Here’s another flyer. I picked this one up in Kerrisdale.
Juku Flyer Vancouver V
Note that the time table shows some emphasis on (provincial) exam preparation, but also some emphasis on English. In that context, it seems surprising that some of the English text is a bit awkward suggesting a non-native writer (i.e. someone like me).
Juku Vancouver V Timetable
Posted in Advertising, Vancouver
Following my recent post on abacus education in Japan, I feel like I have to report on my daughters’ (6 and 9 years old) encounter with the abacus here in Vancouver. They have been attending an abacus school here since September, going once a week. A very good friend of ours mentioned that her daughters were going to abacus and given my past experience with abacus schools in Japan, we were eager to try this out for our girls, especially the older one who is very keen on math.
They’ve taken to it like fish to water and go with great anticipation.
When I told my good friend in Japan who is quite involved in abacus education that the girls were going, he sent two “one-touch” abacus for the girls so that they’re all equipped now.
The school that they attend was recently at the centre of a story in the Globe & Mail.
Some of the things that I find fascinating largely based on my research on juku in Japan:
Interestingly, our teacher is the daughter of an abacus teacher. When I was doing research on juku in post-disaster Tohoku last week and mentioned that my girls were in abacus juku, some questions led to the observation that my interlocutor knows (of) our abacus teacher’s father. Small world.
An abacus juku that I visited in Sendai was a reminder of how astonishing abacus skills can be. Students there were doing something called “フラッシュ穴算”, i.e. flash calculations in their head. This is computer based and the program is pre-set to different levels of difficulty in the computations. A student will sit down and the program will flash a succession of numbers on the screen that the student adds, subtracts, multiplies or divides. For the younger students a series of four single-digit numbers might flash for a second each, while older students will be shown series of 10 3-digit numbers over a short time span. Amazing!
In her abacus article for the Globe and Mail, education reporter Kate Hammer picked up quite nicely on the amazing calculations, but also on the almost physical learning that the manipulation of beads seems to foster. I have found this a fascinating aspect of instruction in juku for some time and it is something that the correspondent for The Economist also picked up on in describing the rhythmic chanting of chemical elements at a juku he visited.
A Facebook ad – of all things – recently pointed me toward the website of a seemingly new juku in Vancouver. It’s difficult to reproduce elements of the website without identifying the site itself, but the opening paragraph of the website’s “An Introduction” reads as follows:
Research has shown that life and work have changed, not just technologically, but also in the way we do things. It is no longer enough to have expertise in one skill area; rather, companies expect employees to be knowledgeable and capable in a variety of skills and subject matters. Current educational methods do not meet the needs of either the economy or the children they serve. Children leave school and university lacking the skills they need to be successful and contribute to the growth of Canada’s economy.
This is certainly one of the nicest-looking and most extensive websites for Canadian juku. Pretty, clear design, extensive content including a moderately active blog.
Interestingly, the content and methodology offered is somewhat original – a rarity in the supplementary education field in my experience. The claim at least is that this juku is integrating various subjects around specific themes and offering collaborative learning that parallels BC schools, but focuses on specific themes. It’s not clear at first glance whether this is meant to be remedial, supplementary or accelerated instruction. However, the frequent claim at newness and 21st-century-ness suggests that it is something between supplementary and accelerated instruction.
Unusually for a Vancouver juku, this seems to be neither a tutoring broker, nor is catering specifically to an ESL or immigrant audience. The location is close to Kitsilano Secondary in a neighbourhood that is less dense in juku than many other neighbourhoods.
Posted in Vancouver
In today’s Globe and Mail Mark Mackinnon had a folio about primary and secondary education in Shanghai. This piece basically started with last year’s PISA results where Shanghai students scored highest among comparison “countries” to tell a story of a narrow focus on exams and test-taking. While the article describes the situation in Shanghai well and fills this description out with some interested quotes from officials, the situation in Shanghai as it is described will be quite familiar to readers from other hypereducation societies.
This also confirms my long-standing prediction that China is quickly headed to hypereducation on a national and thus massive scale.
