Political Change Impact on the Education System - Essay Example

Japan’s political arena has not been at its best for the last decade or so. Recently, two Prime Ministers, resigned after only a year in office due to the rise of a divided opinions where the ruling party controls the House of Representatives, while opposition parties control the House of Councilors. The Japanese government has been encouraged to postpone key decisions. There are pounding attacks on the bureaucracy by the media and politicians. For this reason, young and competent bureaucrats are fleeing from government service. Della (2006, p. 27) stated that Japan’s total outstanding public debt as a ratio of gross domestic product has reached 170 percent, by far the highest among the group of seven industrial countries and nearly three times higher than that of the US. Reformists are partially correct when they attribute the current political mess to a steady one. The point they miss is that the present malfunctioning of the political system is partially due to changes that were made in the 1990s. Those changes totally upended the coordination mechanisms that completely characterised the Japanese system. This resulting lack of coordination mechanisms has invited comprehensible failures. Confrontation has intensified especially between political players and it has become difficult for them to agree on any political issues. Lynn (1987) describes Japanese right-wing political ideologies, developed over a period of time from the Mejji restoration and dominating Japanese politics during the first part of these periods. Japanese nationalism and Japanese militarism mixed ideas with state socialism, and were proposed by a number of modern political philosophers and thinkers in Japan. This led to the emergence of many private institutions of higher education. Higher education in Japan is highly occupied by the large contribution of this sector. There were 993 private universities as of may 2004. Nowadays; three forth of students attend private higher education institutions. In Japan education was a high priority for the government as the leadership of the early Meiji government realised the critical need for universal public education in its drive to modernise and westernise Japan. Overseas missions were sent abroad to study the education systems of leading Western countries. Education was egalitarian and virtually universal at the primary level, in the early twentieth century but at higher levels it was multitasked, highly selective, and elitist. German influences were strong while college education was for the few imperial universities, where women had relatively few opportunities to enter higher education as few imperial universities admitted women. There also were a number of womens colleges, some quite prestigious. At this period, numerous universities were founded by Christian missionaries, who also took a vigorous role in expanding educational opportunities for women, particularly at the secondary level. Several of the private universities established official status and were granted government recognition for programs they had conducted, this was in 1919. In the 1920s, the tradition of liberal education reappeared, particularly at the kindergarten level, where the Montessori Method attracted many. Education was later a subject to strong military and nationalistic influence (Susan 1982, p. 184). In 1946, occupation policy makers made a number of changes aimed at democratising Japanese education. The pre-war system that was of higher secondary schools was replaced by comprehensive upper-secondary schools. They also revised curricula and textbooks and the nationalistic morals course was abolished and replaced with Social Studies. After the abolition of the elitist higher education system and the increase in the number of higher education institutions, the opportunities for higher learning grew. The system expanded by granting university or junior college status to a number of technical institutes, schools, and advanced secondary schools. In 1952 when the full national sovereignty was restored, Japan immediately began to adapt some of the changes in education, to reproduce Japanese ideas about education and educational administration. The Ministry of Education regained an immense deal of power after the war. School board of directors were appointed, instead of elected. A course in moral education was modified and reinstituted, despite considerable initial concern that it would cause a renewal of heightened nationalism. By the 1960s, accelerating economic growth and post-war recovery brought new anxiety to expand higher education. As the expectations grew, the quality of higher education improved, the costs of higher education also increased. This was a time of great turmoil in higher education. Later, many campuses were disrupted due to violent student riots. Clark (1986) argues that campus strife was the convergence of a number of factors, including the ideological differences between various Japanese student groups, anti-Vietnam War movement in Japan, disputes over campus issues, such as discipline; student strikes, and even general frustration with the university system itself. In 1969, the government responded with the University Control Law  and in the early 1970s, further education reforms were introduced. New universities and teachers compensation were governed by new laws and public school curricula were revised. Nationwide standardized university entrance examination was further introduced for the national universities as private education institutions received public aid. Also during this period, strong divergence developed between the government and teachers groups. Despite the many educational changes, especially since 1945, the education system still reflects extensive position in cultural and philosophical ideas (Kelly 1999). Moral and character developments have been integral to education. The Meiji period of the meritocratic legacy has endured, as has the national education structure. Attention still remains in adapting foreign ideas and methods to Japanese traditions and in improving the system generally. Since World War II, there has been admirable success of the education system though problems remained through the 1980s. These difficulties apparently were brought by domestic and foreign observers such as rigidity, excessive consistency, lack of choices, unwanted influences of the university examinations and intervening emphasis on formal educational qualifications. There was a belief that education was responsible for some social problems and for the general academic, behavioural problem of some students. The great concern was that Japanese education was not being receptive to the new requirements caused by international challenges of the changing world in the twenty first century (Peter 1988, p.317). According to Okamoto (2001) internationalisation, elasticity, creativity, individuality, and diversity  became the watchwords of Japan’s significant education reform movement of the 1980s. Proposals and potential changes of the 1980s were significant that some compared them to the educational changes that occurred when Japan opened to the West in the nineteenth century and those of the occupation. Concerns of new restructuring movement were captured in a succession of reports issued between 1985 and 1987 by the National Council on Educational Reform, set up by Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone. The final report outlined essential emphases in response to the internationalization of education, new information technologies, and the media and emphases on individuality, lifelong learning, and adjustment to social change. To explore new guidelines, the council suggested that eight detailed subjects be considered in designing education for the twenty-first century. This was by organising a system of lifelong learning and reducing emphasis on the educational background of individuals. There was also civilising and diversifying higher education, elevating and diversifying elementary and secondary education, improving the quality in respect to teachers, adapting to internationalisation, adapting to the information age and conducting an appraisal of the administration and finance of education (Della 2006, p. 27). These subjects reflected educational and social aspects of the reform, with the Japanese view about the association of education to society. As debate over reform took place, the government rapidly moved to begin implementing changes in most of these eight areas. These reforms have been constant, and although most have now forgotten about the work done by the reform council in the 1980s, the contents of numerous changes can be traced back to this era. In Japan today, education plays a critical social task. References Clark, BR 1986, Academic organization in cross-national perspective, The higher education system. Della, Porta 2006,  A comparative analysis, Social movements, political violence, and the state. p. 27. Lynn, R 1987,  Lessons for the West, Educational achievement in Japan. Peter, Duus 1988, Party rivalry and political change in Taishō Japan,  vol. 35, p. 317. Okamoto, Kaoru 2001, An introduction to Education in Japan, Education of the Rising Sun21. Susan, Pharr 1982, The Search for a Place in Political Life, Political Women in Japan, p. 184. Read More