1. Equalization of school facilities.
What we see is a normal school, an ordinary school, and I think the biggest revelation for me is actually here - you see the daily and normal appearance of primary and secondary schools in a country, which is actually quite important.
A lot of people say that you are looking at a model schoolI think they're just letting you go to some good schools. Because the school has a swimming pool, a gymnasium. This is a transplantation of the concept of China to observe Japan, in fact, this is not the case, we look at Japanese schools, there are more than 100 years old schools, there are schools with the inscription of Emperor Showa, there are also public schools in cities and counties, but the daily management, equipment and facilities of each school is roughly the same. To put it simply, Japan is a country that runs schools strictly in accordance with the law, and there is no division of schools into three, six, nine, and so on, so there is no such thing as a key school in the compulsory education stage.
2. Rotation system of principals and teachers, and civil service system of teachers.
Without a key school, what is so special about Japanese education?Principals and teachers of elementary and junior high schools have been made civil servants. Principals and teachers are rotated every six years and reassigned by the Board of Education. Primary and secondary school teachers are included in the civil service establishment and are subject to the unified plan and arrangement of the state.
Since teachers are all civil servants, their salaries are relatively stable and fixed. Although some people think that the salary is low, for example, Sato Manabu said that the quality and level of treatment of Japanese teachers are not as good as those in China, and he has a very high opinion of China. What we see in Japan is the norm, and all schools are like this. Their school-running concept is based on the education law, where there are students, there is a school, and if there is a school, it is necessary to treat all students equally, and regard the normal growth of students as the pursuit of education. Primary and secondary schools do not have any goals of their own, such as striving for the first place in 10 or 20 years, and there are no similar goals. It's just a normal, normal school. So there's no need to work overtime, there's no need to catch up with anything. I think that's important, but we're ignoring it.
3 Students are reassigned each year:
Make more friends and break the congregation of the same kind.
One of the peculiarities of Japanese schools is that students are rearranged every year, starting from elementary school, which is quite surprising. We've been in schools in China for a long time, and we don't realize the value of it.
So what is its educational significance?It is to let primary school students meet as many students as possible and make more friends in six years. There is also a sense of breaking the possibility of similar gatherings. If there is a group of top students in this class, spread it out and balance it. Therefore, there is no unconventional goal or pursuit of education in Japan that transcends daily teaching. I think it's normal education, or normalization.
In addition, the school is so strict with the privacy protection of students that we can hardly imagine. If you see a student, you can take a picture casually, but that's absolutely not okay in Japan. Some schools don't even allow you to take pictures of the posters outside the classroom, because the posters will also have basic information about the students.
4 Traditional teaching facilities and rice field teaching.
The Japanese school we see is more traditional, with a class of 40 students, and the desks are arranged on the blackboard, the so-called "rice pad-style" layout. The teaching method is mainly lectures, and the teacher's board books are well written. The school's teaching facilities are relatively old, such as electric fans, projectors, etc., which we don't use much now, but they are still used in the classrooms of Japanese schools, and the degree of modernization and advancement of teaching facilities is far less than that of schools in big cities in China.
The school's playground is all land, with no cement or plastic. We asked the principal why the school's playground was built like thisThe principal was also very strange, he said that it was like this, nothing special, and that it was like this in all schools. Of course, you can also give it a lot of deep meanings such as returning to nature, but in fact it is a simple, natural, and normal appearance of a school.
5 Manabu Sato's Criticism and Reflections on Japanese Schools.
The state of Japanese schools, in terms of benefits, we call it "normalization of education", normal teaching, and there are not many things that change with each passing day. On the other hand, it is more traditional and old-fashioned. We talked to the Japanese educator Manabu Sato, and we felt that he was particularly critical of Japanese schools.
Manabu Sato believes that over the years, only a few schools in the world have had a "rice field-style" classroom appearance, such as Japan, China, and South Korea. The vast majority of countries are either small groups or interactive. This is a basic reality, but it cannot be changed. From this, we can imagine that classroom teaching in Japanese public schools is actually more traditional or rigid, and teachers take up most of their time.
6. Carry out teaching experiments in national schools.
Schools in Japan are divided into public schools, national schools, and private schools, but there is also a type of special school, which is a school for children with physical disabilities. The proportion of state primary schools and private primary schools is very small, accounting for only a few 2.0 percent, and the vast majority of them are public schools, which are run with local funds. State schools are specifically affiliated schools run by national universities, because universities are national and funded** by the Ministry of Education.
One of the functions of a national primary school or national secondary school is to carry out pedagogical experiments. This shows a missing link in China's school system. If we want to promote a new improvement, a new facility, a new method, we often can't do it, or we can only find some model schools. In Japan, it is a very orderly arrangement to first carry out a pilot project in national schools, and then promote it to other schools after it is successful.
7。Do Japanese schools "roll"?
Are Japanese schools rolling?When I went to visit it during the day, it was almost the same in each school, and everyone was in the classroom and playing in the playground, and they seemed to be happy. But what is the actual state of student existence?
This time, we met with a group of parents who are bringing their children to Japan to study. When one of the mothers, her two daughters, first arrived in Japan, she was anxious: how can this school completely ignore learning?She wants to bring the children back to Beijing. Originally, I imagined that Japan was a modern country and should attach great importance to education, but it turned out that their elementary schools almost completely did not pay attention to "education", there was no homework, no exams, and the teacher's requirements for students were to make more friends, eat better, and be physically stronger. The principal's speech was made with these three requirements. Because there is no homework and no exams, children naturally have no pressure.
