CHAPTER EDUCATIONAL REFORMS IN DIFFERENT COUNTRIES AND THE
FUTURE EDUCATION IN JAPAN
3 Future Education in Japan
(1) Improvement of School Curriculums
In Japan, where quantitative development of education has been
realized to a high degree, at least in elementary and secondary schools, further
efforts should be made as a next step to improve the quality of education as
well as to assure the quantitative adequacy of education. One of the important
factors determining the quality of education is the curriculum. It is of vital
importance that school curriculums should be constituted both to meet the needs
of society and those of individual students, and that courses of study be improved
and educational facilities and teaching materials been enriched. If curriculums
won't meet the changing needs of society, they can't meet the expectation of
society, and if they are not adapted to the mental and physical development of
students, they don't work well for effective learning. Although the curriculums
for elementary and secondary schools have been revised since 1958, the aims of
the revision such as improvement of basic learning and education according to
the abilities and aptitudes of individual students, are not always fully attained.
Besides, in comparison with other countries, it has been pointed out that the
proportion of time devoted to the fundamental subjects, like Japanese language
and mathematics, in the composition of curriculums, is rather small, and improvement
of teaching methods is not strongly promoted. In this rapidly changing society,
efforts should be made to produce satisfactory results of education by coming
at a true knowledge of teaching contents at school as well as by the improvement
of teachers' qualifications, teaching metlaods,teaching materials, etc.