School Textbooks To Get Thicker; Pupils Encouraged To Read Them

[Mulboyne]

[floatr][/floatr]Yomiuri: Panel to urge doubling of information in textbooks
The government's council on revitalizing education is to propose increasing the volume of information in textbooks at primary, middle and high schools, as well as improving the quality of content...According to the draft of the Education Rebuilding Council's proposal for textbook reform, students will be encouraged to use the new textbooks for self study, in contrast to current textbooks, which are generally used only in the classroom. The commission suggests the number of pages in new textbooks for English, science and Japanese should be doubled, and that the books should contain excerpts from famous literary writings and exercises for students. Members of the council, headed by Keio University President Yuichiro Anzai, will engage in full-fledged discussions based on the draft proposal from Monday. There is considerably less content in Japanese textbooks than in their European and North American equivalents, according to the Education, Science and Technology Ministry. Content levels fell especially quickly after the introduction of a more relaxed education policy in the 1990s, with the volume of content in books at primary, middle and high schools hitting a low in 2002. According to sources, Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda also has expressed concern over the sparser content in many textbooks...Official curriculum guidelines outline exactly what is to be taught in each grade at schools. However, the guidelines do in exceptional cases permit textbooks at primary and middle schools to contain information expected to be taught in higher grades, as long as such content is limited to 10 percent of the volume. High school textbooks are allowed to contain up to 20 percent of such "advanced" content. But the council is encouraging the ministry to lift such limits to allow publishers more flexibility when compiling textbooks. The council believes that in order to achieve these changes, new textbooks for Japanese, English and science will need to double in size...more...

[Iraira]

not to cast dispersions on the importance of giving the kids more (unbiased) information to learn, but, I wonder how much Fukuda charges for enjo kosai?

[ghostunit]

I think the Japanese maybe should stop trying to learn English at school. What's the point of investing so many hours of study with no real payoff?

It's just embarrassing watching them trying to initiate conversation in anything other than their native language (and a waste of time for the listener as well).

Two years living in Japan, and the only Japanese who spoke passable English was a guy who actually lived in the usa for a year.

[Greji]

I think the Japanese maybe should stop trying to learn English at school. What's the point of investing so many hours of study with no real payoff?

You'd be surprised what it means in a J-company. They don't have to speak it, they just have to scored high on the evaluation tests. It can mean major things in assignments and promotions, even if the slug can't actually make a sentence in the language....