distributed two dozen busts of Michelangelo’s David and told each student to make an exact, frontal drawing of the face. No deviations were allowed. Many Japanese are now starting to question the lack of originality in their schools. Taichi Sakaiya, a well-known Japanese writer and former official with the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI), stressed recently that Japan’s success as a world leader of mass-produced goods is the result of the country’s standardized education and the technical skills of its workers. “But individuality and variety have been sacrificed for this goal,” he wrote in a newspaper editorial, “and as a result, contemporary Japan, though materially abundant, is a most uninteresting place.” His proposed solution was to shift the focus in schools from serving the needs of society toward fostering independence of mind. “The concept of standardization must be discarded,” he insisted, “and society refashioned so that individuality and creativity have a place. The continued prosperity of Japan depends on whether social change can be moved in this direction, because future success in business will require innovation.”
Communication. After my year in the Japanese schools, I believe that the largest gulf between Japan and the West is caused by our dissimilar ways of communicating with others. Westerners often ask how I can possibly understand the Japanese: They are so quiet. Their faces are like stone. They never show any emotion. The Japanese, for their part, say similar things about Westerners, particularly Americans: They talk so much. They always say whatever they think, even if it is rude. They are inconsiderate of other people’s feelings.
I came to appreciate that Japanese reticence and indirect speech are not the result of a lack of emotion or a willfulness to deceive but are the outcome of careful and deliberate training. Students are constantly reminded not to interject their personal feelings into a public discussion but to save them for a more private time. Among themselves, the Japanese are masters of the art of not offending anyone. To them, this indirectness seems considerate and politic, while to us it seems evasive and, at times, maddening.
My biggest challenge as a teacher in Japan was to emphasize that while this style is effective among Japanese, it is less effective when speaking with people who are not Japanese. “English is more than a language,” I would often say to my classes, “it is a state of mind. If you are speaking English the same way you are speaking Japanese, then you are probably speaking it incorrectly.” I first realized this different approach through my own experience with the Japanese language. When I spoke Japanese with Mr. C, my eighty-five-year-old landlady, or the principal of my school, I could feel myself physically change. I would scrunch my shoulders, stiffen my arms, and even suck in my stomach. At times my posture would dictate my speech. It’s nearly impossible, for example, to have a good knock-down, drag-out fight in standard Japanese. One’s body—one’s words—will not allow it.
English, on the other hand, is perfect for confrontation. Not only does the language favor frankness, but children are taught to be as direct and succinct as possible. Even our idioms are different: Japanese are constantly reminded to be polite, considerate, and mannerly, while Americans are told to “talk straight,” “get to the point,” and “put it on the line.”
The value of learning a foreign language is to understand these basic distinctions. All Japanese students beginning in the seventh grade must study English for three years, plus three more if they attend high school. This represents a commitment to language study which American schools would do well to follow. But the obstacle in many English-language classrooms in Japan is that very few teachers emphasize cross-cultural themes. Many Japanese instructors teach English as if it were Japanese: through constant memorization and repetition of words. Every student at Sano Junior High had drawers full of old notebooks with page after page of English vocabulary words written ad infinitum. A student might be able to learn the Japanese characters for “sensei” by copying them fifty times, but writing the English word “teacher” one hundred times a night does not guarantee that a student will be able to understand it, or use it. An important component of communication is conversation, a device that few teachers like to use because it is not covered on the entrance exams. If schools hope to breed “international” students, then Japanese teachers must adopt techniques that stress speaking and listening skills as basic steps toward interpersonal communication.
Character. For all the rules and regulations that govern their lives, Japanese students still enjoy school. When asked to describe school life in my year-end survey, over two thirds of the students wrote such phrases as “cheerful,” “comfortable,” “noisy,” or as one student aptly expressed, “spirited, at least between classes.” But the spirit that lives in the halls between classes often dies out when students return to their seats.
During my time in Japan I met a sixteen-year-old girl who had spent seven months in Arizona with her family while her father worked at an American computer company. The girl, named Mia, attended eighth grade in a Phoenix-area junior high school and was struck by the different behavior of American and Japanese students. “At first I was shocked by how many students raised their hands in class,” she said. “They all wanted to speak. They all wanted to answer the questions. They all wanted to talk with the teacher. That would never happen in Japan.”