One element in Mark’s article that I noticed was that he wrote that “In faraway North America, there was the usual handwringing that children there are falling further behind studious (and numerous) Asian kids.” I would contend that at least for Canada there was relatively little of that handwringing in part because participating Canadian provinces consistently do well on PISA and similar comparative standardized tests. This seems to have given the Canadian public a certain self-confidence that borders on the self-satisfied when it comes to the discussion of education elsewhere.
The other element I noticed in the article was that Mark didn’t mention the doubts about the results from Shanghai in last year’s PISA. PISA results have been subject to extensive methodological scrutiny in almost all participating jurisdictions. Some commentators suspect that some of the test-to-test improvements in students’ achievement are primarily the result of gaming the test system on the part of education authorities rather than of substantive improvements, especially when no policy changes have been implemented between test iterations.
One obvious methodological challenge with the Shanghai results is that these compare students in a single city (and one that can be assumed to be particularly resource-rich and filled with ambitious parents compared to the national Chinese average) to entire countries. This is also true of Hong Kong and Singapore results, of course, but brings with many fewer sources of variation in achievement through rural-urban inequalities, etc.
The Shanghai results in some ways seem so outlandish that it’s difficult not to doubt their veracity. 600 on math when the next closest score is 562 (Singapore) and other point differentials tend to be in the single digits between countries? Hm…
Finally, I couldn’t help but notice that Mark repeated the OECD’s claim that 80% of Shanghai students attend supplementary education. Little further information has emerged about this claim, though I suspect that most of it is in the form of private, one-on-one tutoring, but there have been numerous discussions about the pressure that this exerts on all Shanghai students. This, of course, will once again be familiar to parents and observers of many other hypereducation societies.
Posted in Canada, China, Competition, Hypereducation, PISA, Press and Media
In an editorial for the Globe & Mail on Oct 11, 2011 (“Alberta’s Education System Offers Lesson in Competition“), Tom Flanagan, a professor at the Univ of Calgary and presumed confidant of Prime Minister Harper, extolled Alberta schools for their status as higher ranking than “those of any other English-speaking jurisdiction in international tests of education competence”.
The editorial asks the question why exactly Alberta has been doing so well. This is a very worth while question to ask, even after considering whether standardized scores have much to say that’s meaningful. While many countries (who have done poorly, e.g. Germany, but also some who have done very well, i.e. Japan) are somewhat obsessed with PISA scores, these scores are largely ignored in Canada.
However, Dr. Flanagan hardly provides an answer to this question. He merely lists the many alternatives that are open to students and parents in Alberta. From the number of alternatives, Dr. Flanagan concludes that there is vibrant competition among these alternatives. By some unspecified leap of faith, he then concludes further that this competition must produce the excellence that is observable in Alberta.
It is this logic that underpins many of the arguments for supplementary education as well. Choice leads to competition among schools (or supplementary education institutions) which leads to excellence as only excellent options “survive” competition.
Yet, there is little more than apparent logic that speaks in favour of these links. Empirical evidence is scant at best.
For example, on charter schools, research in the United States has questioned whether such schools actually open up competition because geographic mobility inhibits further-away choices. Dr. Flanagan counters with bussing strategies in Albertan cities that bring options closer to interested students. Fair enough, yet ultimately the number of options that students and parents look upon as reasonable to consider is still very small.
Next, does choice actually produce competition and if yes, competition on what? The choices that Dr. Flanagan points to (from charter schools to various language immersion options) sound great and many of them would certainly be options that I would consider with my children (disclosure: my children are all enrolled in public French immersion schools in Vancouver), but few of these alternatives explicitly aim at pedagogical or outcome excellence, they seem to emphasize content options instead. By which logic does the presence of French or Mandarin immersion programs raise math achievement scores?
Some pedagogical alternatives do exist, of course. How do students and parents evaluate these options? Presumably on the basis of some kind of standardized testing and word-of-mouth. The latter is probably somewhat unreliable, even in smaller cities, but somewhat meaningful, while the former may be fairly reliable, but only meaningful for broad comparisons, much less so for the individual fate of a student within a given school.
It is precisely questions that emanate from a discussion about the role of choice and excellence that have driven me to research about supplementary education in Japan. Here’s an entire sub-education system that’s built around for-profit competition with no shortage of options and parents in metropolitan regions who are not inhibited at all about sending children 90 minutes on public transport to a specific juku. Yet, a diversity of options? Excellence?
