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Japan After-School Education
Much debated, and often criticized in the late
twentieth
century, juku are special private schools that
offer highly
organized lessons conducted after regular school hours and
on the
weekends. Although best known and most widely publicized
for their
role as "cram schools," where children (sent by concerned
parents)
can study to improve scores on upper-secondary school
entrance
examinations, academic juku actually perform
several
educational functions. They provide supplementary
education that
many children need just to keep up with the regular school
curriculum, remedial education for the increasing numbers
of
children who fall behind in their work, and preparation
for
students striving to improve test scores and preparing for
the
all-important upper-secondary and university entrance
examinations.
In many ways, juku compensate for the formal
education
system's inability or unwillingness to address particular
individual problems. Half of all compulsory school-age
children
attend academic juku, which offers instruction in
mathematics, Japanese language, science, English, and
social
studies. Many other children, particularly younger
children, attend
nonacademic juku for piano lessons, art
instruction,
swimming, and abacus lessons. To some observers,
juku
represent an attempt by parents to exercise a meaningful
measure of
choice in Japanese education, particularly for children
attending
public schools. Some juku offer subject matter not
available
in the public school curricula, while others emphasize a
special
philosophical or ethical approach.
Juku also play a social role, and children in
Japan say
they liked going to juku because they are able to
make new
friends; many children ask to be sent because their
friends attend.
Some children seem to like juku because of the
closer
personal contact they have with their teachers.
Juku attendance rose from the 1970s through the
mid1980s ; participation rates increases at every grade level
throughout the compulsory education years. This phenomenon
is a
source of great concern to the ministry, which issued
directives to
the regular schools that it hoped would reduce the need
for afterschool lessons, but these directives have had little
practical
effect. Some juku even have branches in the United
States
and other countries to help children living abroad catch
up with
students in Japan.
Because of the commercial nature of most juku,
some
critics argue that they have profit rather than education
at heart.
Not all students can afford to attend juku.
Therefore
juku introduce some inequality into what had been a
relatively egalitarian approach to education, at least in
public
schools through ninth grade. Yet, while some juku
are
expensive, the majority are affordable for most families;
juku can not price themselves beyond the reach of
their
potential clientele. If rising enrollments in juku
are any
indication, costs are not yet a limiting factor for most
parents,
and juku clearly are given some priority in family
budgeting.
If a student does not attend juku, it dies not
mean that
he or she is necessarily at a disadvantage in school.
Other avenues
of assistance are available. For example, self-help
literature and
supplemental texts and study guides, some produced by
publishing
houses associated with juku, are widely available
commercially. Most of these items are moderately priced. A
correspondence course of the Upper-Secondary School of the
Air is
broadcast almost daily on the Japan Broadcasting
Corporation
(Nippon Hoso Kyokai--NHK) educational radio and television
channels. These programs are free, and costs for
accompanying
textbooks are nominal. In addition, about 1 percent of
elementary
school students and 7.3 percent of lower-secondary school
students
take extra lessons at home with tutors.
Data as of January 1994
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