In the beginning of her sojourn, Mia hated her American school. “I want to go home,” she cried to her parents. Her math class was too easy, and her history class was too hard. The students were noisy in class, and she missed the familiar structure of school life in Japan. But at the end of the y
ear, when Mia returned to Japan, she experienced a similar shock in reverse.
“Japanese classes seemed so boring,” she remembered. “Nobody raised their hands. Nobody answered questions. Nobody spoke in class except the teacher. School was like a factory pouring information into students as if we were all canned peaches.”
Mia is not alone in her frustration. Even the Ministry of Education has entered this debate and is now calling for more focus on the character of individuals in Japanese schools. In a blueprint for educational reform prepared for the prime minister in the late 1980s, the ministry appealed for a new age of individuality: “Educators in Japan should once again clearly grasp what ‘perfection of human character’ means, and put emphasis on the importance of personal dignity and respect for individuality, which, in the process of Japan’s rapid modernization to catch up with the West, tended to be ignored.”
As its minimal dropout rate can attest, Japan is extremely successful in convincing children that their future success depends on staying within the system. But if schools hope to maintain this level of commitment, they must spend more time cultivating in students a sense of personal fulfillment.
Citizenship. One of the most impressive aspects of the Japanese school system is its ability to foster among students an allegiance to the state. In the United States, students learn early about their rights as Americans. “It’s a free country,” adolescents often say, “I can do whatever I want.” But do they learn about their responsibilities? In Japan, this balance is made clear. From cleaning the windows of their classroom to picking up trash in their neighborhood, students learn the importance of serving their community. The essence of citizenship, I believe, is the feeling that people value their place in a group to such an extent that they are willing to sacrifice some of themselves so that the group as a whole may prosper. Japanese schools’ biggest service to the state is their ability to create among most students this overwhelming sense of belonging.
Yet for all their paeans to group cooperation, Japanese schools still fall horribly short in teaching children how to get along with those who look, think, and act differently from the majority. The beleaguered minority in schools includes handicapped students who are assigned to special classes, “returnee” students who have lived abroad, and students who are descended from families that were outcasts over a century ago. This intolerance is no more apparent than in the way young Japanese feel toward foreigners. When I asked students in my survey if they thought Japan was superior to other countries, over seventy-five percent said yes. Their reasons: the Japanese are more honest than other people; they work harder; and, the most popular answer of all, the Japanese have better brains. This fact, more than any other, raises doubts about the ability of young Japanese to live in an international world. While Japanese schools prepare their students to be citizens of Japan, they fail to teach them to be citizens of the world. If these students can learn one thing from the West, it is respect for diversity. The government’s Ad Hoc Council on Reform issued this warning best: “Students are expected to love Japan as Japanese, but they must avoid judging things on the basis of narrow nationalistic interests.”
Japan, like its economy, cannot exist in a vacuum purposefully cut off from the rest of the world. More than ever before, the future success of the Japanese people is linked to the continued good fortune and good will of people living across Asia, the Americas, and Europe—all former enemies of imperial Japan. Thus, it is in the best interest of Japan—and of other nations as well—for Japanese schools to raise a new generation of students who will be able to blend with people all over the world, even those not “Made in Japan.”
The last chapter of the ninth-grade moral education textbook at Sano Junior High addressed this issue through the story of a young junior high school student named Masao. At the beginning of the tale, Masao receives a grade on a midterm exam that says he is third in his class.
“It’s not bad,” he thinks, “but I’ll try to become the top student. I just need to study more than anyone else.”
For the next several months Masao spends almost all of his time studying. He never watches television; he rarely leaves his house; he doesn’t even speak with his best friend, Takeo, the number-one student in the class.
Six months later, when the results of the final exam are made known, Masao has moved to the top of the class. His hard work has paid off, he thinks. He is satisfied and feels superior. But when the scores are announced before the class, a chill fills the room. The other students do not applaud the top scorer as they usually do. Masao is shocked, but he assumes the other students are envious of him.
Several weeks after the test, Masao’s old friend Takeo approaches him and asks if he would like to help produce the class yearbook. Masao thinks Takeo is trying to take away his studying time and refuses the request. The next day Masao’s teacher asks the boy to stay after school for a talk.
