I am an elementary school music teacher in Arcadia, California. I have also taught music for nine years in South Central Los Angeles. In November of 2001, I went on a wonderful three-week educational experience to Japan, paid for by the Japanese government and the Fullbright Memorial Fund. The program gives American teachers a first hand look at Japanese schools on all levels, from kindergarten centers to universities.

The trip involved 200 teachers from all over the United States. We spent the first of our three wonderful weeks in Tokyo, where we had daily classes and seminars. Then we broke up into small groups of 20 teachers each and were sent to different cities to look at the educational systems. My group was sent to Masuda City, a medium sized city in Shimane province in southwestern Japan. Masuda is about a three-hour bus ride from Hiroshima.

School is compulsory for nine years of elementary school. Children attend school six days a week. Ninety-eight percent of students go on to attend an additional three years of high school.

Extremely difficult exams are given to children at the end of ninth and twelfth grade. These exams require an average of three hours of study per day during the year of the test. In order to do well on these exams, many students spend several hours a week after school attending jukus, private evening classes geared towards the exams.

The exams place an extreme emphasis on rote memorization, the memorizing of facts and not of concepts. This emphasis has, Japanese authorities fear, created children who are unable to think creatively and get along with each other. Japanese officials would like to see the educational system change to one that puts more emphasis on independent thinking, such as the schools in the United States, and less of an emphasis on cold, hard facts. They want to encourage children to think more and have more extracurricular activities. In order to give students more free time, and relieve some exam pressure, the Japanese government is reducing the school week from six to five days and is working on simplifying the exam.

In Japan, teachers and principals are required to change schools every three to ten years. They are often required to move to other towns in order to teach. Some teachers we spoke with were required to move across country, many miles from their previous assignment. Principals tend to change schools and towns more often than teachers.

At the junior high and high schools, a six period day seems to be common, as it is in the United States. Teachers usually teach four periods of lessons. They have two periods a day for lesson preparation. American teachers teach approximately six periods per day. Teachers in Japan usually switch classrooms at junior high and high school. In American schools, the students switch classes while the teachers stay in the same classrooms. It is not uncommon for an American teacher to work on nights and weekends, doing homework and grading papers. Teachers in Japan finish their schoolwork during the school day, and rarely take papers home to grade.

Being a teacher is a very prestigious position in Japan. It is also a very popular career. In California, teachers have to do six months to a year of teaching practice after graduating from college in order to get their teaching license. In Japan, college students get only seven week of teaching practice. While any college graduate can get a job teaching in California, only 57% of Japanese graduates with a teaching degree actually get a teaching job.

During our time in Masuda City, we had the opportunity to spend four full days looking at the school system. We visited an elementary school, a junior high and a high school.

The first school we had the opportunity to explore and observe was Yasuda Elementary School, a medium-sized school of about 400 students. As in the United States, elementary school in Japan seems to be a time to learn, make friends and explore. Teachers have a relaxed, caring attitude towards their students and are on a first name basis with them. As in the U.S., elementary school teachers dress very casually for work. The average class size is about twenty students per teacher, slightly smaller in number than the situations I teach in. The classes seemed to be doing a lot of hands-on activities and very little work sitting at their desks.

At lunch, students from different classrooms came and escorted individual teachers to their classrooms. At schools in Japan, students prepare the lunches, serve and eat them in their classroom then clean up afterwards. After lunch, there was recess. Elementary school children tend to be as active as their American counterparts, playing soccer and tag on the school playground.

After recess, students and teachers cleaned the school. The students seemed to take great pride in their school and did an excellent job. This was followed by another period of class and then a period of clubs. This was different from the United States, where there are very few clubs. Yasuda Elementary School has many different clubs including home economics, pottery, koto (a traditional Japanese instrument) handicraft, badminton, baseball, tennis, card playing, computer and English. Most students participate in the clubs, which are often taught by community members.

The next day we visited Tokatsu Junior High School. Junior high schools in Japan are very different from elementary schools. While American teachers tend to dress somewhat casually at this level, Japanese teachers dress in business attire to teach. Teaching at this level seems to be geared towards the national exam, an extremely difficult test given in the ninth grade. Students in the ninth grade get about three hours of homework a night to prepare for the test.

During our visit, we were free to roam about and look at classes. In Japanese schools, the students tend to stay in the same class and the teachers move around.

I observed a lot of hands-on activities at the junior high school. The geometry teacher was using visual aides and a soccer match to help his students learn about angles. The English teacher used a word game to learn sentence structure. In the computer lab, each of the forty students had their own computer.

The classes were for the most part orderly and on task. Even here though, there are individual students who act out. The teachers seemed to tolerate these students, not rewarding them for poor behavior.

Later we learned from the teachers that suspending or disciplining a student is very difficult to do at the junior high school level. During breaks and at lunchtime there is very little adult supervision at Tokatsu Junior High School. I saw a lot of teasing and fun fistfights that probably would not be tolerated at an American school. I also saw some bullying going on in the hallways.

Bullying is a major problem at the junior high school level. Victims of bullying are treated very different in Japan. In America, children who are bullied are usually left in the classroom. The school counselor and teacher usually deal with both the victim and the teaser. In Japan, the victim is placed in the nurse's office for the entire year. Teachers give work to the separated student, but the student is never in a classroom with other students.

Scores on the national exams at the end of ninth grade help determine which high schools students go to. We visited Masuda High School, the top high school in Masuda City. While the elementary schools and the junior high school we visited seemed to be very current on technology (like schools in California), Masuda High School was not. There were no computers to be seen. The principal stated that he had forty computers sitting in a closet that he and his staff did not have the time or the inclination to figure out.

While we observed much in the way of innovative, hands-on education at the elementary and junior high schools, almost all of the high school classes were done in a lecture format. The students were very polite and caring. Teachers who do not speak English very well teach English reading and grammar classes. The school has an Australian English Language teacher who comes in once a week to give large group lessons in conversational English.

The students were well behaved, but the principal was concerned with a breakdown in discipline. He said that his main problems were: 

1. Students not exchanging a proper greeting with adults. They have this little greeting ritual that they do at the beginning and at the end of each class and the children are not doing it right.
2. Students not wearing the school uniform properly. All school children in Masuda junior high and high schools wear a military style uniform (similar to the dress black uniforms U.S. Marines wear). Teachers are concerned that their shirts are hanging out and that they have baggy pants.
3. Punctuality: These problems would be considered very minor ones in California Schools, where problems such as drugs, fights and other questionable activities are considered to be problematic. 

In conclusion, school systems in Japan and the United states both have strong points. The Japanese with their group learning, rote memorization and individual responsibility, and the U.S. with its tendency towards more individualized instruction. This trip was one of the most enjoyable that I've worked on and I'd recommend it to all teachers. 

The Fullbright Memorial Fund is looking for more teachers to go to Japan and look at its educational system. For more information, please go to: www.glaconmet.or.jp/fmf/fmfers.html