Does anyone know of any interesting facts about schools in Japna?
Japan - 10 Answers
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1 :
well you have to wear these slipper-like shoes when going to your classes or something...
2 :
I'm not sure how recent this is? Buts its on Japans High schools http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=8Pqcd4qFAZ4C&oi=fnd&pg=PP11&dq=Interesting+facts+about+schools+in+japan&ots=jisfzBJPxP&sig=lefZ3_NY00lBoQEN0cQVFqtUN2A#PPP11,M1
3 :
1. They attend school on Saturday 2. They have to take entrance exams to get into high schools 3. The better your entrance exam scores are, the more likely you'll be sponsored by a major company who will pay for your education through college and then you go to work for that company to pay them back 4. English language classes are mandatory 5. Almost all require school uniforms 6. There is a high rate of suicide amongst Japanese students due to the pressure to perform well
4 :
I just want to add my thoughts about this topic. I have been a teacher in a private Japanese high school for the last 5 years. I think that pknutson_sws's post was pretty close. But some things are a little different. 1. Students do have to take tests to go to Jr. high and high school except I have never heard of students being sponsored by a company. In Japan all schools have an academic level. The higher you score on the entrance exam the better the school you can go to. Jr. high and high school are both 3 years. The first year of high school the students are pretty new so they study a little and try to make friends and find a club or sports team. The second year most students study hardly at all. They spend most of their time practicing for they sport or club. For example if you play baseball. The students spend most of their time with team mates practicing baseball 7 days a week. This is true for brass band, drawing clubs, Karate, and even student council. The students have more respect for their seniors than they do for the teachers. Only the coach ranks at the top. The student who are in clubs are so busy that they have little time to study for school. On the flip side of this are the students who really want to go to a good university. (They have the same system, the higher your entrance exam score is, the better the university.) These students spend most of there free time at a cram school where they study core subjects such as math, history and science. The reason for this is that their classes at school do not challenge these students because teachers only teach to the average students in the class. All high schools are elevator schools, once you are in you can graduate unless you are absent too much from school or you fail more than 50% of your classes. Failing a class is very hard to do. The grades for classes are given on a 1 to 5 scale, with 5 being top. If you compare it to a western school it is like a scale from 1 to 100 system, with a twist. The twist is that for a class most points are given on a 1 to 10 scale (100=10, 90=9 and so on) but then for the report card that is broken into: 10 or 9 =5 8 or 7 = 4 6 or 5 = 3 4 or 3 = 2 2 or 1 = 1 So the student only has to get a 2 to pass a class. If they learn 20% of the information they can graduate from high school. In their senior year the students stop taking classes at school their last semester to allow them to focus on university entrance exams. They usually go to university entrance exam prep schools. The students who do not wish to go to university start looking for jobs at this time. The students who plan to go to a junior college or trade school go to classes that will help them get into the kind of school they want to go to. This system might be a problem in another culture but in Japan the system is of lifetime employment (This is slowly changing, but old habits are hard to break). So if a company hires you they will train you to do your job. This is true even for university students, even at the top level universities. The companies hire the brightest and train them (sometime for years) to do their jobs. I think that this is a very interesting fact about Japanese high schools. This is not just a good story it is a fact. I live it everyday. I disagree with it and so do many other teachers. I hope this was interesting or you. http://www.japan.survival-links.com
5 :
Most public schools don't have classes on Saturdays anymore; I know some private schools do, but I don't know if it's most of them or not. Sports clubs do have practices on weekends, for both junior high and high school. Most high schools do require passing an entrance exam, but there are some that don't (for example, when a high school and a junior high are part of the same institution, junior high students may be able to pass directly to the high school). Mandatory education in Japan is only up to 9th grade (3rd year of junior high school). The public school system generally charges no tuition for elementary and junior high school, but public high schools may charge tuition since it's considered voluntary education. They do provide tuition assistance for low-income families. English is a required subject, starting in the first year of junior high (7th grade). In most public schools, English is the only foreign language taught.
