Japan’s Example

Imagine an applicant for a teaching job in America answering this exam question: Take the equilateral triangle ABC and rotate it along the BC axis. What is the volume of the resulting body?

Toru Teraoka can tell you. Before the 25-year-old was hired to teach at Nara Elementary School, in a pleasant suburb between Tokyo and Yokohama, he had to pass three days of daunting tests, including problems like that one. He also had to show that he could draw, play the piano and the recorder--even swim laps.

And that was after earning his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in education from Yokohama National University.

Teraoka was one of just 162 teachers hired in Yokohama last year out of 2,055 applicants, a ratio of nearly 1 to 13.

He then was assigned to a class of 31 fourth-graders--and never allowed to flounder. Japanese teachers probably receive more supervision in their first year than their counterparts in any other country. Each is assigned to a senior teacher who serves as a mentor; Teraoka was taken under the wing of Miyoko Arakawa, a 22-year veteran.

“I consult her about everything,” Teraoka said. “For example, how should I teach the lesson in my third-period math class? Or, there are two kids fighting in my class and how can I get them to make up?”

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Each first-year teacher receives 60 days of training in school. Twice a week, Teraoka observed one of Arakawa’s classes. And twice a week, she watched him teach and offered suggestions. Once a week, they met to discuss his progress and problems.

“It was very hard, to tell you the truth,” Teraoka said. “You watch a class . . . and you think you’re doing it the same way yourself, but in fact you’re not.”

Each teacher also gets 30 days of training or enrichment programs outside school, in regional centers set up by local boards of education.

Teraoka attended a children’s history course in a history museum and helped the staff answer questions from youngsters about the exhibits. He planted and harvested sweet potatoes and peanuts to prepare for agricultural lessons that are required for fourth- and fifth-graders. He spent two days in a school for disabled students.

He attended lectures and study sessions on such subjects as school bullying and human rights, including the treatment of the ethnic Korean minority in Japan. He took a nature observation class that taught him games to play with children on weekend field trips.

“Compared with other countries, Japanese teachers are expected to take more responsibility for their students’ entire lives, not just for classroom teaching,” said Yoko Fujie, assistant chief of teacher training at the Education Ministry.

For that work, Teraoka earns $33,000 per year, more than the average Japanese civil servant, but less than a newly minted businessman--and just about the same as a starting teacher in Los Angeles with no special training, just a college degree.

In the past, all the on-the-job training was not possible because there weren’t enough substitutes to conduct classes while the teachers were being trained. But under a revamped national training program adopted in 1992, the Education Ministry provides school districts with subsidies and requires that one part-time substitute teacher be hired to supplement each first-year teacher.

All this isn’t cheap.

Junichi Takahashi, a personnel administrator at the Yokohama Board of Education, estimates that it costs nearly $23,000 to train one teacher.

Of course, unlike in the United States, the investment is rarely wasted on recruits who quickly decide that another profession is more to their liking. Teachers here rarely quit.

Except for the female teachers who leave to raise children or relocate with their husbands, the vast majority of Japanese teachers stay on until the mandatory retirement age of 60.

Burnout is more of a problem than turnover.

“When people are first hired they are so positive and energetic, but after awhile they start to lose steam,” said Hiroshi Fukushima of the Board of Education here.

The response? The Education Ministry has mandated short teacher training programs after five, 10 and 20 years of service.

Yet despite such extraordinary efforts, Japan’s educational system has come under fire of late. Just as this nation’s economy no longer inspires fear and envy around the world, so have delegations of foreign scholars stopped merely extolling the virtues of Japan’s schools, as they did in the 1980s.

Nowadays, Japanese education is more often criticized as too stifling, dehumanizing and focused on rote memorization rather than problem-solving. At Teraoka’s school, 20% to 30% of the fourth-graders already are attending juku, or cram schools, in order to gain entrance to good private schools, the first step in a competitive admissions system known as “examination hell.”

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Polls have found that an overwhelming majority of the Japanese public believes that more reforms are needed. In Yokohama, new training regimens thus aim to reinforce teachers’ communication skills so they will be more apt to notice troubled children: Might those who hang around, but don’t say much, really be asking for help?

Teraoka admitted that the most difficult challenge of his first year has been learning to understand his pupils.

“I have 31 of them,” he said, “and 31 different patterns.”

On a recent day, though, he was leading the 31 through an activity that was a reminder of how, for all its excesses, the Japanese system still offers much to admire. The fourth-graders were performing a play they had written themselves.

Instead of giving stage directions, Teraoka brought a camera to school and videotaped a rehearsal so the students spontaneously discovered such acting truths as “face the front of the stage” and “speak loud and slowly.”

Asked what they thought of their teacher, Teraoka’s wards were not shy.

“It’s scary when he gets mad!” said one boy.

“He’s too strict,” complained another.

The girls were more charitable.

“He doesn’t get too mad when we forget stuff at home,” said one. And another offered a point of praise that would resonate with students anywhere: “He doesn’t give us too much homework.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Japan’s Exam

What Japanese Teachers Must Know

Here are sample questions for the exam taken by all applicants for Japanese teaching posts. Each school district conducts its own exam--the following problems are from a publisher’s study guide. General education questions cover Japanese literature, music history, art history, European and Japanese history, geography, world religions, Japanese government and science. There are separate specialist tests for middle and high school teachers who plan to teach such subjects as English or science.

SAMPLE QUESTIONS

1) Take the equilateral triangle ABC where ‘a’ is the length of each side of the triangle. ) Rotate the triangle along the BC axis. What is the volume of the resulting body?

2) Which country does not belong to the G7?

a) America b) Germany c) France D) Japan E) Holland

3) Put mercury oxide in a test tube and heat it with an alcohol burner. In this experiment, what is the chemical process that will occur as a result of the application of heat?

a) Formation of a chemical compound b) Decomposition c) Melting d) Evaporation e) Deoxidization

4) Who said, “I think, therefore I am”?

a) Descartes b) Pascal c)Byron d) Marx e) Kant

5) Which painting does not belong in the late Impressionist period represented by Van Gogh, Cezanne and Gauguin?

a) “The Blue Vase” b) “Bridge at L’anglois” c) “The Waterlilies” d) “Head of Tahitian Woman” e) “The Sunflowers”

Answers 1) b; 2) e; 3) b; 4) a; 5) c

Source: Expected General Education Questions for 1999 Teachers’ Examination, Jiji Press