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Juku

Juku’s are a form of education in Japan similar to cram schools and are aimed to help students with examinations. They are run by either organisations, part time college students or retired teachers. Juku’s are fundamental in understanding why Japan has such great economic and social factors gearing its society.

The parents and the students view that the education system in Japan is insufficient and that these cram schools are necessary in order to pass examinations. Implying the roots of education is not strong enough within the country and that they have to rely on external sources of education to tutor their children. This will also bolster the countries labour force and provide more valuable workers with higher education. A statistic recorded that there were 50,000 Juku’s compared to 35,000 middle and elementary schools. It presents this information in a way that due to their colossal size their importance is scaled as well. Juku’s are not all the same size, same quality of teachers, same venue size etc. The point being is they are all different and even if there are more of them in statistics doesn’t mean that they should be viewed as a better education tool than the standard elementary and middle school. A standard middle and elementary school is funded by the government and will have professional teachers and follow a certain curriculum however with many Juku’s they are privately owned.There is an interesting point that whilst a middle schooler attends regular classes at school, they have to attend these cram schools afterwards and for a social reason, they are ‘robbed of their childhood and have their social skills stunted’. Social skills they would have adopted during young childhood is replaced with classes many not necessarily true as other sources suggest they were able to talk to their fellow peers before and after class in the Juku. Additionally with regular middle school education, they spend time socialising with their classmates and measuring ones social skills is a very hard metric to follow.

The atmosphere of a Juku is said to be enjoyable for the students and that classes are ‘open, informal and times disjointed’. With this in mind the question of how productive are they really? As mentioned before it is recorded to have around 50,000, not all of these Juku’s are organisations which lead to these relaxed atmospheres. Large chain Juku’s however offer a social aspect, it talks about the commute to the Juku schools where you will go as groups with friends, share a snack or even the Juku itself will organise meet ups for the students so they can expand their social contacts through networking. There is a contrasting view that Jukus are a social prison, shackling them in this institution and preventing them from fully engaging in social norms and improve their social etiquette. There is a level of inhibition of a child social normality given that they will attend this Juku regularly after class which clamps down on social time with friends however there is no indicator or metric that concludes the stunting of individuals in Japans workforce who undertook these Juku classes in their younger years.

Juku’s are profit ridden organisations. Low end Juku’s cost 160 dollars per month while the high end ones are triple the price. There is a social aspect of poorer students can’t afford to attend Juku’s so they fall behind in class which act as a financial barrier for education. This is considered as an act of class inequality and an egalitarian approach in education. It is an interesting perspective to a top down approach of social and economic inequality within a country. The quality of a Juku depends on location and varies across the country. College students can take this as a part time job, people who are retired and have more free time such as retired teachers also take on this role. There was a survey (AS March 17, 2002) which describes a higher examination result with students who attend a juku versus students who did not. The statistical source helps supports the logical narrative that the students who go to extra classes would get a higher examination result. This further enhances the perspective that if you do not attend a Juku you are casted out of this higher education realm.

There is an interesting topic of teacher freedom in public schools, parents want their children to focus on the school curriculum which means teachers can be forced to structure their class lessons in a way that puts a restriction on their creativity to construct their own lesson plan. Additionally some parents want their children to primarily focus on Juku studies as they put more value on it that the schools curriculum. A teachers perspective on a Juku is broad, many do think it helps enhance a students learning outside of school which they can incorporate into class lesson. However there is also the perspective that those who are less financially unable are not able to catch up in these school lessons and thus fall behind work. Different styles of learning is also at play here, the intial schools teaching and the juku style of teaching. These different styles if utilised correctly will enable the child's learning to greater heights. Juku’s are fundamentally great for the socio-economic welfare of Japan as it helps the children learn more and do better in examinations.

The aspect of commerce is highly important, juku’s compete one another in the market place where parents are given the choice for education consumers. Due to the competitiveness of juku’s they have to polish their own curriculum and in doing so they have a 5000 page worksheet curriculum. This also implies that due to competing one another and the risk of losing out financially, they have shaped each other to become better tools for education. Which in turn helps Japan’s society as a whole, better education for students will result in more professional jobs being taken and shaping the countries social and economic factors. Jukus are tools which make society as a whole better as with a more valuable labour force, productivity of a country increases and countries that have a higher HDI is positively correlated to higher GDP per a capita of a country. You can look at the Human development index of a country scaled with GDP and with the existence of Jukus this only seems to boost it even higher.