Education in Japan

...Not only does the JTU throw itself into all sorts of political activities and demonstrations which have nothing to do with educational affairs, it agitates its teachers to bring the message of "socialist" salvation right into the classroom...

...It is significant, and highly characteristic of the present situation in Japan, that not a single organization which has gone vigorously on record in protest against the proposed revision of the Police Duties Law has so much as by a whisper protested against the violence, the betrayal of educational trust on the part of the JTU whose behavior was the most powerful consideration determining the introduction of the law...

...The bulk of the students are largely passive and even in the Christian universities no third force has developed...

...Its hypocrisy, however, has been surpassed by the hypocrisy of the opposition...

...The ideal solution would be for the members of the JTU themselves to revolt against their pro-Communist leadership under the inspiration of prominent educators in the universities...

...This explains why, whatever proposal is put forth to undo some of the laxities, oversights and mistakes of the occupation, the cry is immediately raised that this means the restoration of the old system of authoritarian control...

...Some of these measures were of dubious wisdom...

...Its national membership is 500,000...

...But SCAP could not foresee that teachers would systematically propagandize in their classes on behalf of the narrowest factional political interests...

...The general attitude is that all students are radical when young but become conservative when they grow older: Therefore, there is nothing to worry about...

...The socalled "democratic revolution" in Japan was really an American revolution...

...This fear is quite sincere in some quarters, but it is exploited mercilessly and dishonestly by the leadership of the Japan Teachers Union...

...The alternatives are obviously not exclusive...

...No attempt is made to conceal the fact that the teacher is expected to indoctrinate his students...

...The last thing in the world, however, that the JTU wants is a discussion of these proposals on their educational merits...

...The Government made a mistake in not announcing these considerations more openly, in not proceeding more carefully with proposals to remedy specific deficiencies gradually...

...Before the military defeat of the last war, education was geared to the interests of Japanese militarism, especially in the primary and secondary schools...

...The ringleaders among the Communist student union are "professional" students, in effect functionaries of the Communist party planted in the universities to recruit students and to further the Party line...

...Typical of the specific practices of indoctrination is the report that teachers draw a map of Japan with a red flag in the middle on the blackboard and tell their pupils that "this is the People's Republic of Japan...

...During the American occupation the power of the police was emasculated for obvious reasons...

...The left-wing Socialists, Communists and the JTU are having a field day screaming "fascism is around the corner" and lining up hosts of genuinely liberal organizations as well as different front organizations in a national campaign of opposition, much of it violent...

...Everyone seems to deplore the activities of the Zengakuren, but no alternative has been developed...

...The field is pretty much left to its activities...

...Some of the teachers maintain that dissent from the pro-Communist leadership, particularly if accompanied by attempts to combat it organizationally, is physically dangerous in certain regions...

...There is some truth to this, of course, but it overlooks some crucial differences which exist between student radical movements of the past and present, and certain distinctive features of Japanese society and economy which make the character of Japanese education a weighty factor in determining whether Japan is to remain free...

...The Japanese children, who strangely enough enjoy going to school, seemed to feel deprived and bewildered at the spectacle of their honored elders falling out-and sometimes upon each other...

...Yet the first general strike of the JTU showed that its Communist leadership had gone too far...

...In many parts of the country these demonstrations led to sit-down, lay-down and locked-arm tactics that became prefaces to violence...

...Privately, almost all whom I have questioned admit that this indoctrination is widespread...

...Occasionally, a brave man like Kotaro Tanaka, Professor Emeritus of Tokyo University, risks his reputation among the packs of conformist "progressives," and speaks out...

...The resultant follies were compounded by the political naivete of the American occupation which at first included Communists in the democratic spectrum and opened the doors to them in the labor movement which included almost 500,000 members of the Japan Teachers Union, the Nikkyoso or JTU...

...Whatever deficiencies can be traced to the educational policy of the American occupation authorities (SCAP), like imposing excessive decentralization and raising inferior institutions, which were little more than training institutes, to the status of universities, the main educational aim of the occupation was quite exemplary...

...I have made a careful study of both...

...There is no space to detail the various administrative measures the Government proposed to correct a situation which even leading members of the Japanese Socialist party admit (privately, of course) to be educationally undesirable...

...The opposition is irresponsible and reacts with a conditioned reflex of political negativism...

...We are to fight on the side of these workers against the tyrannical propertied class of Japan...

...This year at Fukishima University they boycotted examinations in protest against the teachers' efficiency rating system, an issue which has no relevance to university educational life...

...It would therefore have been wiser to amend the education law instead of the police law, making violent interference with the processes of education legally actionable...

...With the help of specially recruited squads of Communist university students, the leadership of the JTU conducted pitched battles in several prefectures to prevent principals of schools from receiving instruction in the application of the ratings...

...But at the moment this appears to be a forlorn hope...

