Talk:Secondary education in Japan

How much Individualization?
I'm a bit confused about the level of individualization / choice available to Japanese students - especially those in upper secondary school. From the second paragraph of the article, "Students who do not plan to attend university are generally tracked into vocational departments in upper secondary schools." Are the vocational students in the same classrooms as the university-oriented students? In the "Lower Secondary School" section, are the "mandatory club meetings" offered in the same classroom as the regular classes? Do the mandatory clubs continue into upper secondary school? Do they transform into the vocational-technical programs? In the "Upper Secondary School" section, it mentions both a "general program" and a wide variety of "vocational-technical programs." How much opportunity do students have to switch between these programs? (Does assignment happen each trimester, each year, or upon entering secondary school?) Do students in different vocational-technical programs share a classroom with the general-program students for part of the day? Thanks for the clarifications. I've grown up in the U.S., and the system here is quite different.SMesser 00:53, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

We probably need to talk about the new patriotism emphasis legislatated for by the LDP, can anyone help? Andycjp 05:29, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Violation: Verifiability of nuclear energy curricula
"In science, students may take courses 'emphasizing the safety and necessity of nuclear power plants, with curricula written by government bureaucrats rather than teachers'[1]"

The source for this is The New Republic, which is very left-of-center and political. Additionally, the author of this TNR article is promoting his own book.

This opposes Wikipedia guidelines for Verifiability. See NOTRELIABLE for a discussion of questionable and self-published sources.

It seems like this article has some problems; another citation is just a jumble of letters. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.165.246.153 (talk) 05:02, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Middle School vs Junior High School
The term "middle school" is used in this page to describe grades 7, 8 and 9. This combination of grades is more accurately called junior high school. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government Board of Education on their web site refer to these schools as junior high schools. All references to middle school in this page should be changed to junior high school. Duane-light (talk) 17:38, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

Misleading text?
"Schools are headed by principals, 99% of whom were men in 1988."

This gave me the impression that sex change is popular in Japan.

Outdated sources
A number of sources in this article cite how things worked in the 1980s, which is more than 20 years ago now. Aren't there any more recent sources? 131.191.13.63 (talk) 21:45, 30 May 2014 (UTC)


 * I tagged the article as outdated.2A02:2F01:504F:FFFF:0:0:BC19:1A7D (talk) 18:11, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

Outdated information?
It's very noticeable that a lot of the information used in the article is over 20 years old now. (Most of the statistics are from the late 80s/early 90s.) Is there better, more recent information that the page could use, or is this a matter of not having an up-to-date English source to cite? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.241.64.241 (talk) 05:46, 22 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Yes, much of the article is very outdated. Some of it is also unsourced (I removed a bit of such info).2A02:2F01:504F:FFFF:0:0:BC19:1A7D (talk) 17:58, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
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