In fact, like schools in most Western countries, Japanese schools do not advocate competition in elementary and junior high schools, and there are no exams for elementary school and junior high school. But to enter high school, you have to take an exam. Therefore, selective education, or competitive education, only begins in high school, which Chinese parents and teachers do not experience.
8。How to break the cycle of seedlings.
Children's education cannot be done in a fast-track way. When he was in elementary school, he relaxed a little more, so that he could grow naturally, sleep well, and eat well. When I reach junior high school, I am more mature physically and mentally, and then I will carry out challenging learning and education, so as not to beat the students down in elementary school.
At present, the proportion of primary school students in China who are tired of school or abandon school is quite high, and this is actually more than worth the loss. There needs to be a holistic approach to this problem.
The holistic solution is to eliminate exams and eliminate school disparities. Japanese elementary school students are enrolled in the nearest school. Parents are not allowed to pick up or drop off children as the distance is relatively close, only 5-10 minutes away. Parents are only allowed to send their children to school in the first week of school, or the first three days, in order to help them know the way, and then they are not allowed to send their children.
9。The focus of Japan's compulsory education stage:
Club activities.
Two years ago, Joint Publishing published a book - "365 Days in Japanese Public Elementary Schools", and we had an exchange with the author Tan Qi in Japan.
She introduced that the real focus of learning and education in Japan is "ministry work" - club activities, referred to as "ministry work". It is the most important thing for Japanese students from elementary school to junior high school, you can not study well, but you must participate in at least one "ministry work" and do it as well as possible.
Club activities are optional for students, about 2 3 are sports, and 1 3 are liberal arts. Students who choose physical education make up the majority. The requirements for "ministry work" are very high, because the Japanese education system does not have a dedicated junior sports school. The cultivation of young sports talents is all produced from the "ministry work" of ordinary schools. In elementary and junior high school, students' time and energy are mainly spent on "ministry work".
Parents in China will think that this is a misguided child. However, judging from the case of the mother who took her two daughters to school in Japan, one child is now in high school, and the school affiliated to the Waseda University School of Medicine, her career direction and interest development are very stable, and she has gradually entered the professional learning track.
In a country with abundant educational resources, in fact, parents do not have to worry too early, let their children explore and discover themselves, and they can get a good development.
10。The function of sports: a sense of accomplishment and a sense of teamwork.
The sports day in elementary schools in Japan is attended by all students, and there are no individual events, and most of them are team events. Including long-distance running, run 1 kilometer. There are so many students, how can you tell the difference?Tie a streamer on the head, and the color is different for different classes. Finally, there is a set of ways to evaluate the results.
The biggest challenge for students in the annual sports day is not the track and field events, but their classic events, such as running competitions with two people tied and three legs. There is also a stacked arhat, a class of students who fold up to form a triangle. For this reason, the students did not know how many times they had to fall, their noses were blue and their faces were swollen, and finally when it came to the sports meeting, they folded it up, which was unforgettable for life.
The cultivation of students' sense of achievement and teamwork is the function of sports, which is indeed different from ours. The process of developing excellent individuals may be in club activities. Because each person's strengths and choices are different, each person pays their own money and arranges their own pace of learning, and from this arrangement, we can realize that the educational function of Japanese schools is very different from ours.
11。Parallel schooling and remedial education.
Schooling and remedial education in Japan are two completely unintersecting paths. There is no academic competition or remedial classes in school education, and all of them are remedial education, which they call "juku". The average annual salary of the school is 500,000 yen, which is equivalent to 2 yuan50,000 yuan, the market of "school school" is also relatively standardized, and it is not a sky-high asking price.
Tuition and school education complement each other, so we feel that Japanese society and parents do not have a particularly strong opinion about tutoring education, nor do we say that it has exacerbated the gap between the rich and the poor or the class as a result. Maybe we don't know enough, learn more, there will be new understandings.
Are there any special rolls for Japanese parents?There are also, for example, the target is the University of Tokyo, and it is the medical school of the University of Tokyo. But it's a specific group of people, a specific family. Some people in Japan believe that this group accounts for only 5%-10%. Therefore, the degree of its volume is not comparable to that of China. If you want to go to a school other than the University of Tokyo, it's relatively easy.
12。Judge yourself accurately and find your own track.
A Japanese concept used to evaluate academic and test levels is called bias value, which uses an algorithm to calculate your level among your peers. Based on the deviation value, you can determine your intention to go to high school or university. It is equivalent to sorting and queuing. They call this kind of evaluation and comparison the "self-axis", and you only need to compare yourself with yourself, not with others. Each one has their own different tracks. Comparing with others is called the "other axis", always comparing with others, caring about the eyes and evaluations of others, and being criticized is depressed.
All of these can be regarded as a kind of educational ecology or a philosophy of education in Japan. That is, a kind of education that is normal and natural, based on each individual's self-cognition. In this sense, although it is not so outstanding and unconventional, I think it is still relatively friendly to most students.
There are also many problems in education in Japan, and the main one reported is that bullying in schools is on the rise. There is also gender inequality. A surprising phenomenon is that Japanese students are becoming less inclined to study abroad and are willing to stay in Japan. How should this be understood and evaluated?