...At present, the CP is attempting to purge the Zengakuren leadership...

...The chief instrument 'the Government attempted to employ was the efficiency rating system...

...Among them are approximately 1,500 members of the Communist party, assigned to work in the Teachers Union...

...In principle it is unexceptionable, but some of its detailed provisions are superfluous and its use for salary allocations or raises is of doubtful wisdom...

...And while most of the teachers in the JTU are not Communists or even fellow-travelers, they are helpless before the skillful and unscrupulous factional politics deployed against them...

...What in Western countries would be solved by legislative hearings and consultations between professional educators and officials of boards of education is in Japan the occasion of fierce struggle and violence more extensive and severe than most episodes of industrial strife...

...The Japanese were commanded to be democratic even before they understood what it meant...

...At the same time it is noteworthy that the JTU has conducted violent demonstrations against the proposal to hoist the Japanese flag and to sing the national anthem, Kimigayo, at school ceremonies...

...Symptomatic of how far semantic corruption of the term "democracy" has been carried is the amusing story of a Japanese citizen, slightly intoxicated, who accosted a policeman-a rather awesome figure in pre-war days-thrust out his foot and said: "Hey, you, tie my shoes...

...For it would then have to reveal itself once more in favor of the anti-democratic, pro-Communist indoctrination being carried on systematically in the schools under the skilful direction of left-wing trade-union activists...

...Literally faithful to the doctrine of Marxism, they have not failed to profit by every opportunity to condemn traditional morality and virtue as feudalistic and reactionary, to exaggerate existing social evils, to stimulate class antagonism, to insist on the overthrow of conservative government, to discredit the judiciary and to excite anti-American sentiment...

...The teachers in the universities were not so much overtly hostile as less enthusiastic than those in the lower schools...

...When some professors came to the aid of students who were being obstructed from entering the university to take their examination, they were severely beaten...

...There is hardly a trick employed by the Young Communist Leagues decades ago in the West which has not been adapted to Japan, from paying students so much per day for participating in sit-downs and lay-downs, to compromising the professional future of students by unnecessary exposure in order to close all avenues of work for them except some kind of Party activity...

...The Government also attempted to introduce, at about the same time, an ethics course into the curriculum along lines familiar to Western schools...

...Public opinion polls conducted by the Asahi Shimbun and other agencies indicated that less than 10 per cent of the population approved the strike tactics of the JTU...

...Rating systems exist for civil servants, for educational personnel of Government colleges and universities and for non-educational employes of the school system...

...No government in a democratic community can permit this type of educational subversion to go unchecked and stand by idly when groping efforts to cope with it are challenged by organized violence...

...The potential dangers, vastly exaggerated, of the Police Duties Law have aroused large segments of the population, and it is not likely to be adopted in its present form...

...Something should be said of the student movement in Japan...

...Most of the teachers did not abandon their classes and their educational charges...

...anything which furthers those interests is ipso facto democratic...

...In the wake of the teacher and student violence, the Government introduced a bill to revise the present Police Duties Law...

...There is no real concern for the parliamentary process or respect for the principle of democratic majority rule...

...This is precisely what happened, on a scale and with a boldness unparalleled in any democratic country...

...The proposed revisions try to remedy this by an extension, so to speak, of the American "clear and present danger" principle, phrased in such a way that teachers' violence and similar disorderly activities on the part of extremists can be curtailed...

...An organization of its size employs a large number of full-time professional workers who are not teachers or educators but trade-union activists...

...The only organized force of importance is the Zengakuren, which is more Communist than the Communist party today because its leadership insists upon following the ultra-violent tactics which the Communist party advocated only yesterday...

...The Chairman of the Arita City Education Board, in the Wakayama Prefecture, reports that some pupils have been surprising their parents with the information that they have been taught that the USSR is their real homeland...

...They cannot even arrest uncontrollable drunks or put them into protective custody or confiscate arms from juvenile delinquents...

...Last year they assaulted the past President of Kyoto University...

...What seems like a simple educational issue, for example, a method of rating teachers' efficiency, has deep political tap-roots...

...Imagine each of these teachers closely tied, through his 50 pupils, to the working class which constitutes 90 per cent of the entire population...

...The Communist students regard themselves as the shock troops of the revolutionary movement...

...Despite this reaction and the emergence of a more moderate faction in the JTU which sought to conduct the struggle against the teachers' efficiency rating in a more orderly manner and on an educational plane, the extremist leadership of the JTU pressed for further general strikes during the teachers' working time...

...They have not only played a considerable part in political campaigns, but have influenced pupils in the classrooms...

...Just as important is a second factor...

...Instead of contesting the educational validity of the efficiency rating system or of courses in ethics on professional grounds, the JTU took to the streets...

...The Government party deems it sufficient to have a simple majority in order to ram through legislative measures without adequate prelimary discussion, advance notice or even an attempt to take its case to the court of public opinion...

