Masahiro Shibata
On the 13th of December, 2002, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) made public the results of an academic ability survey on five principal subjects, Japanese, English, social studies, mathematics, and science. In January and February of that year the Ministry conducted the survey with approximately 450 thousand students from the fifth grade of elementary school through the third grade of junior high school. As indicated below, I compared the results obtained from this survey and the previous survey with the junior high school students from 1993 to 1995.
It is unavoidable that MEXT will be criticized, as it gave notice of the new educational guidelines in which the ministry advocated that teachers must develop "the zest for living" of students through "education free from pressure." Since the ministry, which has just introduced the five-day week school system, was confident that through "education free from pressure" teachers could form a good educational foundation in their students by repetition, experience-centered study, and problem-solving activity, it cut back the volume of education by thirty percent. Nevertheless, according to the results of this survey, forty-six percent more of the students answered questions wrong than on the previous examination. We came reluctantly to the conclusion that the academic achievement of students declined: glaring examples are a drop in the rate of the correct answers to the questions in social studies and mathematics. Though MEXT has just adopted the new guidelines, the argument that the ministry should change its policy and take another hard look at the guidelines will be spurred on.
Though Atsuko Toyama, the Minister, said that the rate of correct answers in most of subjects was higher than she expected, and ﾒThe students produced some excellent results, but I must take this problem as remaining to be solved.ﾓ It should be noted, however, that MEXT made this survey before schools started to follow the new guidelines, yet It is undeniable that concern should arise concerning declining academic standards.
Moreover, while the trends toward overemphasizing intellectual training and cram-style education is regretted, there is no great opposition to the idea that if MEXT enriches the content of education in the present educational environment, children can improve their scholarship and that if the ministry revises the guidelines, children can advance in their studies. What is worrisome is not the content nor the guidelines, but the way of giving instruction. In other words, the people claim a right to intense education in proportion to the studentsﾕ developmental stages.
When we focus attention on students, the motivation for studying has a decisive impact on their academic achievement: this is a matter commonly accepted and vindicated by this survey. Settlement of this problem will be not focusing attention on the change of the guidelines but seting out to create the environment where we can bring the joy of study to children.