So my third years are graduating next week. It’s pretty interesting how much goes behind a graduation and how it’s not only the teachers that plan the ceremony but the students as well. For one of my elementary schools, I attended a 送る会 which is pretty much a farewell gathering in which everyone in the school performs for the graduating class and says a message wishing them success on the next step on their edumacational journey. It’s the ceremony before the ceremony. Usually in America, we kind of get that all in one, long, go but here in Japan, that’s a separate ceremony all in itself. It’s also, still, pretty ….. I don’t know how to describe it… It’s not so military or strict but rather very systematic. So while you’re wishing these 11/12 year olds success in the next year, the whole ” Stand Up/Bow ” and ” XX Year, XX Class Presentation will begin/has ended ” kind of breaks the whole emotional flow to things.
But I think what has really grabbed my attention to all of this is how you can literally sleep your way through 10 years of education and graduate without any like repercussions or anything. A kid in my school is graduating this year despite not showing up to a single day of class. He showed up for the first week then bounced. The school has been keeping in touch with the parents but apparently he just doesn’t want to come to school and he’s graduating. There’s also another girl in one of my Elementary schools graduating who’s never in class because, well, school bores her. She gets to graduate despite not doing anything.
These kids also have the same privileges as everyone else. If the class goes on a field trip, they get to go as well. It’s really bizarre coming from an educational system in which not going to school meant truancy officers coming to your home and potentially starting a DCF case on your parents or having to repeat a grade due to failing classes.
Schooling in Japan is not about passing the grade, but rather its about passing the entrance exam. So it doesn’t matter if the kid doesn’t understand or doesn’t want to come to school — as long as they’re willing to go to high school and take the entrance exam, they’re good to go. I don’t understand how rewarding bad behavior is key to controlling rowdy classes, reducing bullying in the schools, and repaying diligence with rewards rather than handing out just because you happen to be x.
The whole romanticism of a Japanese junior high is really amazing to see unfold in real life but the realities of the educational system just seems to be rather frustrating when you’re not the student in the chair but the instructor.