Making Pupils Impressed Is Inevitable but Risky: A Proposal to Today’s Japanese Education

• In Event: Poster session III
  In Poster Session: Poster session 3

Proposal

Special Activities (tokubetsu katsudo) including sports meeting and many kinds of ceremonies are playing an important part of today’s Japanese primary and secondary school education. But the presenter thinks that these activities have some big problems, in especially coordinated group gymnastics (kumi taiso) and half coming-of-age ceremonies (nibun-no-ichi seijin-shiki).

As for coordinated group gymnastics, dozens of pupils make a human pyramid which has sometimes ten or eleven stories. Each boy or girl who were told to be the base of the pyramid must bear more than about 200 kilograms. If at least one of them could not bear the weight, it would immediately mean the collapse of the pyramid, and lots of children would be injured. In fact, 6,533 accidents happened in primary schools all over Japan in 2012 academic year (Uchida, 2015, pp 46-49, 53-57).
However, a certain proportion of Japanese population support the practice of this kind of gymnastics. A leader of the teachers among them insists that the attractive point of the human pyramid is impression. He says that pupils trust others, and manage to make their own pyramid, and that the completing scene make everyone who looks at it, teachers, parents and so on, impressed (Kakiuchi, The attractive point of coordinated group gymnastics is impression itself.). MEXT (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports and Technology, Japan) has never said that impression in the special activity is necessary, but people have spontaneously promoted this.
In these days, criticism against human pyramid is getting bigger, because it is extremely dangerous. But the presenter rather confirms that the concept of impression is highly valued in Japanese school education.

As for half coming-of-age ceremonies, coming-of-age means twenty years old in Japan (It will change into eighteen years old in 2022), so, at many primary schools these ceremonies are held for ten-year-old pupils.
Pupils’ parents are invited to the ceremonies where boys and girls read letters of gratitude to them, in front of them. Parents are often impressed to weep.
Criticism against this kind of ceremonies is that children suffering from domestic violence would be too hard to be present at them (Uchida, 2015, pp 93-94). The presenter approves this opinion, but he also thinks that even if boys or girls seem comfortable at the ceremony would be sometimes suffering from domestic violence including uttering harsh words, or neglecting at home.
Children receiving harsh words, such as “Idiot!” or “Number ten!”, are apt to think that he himself / she herself is actually foolish or useless, in order to make his/her mind stable. In these cases, he/she would rather show his/her gratitude to the “strict” parents spontaneously. From the viewpoint of others, he/she looks like a child of noble and good behaviour. Some novels show that the faces of people of twisted mind often look happy and comfortable, for example, Yamada Eimi’s “An afternoon snack” in Japan (Yamada, 2005). In this short novel, a female college student is always with her boyfriend, suffering from his violence. She looks like not a person but a pet animal.
The presenter insists that schools should never be places of bearing pet animals, but at half coming-of-age ceremonies, Japanese schools are bearing submissive pet animals of good behaviour.

As seen above, the presenter thinks that a problem of today’s Japanese education is that the society is forcing to make artificial impressions spontaneously. So, he must question whether impression is necessary or not, in education.
Pupils feel good with an impression when he/she got one more piece of abilities. It is quite natural; therefore, it should be said that impression is inevitable rather than necessary. It should be quite dangerous if impression would be a purpose of education, because impression is a vulnerable feeling and it often puts truth out of sight. Teachers must keep pupils away from sinking into impression.
For this reason, even about social problems, such as war, poverty or discrimination, teachers should not be happy to see pupils angry at them. It is indispensable that teachers must lead them to look at these problems with intellect.

References
Kakiuchi, Kota. The attractive point of coordinated group gymnastics is impression itself. “Kumi taiso no miryoku wa zubari kando da.” https://www.meijitosho.co.jp/eduzine/interview/?id=20140413　Seen on 21/ 2/2018.
Uchida, Ryo (2015). A disease named education, “Kyoiku to iu yamai,” Kobunsha Paperbacks.
Yamada, Eimi (2005). An afternoon snack, “Kanshoku,” Fuumi Zekka, Bungei Shunjuu, pp 5-42.

Author

• Hiroyuki Okamoto, Hyogo University