6 :
Hi, I'm Japanese. Well, in Japan, students are required to wear a pair of indoor shoes called uwabaki which looks like this: http://www.sakuranbo.ed.jp/kinder/goods/image1.gif But they don't need to wear that in college. Students from kindergarten to highschool are usually required to wear the kind of indoor shoes. And in elementary school, students are required to wear a yellow hat and carry a satchel. Femal students carries a red satchel and male students carries a black satchel on their back: http://www.yoshio.net/blog/archives/images/takayamashi.jpg If they belong to a private school, probably they have a uniform but if they belong to a public school, they can wear whatever they want. And unlike America, they don't have a shuttle bus service. They need to walk to school. In the morning, the students who don't belong to some club that has a training in the moring usually get together and walk to the school. Depending on the area where they live, students who live close to each other are required to walk together to the school. Usually elementary school students are not allowed to ride a bicycle to school even though they are allowed to ride a bicycle outside the school when they turn 5 th grade, well that was my school rule back then. And then after elementary school, depending on a place where students live, they can either choose to go to a private or public middle school. If they go to a private school, they need to take an entrance exam. But if they go to a public school, they don't need to take any exam. They just go to the public school close to the area where they live. And in middle school, they are allowed to ride a bicycle to school if they live a little bit far from the school. But if they don't live that far, they are not allowed to ride a bicycle but walk to the school. Middle school students in public and private schools are usually required to wear a school uniform and carry a school bag, and wear a pair of school shoes. A school uniform is different from school to school and a school bag is also different from school to school: http://www.joshibi.ac.jp/fuzoku/common/images/schoollife/d0101_img01.jpg http://www.it-hiroshima.ed.jp/introduction/image/uniform_j.gif http://www.jsh.kyoto-su.ac.jp/junior/img/uniform_image001.jpg http://www.chibanichi.ed.jp/seifuku2000/mfuyu.jpg And depending on a school, school rules are very strict. Some schools ...well the school I went had rules that female students couldn't have long hair and male students had to have their head bald. And students couldn't wear socks other than white, black or dark blue socks. If students wore brown socks, that was against school rules so the brown socks could be confiscated. And also students are not usually allowed to have a part-time job, and can't have pierced ears and can't have their hair colored. Those are usually the school rules. And before they graduate from middle school, they are asked if they want to go to a high school or vocational school. In Japan, all students are not required to go to a high school so some students choose to go to a vocational school. And if students choose to go to a highschool, they need to take an entrance exam. It doesn't matter if they want to go to a private or public high school. The students who want to go to a highschool are required to take an entrance exam. And if some students fail to pass the exam, they are usually asked to go to a vocational school or they are asked to take the exam for the second recruitment. In highschool, again students are usually required to wear a school uniform, school shoes, and carry a school bag. Some students are allowed to take a bus and train and bicycle to go to school. But some highschools allow students to ride a small moped when they turn 17. But my highschool didn't allow students to ride a moped.... Again, depending on a highschool, school rules are strict and not strict. The highschool I went to had very strict rules that students were not allowed to have a part-time job, have pieced ears, wear white socks but black and dark blue socks, have hair colored. But some schools didn't have really any rules. Other than the stuff I said, we have school events such as school festival and athletic festival. The kind of festival is held once a year. Kindergarten and elementary schools don't have school festival but middle schools and high schools do. And athletic festivals are held once a year from kindergarten to highschools. And unlike America, all students from elementary school to high schools are required to attend an entrance ceremony and commencement. The students from 2nd to 6th grade and the 8th grade to 9th grade and 11th grade to 12th grade welcome and farewell the students who enter and graduate from their school. And also once a month, there is a school metting and all students and teachers gather in the morning at a school gym. Students are required to sing a school song and listen to these boring comments of what school president says about something...something that s/he concerns of students....anyways, students can't sit but stand still for a long time and not even allowed to go to a restroom during the meeting so sometimes some students pass out. And also students are not allowed to bring any snack, sometimes even medicine like cold medicine but the medicne that can seriously be needed for students who carry serious disease is the only thing that is accepted in school. So if students have sore throat, they are not allowed to eat candy for sore throat because the candy is considered as snack. Also, they are not allowed to go to a restroom while they have class. They are not allowed to eat or drink anything during class. And they are usually provided lunch. It's not really free, though. But usually each school has a nutritionist and make a healthy menu so students are provided nutritious food. Unlike America, there is no vending machines at school usually but in high school, some schools don't provide lunch so there is a vending machine to sell some beverages but those beverages are not soda but milk and tea, and there is no vending machine that sells snack. Well..the last thing I want to add is that from kindergarten to high school, students have a homeroom teacher. And students usually don't move class to class but teachers come to our homeroom to teach English, math and other subjects except music and P.E. I think there is more to tell but it's going to be too long so I'll stop here. I hope this helps :)
7 :
-You have to wear slipper-like white shoes when going in the school, and leave your outside shoes in a place next to the door. -You have to bow to your teacher every lesson
8 :
A lot of junior high/ high school have "extra classes" during summer vacation, short winter and spring holidays, even though students are loaded up with extraordinary homework and, in the first place, every vacation itself is SHORT. (at least it is true of my school. I'm almost suffocated!) Some students are mad at their club activity. They come to school not for studying but for the club. Plus some schools make it their educational purpose that students should not be bound to just studying, that we should creat the environment for them to both study hard and join clud activity(what we call in Japanese æ–‡æ¦ä¸¡é“), which I'm sure is not working at all. Some teachers have GREAT pleasure in having students answer questions during classes. The Information learning class, or the class for attaining Media Literacy, is so poor- it's like teaching how to use a computer to those who have never seen it. (though it does not apply to those high school which have emphasis on enginerring and industry. )
9 :
I'm not sure if you can find any interesting facts about schools at http://360.yahoo.com/burlydurite but there are some interesting anecdotes about Japan at that weblog.
10 :
I taught in Japan for a year. They have a disabled school for kids in wheelchairs and who need surgery. They used to go to school 6 days a week until a few years ago when the prime minister changed it to 5 days. He wanted them to be more well-rounded. Though most schools now have clubs all day on Saturday or give a lot of homework to make up for the missing day. The kids come in and bow before and bow after a lesson is taught by the teacher. They are a lot quieter than US schools. Our school had no air or heat. The hallways were open so in the winter there was snow on the floors when it got windy.
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