Early childhood education in Japan

The academic achievement of children in the United States is low, and many Americans are turning to Japan, a country of high academic achievement and economic success, for possible answers. However, the answers provided by Japanese preschools are not the answers Americans expected to find. Most Japanese preschools put surprisingly little emphasis on academic instruction. In one recent investigation on various aspects of early childhood education, only 2 percent out of 300 Japanese preschool teachers, parents and child development specialists wrote “to give children a good start academically” as one of their top three reasons for a society to have preschools. In contrast, over half the American respondents chose this as one of their top three choices. To prepare children for successful careers in first grade and beyond, Japanese schools do not teach reading, writing, and mathematics but rather skills, such as persistence, concentration, and the ability to function as a member of a group. The vast majority of Japanese parents teach their young children to read at home.

In the recent comparison of Japanese and American preschool education, 91 percent of Japanese respondents chose providing children with a group experience as one of their top three reasons for a society to have preschools (Tobin, Wu, & Davidson, 1989). Sixty-two percent of the most individually oriented Americans chose group experience as one of their top three choices. An emphasis on the importance of the group experience in Japanese early childhood education continues into elementary school education.

Lessons in living and working together grow naturally out of the Japanese culture. In many Japanese kindergartens, children wear the same uniforms, including caps, which are of different colours to indicate the classrooms to which they belong. They have identical sets of equipment, kept in identical drawers and shelves. Child development specialists and parents do not intend to turn the young children into robots, as some Americans have observed, but to impress on them that other people, just like themselves, have needs and desires that are equally important (Hendry, 1986).

Like in America, there is diversity in Japanese early childhood education. Some Japanese kindergartens have specific aims, such as early musical training or the practice of Montessori aims (Hendry, 1986). In large cities, some kindergartens are attached to universities that have elementary and secondary schools. Some Japanese parents believe that, if their young children attend a university-based program, it will help them to enter top-rated schools and universities. Several more progressive programs have introduced free play as an antidote for the heavy intellectualizing in some Japanese kindergartens.

Упр. 5. Письменно составьте возможные словосочетания из слов списка a and b и переведите их:

Model: a) to put, academic

b) achievement, emphasis

to put emphasis – особо выделять

academic achievement – успехи в учебе

a) to turn for, investigation, aspects, successful, persistence, important to provide with, to increase, robots, economic, school;

b) various, answers, career, to teach, chances, recent, to turn into, elementary, group experience, needs, success.

Упр. 6. Прочтите текст еще раз и письменно ответьте на следующие вопросы:

1. Why are many Americans turning to Japan for answers of achieving success in school education?

2. What do Japanese preschool teach their children?

3. What did Japanese respondents choose as one of the top 3 reasons of having preschools?

4. Are all kindergartens in Japan the same?

Дата добавления: 2014-12-29