Monthly Archives: April 2011

So, what makes me the expert on juku/supplementary education?

It’s now been over five years that I’ve been doing research on juku in Japan.

In the course of this period, I’ve visited over 45 juku. Most of these are located in Tokyo and its surrounding prefectures, but I’ve also visited about eight juku in the Kansai region (Osaka, Kyoto, Kobe), four in Hiroshima city, and another four in rural Shimane Prefecture.

According to my contacts in the juku industry, that makes me the current world record holder in number of juku visited. When I began this research, I was not intending to set a record in this particular discipline.

When I mention that I’ve “visited” over 45 juku, what I mean by that is that I’ve been to the physical location of these juku and have interviewed the owner/operator/principal (塾長 – jukucho). In more than 40 of these juku I’ve also observed classes.

I have visited around ten of these juku more than once, having observed classes in one particular juku on five separate occasions by now.

The shortest visits to juku have lasted around two hours, while the longest begin mid-afternoon and end in a shared meal (or more often than not, beer) with the jukucho just in time to allow me to catch the last train/subway.

The vast majority of the juku that I’ve visited are owner-operated (by the jukucho) and could be categorized as small and medium enterprise (SME) juku with fewer than 10 employees and fewer than 200 students.

I have no strict scheme for selecting classes that I observe, though I enjoy math (算数・数学) and Japanese (国語) the most. As they are not generally entrance exam subjects, social studies (社会) and science (理科) are not taught as widely and I have thus observed fewer classes in these subjects. I generally try to avoid English classes.

Depending on the focus of the juku (in term depending in part on the location), I observe different ages of students. I have observed classes for preschoolers (4-year olds) and primary and secondary students of all ages.

I continue to select juku using a somewhat modified snowball sample.

There you go, that is the kind of data that I have collected that makes me an expert.

If I only have 10 seconds to tell you what my research focuses on, I’d have to say “‘cram schools’ in Japan”. That is the most efficient way to describe my current interests. However, it is also very misleading.

The description is efficient, because most of you will have some sense of what a ‘cram school’ is.

It’s misleading, because your sense of a ‘cram school’ may not be what I have in mind at all, nor does it necessarily correspond to the juku that I have visited and continue to visit.

Also, I feel compelled to always place ‘cram school’ in quotation marks and that is tiring.

Here are some of the associations most people have with ‘cram school’:

• not enjoyable, perhaps even scary
• an, er, old-school pedagogy focused on a teacher lecturing to students
• the repression of children’s natural spiritedness
• darkness
• neon lights
• children are left with no time to play
• children to be pitied

These are, in fact, also the associations most people have with shadow education generally and with juku specifically.

There certainly are some juku where a brief glance or visit might conjure up impressions that would confirm these associations. But just like schools, juku vary massively and for many of the smaller juku that I visit, the common associations with ‘cram schools’ are unfair stereotypes rather than even remotely accurate descriptors.

• many children genuinely enjoy their time at juku
• some juku practice a pedagogy that is not only engaging, but also interactive
• there’s a lot of carousing at juku
• many juku are decorated brightly
• some even eschew neon lighting
• juku is not the only extracurricular activity for many students
• there is nothing pitiful about juku students per se

However, I get distracted…

Other topics that are likely to come up (these are topics that have featured prominently in my Tweets, for example):

• supplementary education, not just in Japan, but worldwide
• countries where I am following the development of supplementary education with a particular interest (Canada, France, Germany, South Korea, Taiwan, the U.S.)
• anything about or from Mongolia
• the Olympics