Japan is Now a Class Society

  My husband’s friends, who live in Tokyo, told us a terrible story when they visited us last week.

  Their granddaughter is twelve years old and had taken entrance exams of three private junior high schools. Japan has an educational system from six to fifteen years old for free, and those public schools have no entrance exams. But there have been people who want their children study at private schools or attached schools to universities wanting privileged environment and privileged lives. The competition is  more and more heating. .   

  To enter those schools, children study at cram schools after normal school from around 5:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. They have classes on Saturdays and Sundays, too. During the summer and winter vacations they take intensive course. Of course the parents need to pay a lot. The popular and good cram schools (it means they send as many children to the famous and good schools or universities) charge more money. Buses and trains also cost. Only rich parents can afford them.

   Think about the life of those children; they have no time to play and talk with friends or do what they like. Where and with who do they have their dinner?.  The UN Committee about children’s rights sent a report and recommendation on the circumstances of the children of Japan (I don’t know the exact names in English). It says ‘highly competitive educational system causes developmental disorder in children’.

   Only such children go to good universities and become leaders of Japan; high ranking bureaucrats, politicians, and big company’s people. They are paid a lot and so their children can walk the same road as their parents To prove it, the parents’ income of Tokyo University students is much higher than usual  Thus Japan is now a class society..