The diversity of options is entirely restricted to a diversity of delivery methods (individual, small group, less and less large group, on-line, worksheets, etc.). There is virtually no curricular diversity in a supplementary education system that shadows conventional schools quite closely. The same holds for other countries where hypereducation has taken root, i.e. Korean or Taiwan in E Asia, or Brazil, Egypt, Turkey elsewhere around the world.
So in the end, I would certainly agree with Dr. Flanagan that choices, especially substantive and curricular choices for students are a good thing. However, I’m not sure what part, if any, of the observed excellence in standardized testing is due to the presence of choices.
Posted in Canada, Competition, Diversity of Offerings, Hypereducation, PISA
Another flyer contributed by a participant in my Continuing Studies course earlier this summer.
First I find this flyer appealing, but not over-the-top in its design and professionalism.
I would note the cost for a 5-week course here. At five days a week for a nearly full day, this works out to $60/day which certainly is not terribly expensive compared to other camps/daycare options.
What was entirely new to me on this flyer was the “earn course credits” opportunity.
Perhaps because of home schooling, but also because of the existence of remote, small secondary schools with limited course offerings, I imagine, BC offers extensive options for long-distance learning. Typically, these are based on some kind of exam-for-credit system.
It is this possibility that this particular tutoring service is relying on. In their 5-week course, one of the grades 10, 11, 12 math course’s subject matter is covered and a student can thus apply to receive the credit for that course via an exam. Potentially, this offers the opportunity to a student to jump a grade of math in their secondary school or to substitute other electives instead.
This exam-for-credit is not an option in Japan and other Asian education systems. In part the absence of such a system, produces the double-schooling that I have lamented.
The “enrichment tutoring” also seems to offer possibilities beyond course credit, though “remedial tutoring” is also mentioned on this page.
The “top ten reasons” seem to be aiming at students more than parents which may be appropriate given the older age groups targeted (16-18-year olds).
Here’s the back page of this flyer:
Posted in Advertising, Vancouver
Here is one of the Vancouver juku flyers that a participant in the Continuing Studies course I taught contributed.
Single-side, basic flyer from Vancouver Juku
This is a very basic flyer that’s black and white and doesn’t really include any information for parents to base a decision on.
Note some of the key terms in the English text: “professional”, “system”, “tailor-made”.
Also note the “Can arrange pick up if needed”. This is quite typical in buxiban (Taiwanese juku) and there was additional information at this juku that it has strong Taiwan links, though it clearly doesn’t cater to Taiwanese immigrants exclusively.
The “free special gift” if obviously enticing.
Posted in Advertising, Vancouver
This flyer is from a specialized juku (learning differences) around the corner from where we live in Kitsilano.
Inside of three-fold brochure
Some of elements that are frequently emphasized in juku advertising and also appear here:
Less typical is the reference to a specific pedagogical approach, Orton-Gillingham. While I am not familiar with this approach, the mention in this flyer certainly suggests a concern with a research-foundation for approaches adopted in tutoring.
A quick check on Google Scholar reveals close to 100 articles that refer to this approach in 2010 and 2011 (as of June 2011) suggesting that it is at least widely-cited, though I am unable to sift through these citations to note whether the citation is approving, critiquing or name-dropping.
The outside of this folder flyer mainly contains some branding, contact details and a column “About ???”:
??? is a learning center that specializes in one-to-one remedial tutoring for children who struggle in school and/or have learning differences. Tutoring is based on the highly-effective and widely-recognized Orton-Gillingham approach, which combines the proven success of phincs with a multisensory delivery method of teaching.
Not sure whether the U.S. spelling of “centre” suggests that this is an American approach or juku, though nothing suggests a chain and the website only mentions the single Vancouver location.
It is pretty unclear to me what exactly “multisensory” means here, though the inside of the flyer (see above) mentions that,
Visual, auditory, tactile and kinestehtic modalities are all used to teach and to learn.
Hm… still don’t really know what that means, though it sounds like it may be akin to some of the learning strategies that seem almost physical in their practice that I see in juku, i.e. rhythmic repetition of terms, vocabulary, etc. The website also offers a FAQ entry on “What is multisensory tutoring?” but it offers more fancy terminology rather than information.
Note that the focus on learning differences is one that is rare in Japan though I’ve discussed two examples of a focus on special needs education in the juku context.