...Even the Japanese newspapers which are traditionally critical of almost all Government measures-this is supposed to be a sign of their independence -were indignant at the spectacle of teacher extremism and violence...

...That these directives are carried out is evidenced in many ways...

...The only relevant question about the ethics instruction is whether it should be given in conjunction with the study of other subjects like history or literature or presented at a specially assigned hour...

...In the eyes of the opposition nothing can be "democratic" which is against its collective or individual interests...

...In its pamphlet, "The Teacher's Code of Ethics," the JTU states that "the realization of socialism is the historic task imposed on the teacher...

...It is wedded to a Marxist-Leninist view according to which any government which is not Socialist, in the special sense of that term, is "an enemy of democracy and peace...

...After all, you are now a democratic public servant...

...The chief source of educational indoctrination is the JTU, whose leadership is in the hands of members of the Communist party or of sympathizers who make no secret of their political allegiance...

...Is it not a picture which is enormously encouraging and gloriously resplendent...

...The first is an extension of the American questionnaire procedure, but enormously extended...

...By Sidney Hook Education in Japan Communist teachers' union and students' organization stretch professional ethics Tokyo It is not often that an educational struggle is a herald or portent of a civil war...

...Particularly furious was the JTU's reaction to attempts to introduce courses in ethics...

...Recently, the Nikkyoso disaffiliated itself from the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions...

...And this under the slogan of democracy and democratic education...

...When the old system was destroyed and the only world they knew crumbled into dust, Japanese teachers looked to the Americans with their slogans of democracy as the source of a newer and more viable authority...

...When I saw newsreels of students and teachers using a treetrunk to batter down the gates of a building in which other teachers were receiving instruction in how to conduct ethics courses, the audience seemed stunned and hostile...

...And now one of the strangest things in the history of education occurred...

...Today in Japan, however, the educational situation is such that an analysis of the complex factors involved provides the best introduction to its troubled political life...

...Measures were taken to guard against the possibility that the federal government, with a highly centralized educational system, might abuse its monopoly of power and inject propaganda into the educational curriculum...

...Although many professors and educators are quite eager to denounce any educational measure sponsored by the Government to correct this situation, very few have come out publicly to protest against the flagrant abuse of educational trust and the massive indoctrination carried on in the schools by the pro-Communist elements in the JTU...

...Except when crimes have been committed, the police function mostly like traffic cops, and with greater mildness than the New York City variety...

...The excesses of one side provoke the other into attempts at wholesale remedy which widen the scope of the political conflict...

...More than a year ago ('the situation since then has become much worse), he wrote in the Bulletin of the Research Institute of Comparative Education and Culture: "A segment of educators, particularly a part of the primary amid the secondary school teachers, in the name of democratic education, have advocated the Communistic or some similar viewpoint...

...But until recently a rating system was not applied to schoolteachers...

...There was no real upsurge or movement from below...

...Whatever opposition existed to the Emperor system and military rule manifested itself on the university level and was largely passive...

...It openly declares in the pamphlet with which it indoctrinates its new members: "Our teachers union is an organization which stands at the forefront of the struggle...

...Teachers were enjoined to desert the classrooms during school hours, tell the children to stay away from school on the days of the strike, and involve their parents as well...

...It consists of die Socialist party, completely dominated by its infantile left wing and committed to a pro-Communist foreign policy, the Communist party (politically immature but influential in intellectual circles and in the lower trade-union cadres) and a host of captive cultural organizations...

...When I left Japan, another strike was in the offing...

...But these provisions may be abused to curb legitimate activities on the part of trade unionists and Socialists...

...Education was to become politically neutral...

...In this task it is abetted by the Japan Teachers Political League (the Nisseiren) of the left-wing Socialists, who make the Pietro Nenni Socialists of Italy appear moderate...

...The JTU does not conceal the fact that its trade-union or professional activities are subordinate to its political goals...

...It is the duty of the teacher to foster young people who would help realize such a society...

...It called a series of strikes throughout the country which culminated in a general strike...

...Parents were annoyed...

...Refusal to come to grips with specific crisis in their own times also explains why the meaning of democracy is badly misunderstood by those who invoke its slogans most vehemently...

...The only concession made by the dominant group in the JTU was to permit the local union® to set their own time for the walkout...

...The educational validity of the teachers' efficiency rating and the ethics course are more complicated matters...

...Regardless of the fate of the Police Law, nothing can prevent an ultimate showdown between the Government and the fanatical leadership of the JTU, except the moderating influence of the Socialist party-an influence it is unlikely to wield...

...They meet opposition within the student movement and within their own ranks with ready violence...

...Two things of importance should be remembered...

...This has been branded as a major step toward the revival of militarism...

...Some knowledge of the historical background is indispensable in order to understand the nature and ramifications of the controversy over education in Japan today...