“Congratulations,” the teacher says. “You did very well on the last exam, the top score in the ninth grade.” Masao listens quietly.
“By the way,” the teacher says, “do you know the phrase ‘Made in Japan’?”
“It means something is produced in Japan,” the boy says.
“There is more to it,” the teacher says. “Japan has improved considerably in the past twenty to thirty years. We now have the world’s third-largest GNP. But how much do other nations trust and admire us?”
Masao is confused but listens anyway.
“Other nations think that Japanese people study and work hard,” the teacher continues. “This has certainly helped Japan to grow. We think we can be proud and others should admire the effort we have showed. But they do not. Some are envious of us, but I am afraid that most think Japan does not do enough to help others, especially countries less fortunate than ours.”
Slowly the boy begins to understand.
“We are very wealthy, at least in material goods. But can we ignore the sad reality of others because it is not our problem? I think Japan ought to think of its position and try to help other nations. Then ‘Made in Japan’ will be accepted as the mark of a good product.”
As he listens, the boy at last understands the reason for the chilled air the day the scores were announced. Just as Japan needs to help other countries, so he should contribute more to his homeroom class.
“I was the one who suggested you work on the yearbook,” the teacher says. “I am disappointed that you turned it down. Why don’t you think it over?”
As Masao walks away, he thinks of asking his teacher why he originally spoke so indirectly. Instead, he nods and smiles. He has learned what it means to be “Made in Japan”: those who are strongest individually must work even harder to preserve the health of the larger—and stronger—fold.
About a week after the American class, I was sitting at my desk at the Board of Education late one afternoon when Sakamoto-sensei appeared at the door. He had never visited our office before. After pausing at the door to announce his name, he stopped briefly by my desk on his way to meet the director.
“Bruce-sensei,” he whispered in my ear, “thank you for teaching our students in such a kind and gentle way last week. They love you from the bottom of their hearts…
“By the way, if it’s all right with you, I would like you to give a short speech to the entire school next week at our summer farewell ceremony. I think the students would enjoy hearing from an American teacher. These are extraordinary times.”
I looked up to thank him for the invitation, but he had already moved on to greet Kato-sensei, who was waiting beside his desk. The two men then walked slowly to the back of the room and disappeared into a private chamber.
I looked at Mr. C, who whispered something into the telephone and quietly hung up the receiver. He pulled a cigarette from a pack in his drawer and let it dangle from his lips without lighting it. I returned to the work on my desk.
After several minutes of silence, the two men emerged from behind the door an
d stopped just in front of the director’s desk.
“Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen,” Kato-sensei began, “I trust that you all know Mr. Principal. I believe he has a short announcement to make.”
Sakamoto-sensei stepped forward and dropped his arms by his side as he did before addressing his school. His shoulders were straight, his face polished, his eyes locked in a timeless stare as in the tinted pictures of past principals which lined the walls of his office.
“As you know, ladies and gentlemen, these last few months have been very difficult…” His voice trailed off slightly but then regained its gravelly tone. “A sickness has been in the air, a very serious malady. I am afraid that this illness has finally infected me.”
None of the members of my office moved as the principal spoke, using what had become a familiar metaphor to describe what had happened at my school. I recalled Denver’s warning that after a disgrace to a child, a lord must bear the shame.
“My colleagues and esteemed members of the Board of Education, I am announcing to you today that I will be retiring from my job at the end of this term to recuperate from this disease. I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. Thank you for your service to my school.”
When he had finished speaking, a cool draft seemed to spread through the room like contagion in a bath. Mr. C diverted his eyes to the floor. Arai-san drew her hand to her lips as if to repress a cry. Kato-sensei stared out the window.
Finally, with his head still bowed, Sakamoto-sensei walked out of the office and disappeared through the elevator doors. This “one-man,” who had expressed such personal pride in the storied tradition of education in Japan, who had believed so deeply in the need for teachers to instill in children a sense of discipline, who had striven so diligently to teach his students about opening and closing the kejime doors of responsibility, in the end had borne the burden of history himself so that his school could persevere.
He would not return that fall.