Posted in Advertising, Special Needs, Vancouver
In today’s Globe & Mail, Tralee Pearce wrote an article that reports on efforts by Toronto parents to seek advice on school admission. This is a nice contrast to a Manhattan-focused article on Kumon in the NYT some weeks ago.
The first thing I noticed that even the most anxious Toronto parents are positively serene in their attitude compared to Manhattan parents. No big surprise there.
What’s more interesting in a general way and as a lens on Japanese supplementary education, is that the article discusses the status of past entrance exam takers in imparting wisdom on the entrance exam. This personal experience is something that is valued very highly in the juku world as well.
While not all juku-cho are graduates of the most prestigious universities (remember that this is a clear and nearly universally-agreed upon category in Japan), many of them are.
In part, this educational background is rooted in the fact that one of the trajectories that has led individuals to become supplementary education entrepreneurs is their role as tutors (家庭教師) during their university years. For some individuals, success in this role and requests from parents to also tutor younger siblings, for example, then led to the foundation of a juku.
In hiring tutors Japanese parents clearly seem to prefer students at prestigious universities, though I’m not sure whether there is any data to corroborate this suspicion. While it seems relatively unimportant to parents whether a tutor or juku instructor has any pedagogical qualifications (formal in the form of a teaching license, or informal in the sense of a talent), subject-specific knowledge, or rapport with students. Instead past experience and success in entrance exams seems to trump many of these other possible considerations.
There are a number of aspects of this preference that I find odd. On the one hand, it suggests a strong belief in the uniformity of learning styles. A students’ individual strengths and abilities are not considered when any past exam taker is seen as an expert independent of whether this student was largely self-motivated or needed a highly regimented study regime, for example.This belief in the uniformity of learners is closely linked to a strong belief in the efficacy of effort in educational success. Adages such as “four hours success – five hours failure” (referring to the hours of sleep during exam preparation, I’ll have to dig up the Japanese original for this some time) are indicative of this belief in effort rather than aptitude.
Contrast this belief in homogeneous learners with the equally strong perception of differences between entrance examinations. This has long puzzled me when looking at the large number of how-to manuals that describe entrance examinations for particular schools (whether at the lower or upper secondary, or the higher education level). For secondary education at least, most of the entrance examinations are based on the school curriculum. While there have been some departures from that in the 2002-2011 yutori years (some private schools basing exams on pre-yutori curricula, one of the rare departures from the official curriculum in juku coverage as well), the subject matter of entrance exams is generally the subject matter of school textbooks and lessons which in turn is the subject matter of all educational aids used in juku (教材).
Given the curriculum as a basis, why is there specific advice for how to take the exam for school A vs. school B? The advice often focuses on a preference for a specific type of question (this is particularly true for university entrance exams where volumes of past exams are analyzed and available for practice tests), yet it would seem to me that at a certain level a student who is well-versed in the school curriculum (with some strategic extensions) ought to be well-prepared for entrance examinations at a large number of institutions. Yet, the strong belief in some kind of insider knowledge from having successful taken an exam persists.
The one area where I do see advice from past test-takers (though successful or not wouldn’t matter) as useful is on the format of the exam. This also holds for interviews and other non-exam-based forms of admission, of course. From my own experiences with the TOEFL, SAT, and GRE (granted, many years ago), I would agree that a degree of familiarity with the format of a test can be very useful in reducing anxiety and also improving results.
Posted in Canada, Press and Media, Teaching Personnel
In 2008, I wrote an article for Education Canada, published by the Canadian Education Association, that a) reported on the current state of (research on) supplementary education in Japan, and b) speculated a bit about what an understanding of juku implies for the trajectory of Canadian education. In this discussion of the Canadian context, I relied on a quick-and-dirty survey of supplementary education institutions in the Lower Mainland that I did together with intern Sabrina Lohner in the summer of 2007.
In this survey, we found 74 tutoring centres and other supplementary education institutions in the Vancouver area.
Roughly half of these supplementary education businesses promoted themselves in more languages than just English and many of them seemed to be branding themselves specifically in a way to appeal to Asian-Canadians.
The full article is freely available on the Education Canada website or as a PDF.
Julian Dierkes
Steve R. Entrich