Kyoiku mama
Encyclopedia
The Japanese pejorative term "kyōiku mama" (教育ママ) translates literally as "education mother". The kyōiku mama is a stereotyped figure in modern Japanese society portrayed as a mother who relentlessly drives her child to study, to the detriment of the child's social and physical development, and emotional well-being
.
The kyōiku mama is one of the best-known and least-liked pop-culture
figures in contemporary Japan. The kyōiku mama is analogous to American stereotypes such as the stage mother who forces her child to show-business success, or the critical, self-sacrificing mother who coerces her child into medical school
or law school
. The stereotype is that a kyōiku mama is feared by her own children, blamed by the press for school phobias and youth suicide
s, and envied and resented by the mothers of children who study less and fare less well on exams.
women’s labor began at a few major corporations in Japan and was adopted by other companies within a decade. It became popular among married women in the 1970s and even more so in 1985.
Women’s return to the workplace is often explained in a twofold way: by financial demands to complement the family budget, and by psychological demands to relate themselves to society. However, part-time workers are clearly subordinate to full-time workers in wages and job security
. In a capitalist society
, this economically and socially unequal relationship between full-time male and part-time female workers may well affect the relationship between men and women at home.
In terms of child-rearing
, women in the 1960s inspired the media to produce the idiom kyōiku mama, which referred to ‘the domestic counterpart of sararii-man’ (salaryman
). This encompassed a major responsibility to ‘rear children, especially the males, to successfully pass the competitive tests needed to enter high school and college’. No such idiom emerged that deemed men ‘education papas’; it was ‘mamas’ who became a social phenomenon.
As a result, there is a clear map pointing students to the right nursery school
that leads to the right kindergarten, the best elementary school, junior high school, high school, all of which may be associated with prestigious universities. In order to ensure these results, some parents have been known to commit unethical and/or illegal acts in order to promote their child's success.
The issue is compounded by the notion that most important job positions in business and government are held by graduates of Tokyo University
. In addition, which university a student attends is also believed to affect one's choices for a future spouse. Because a child’s life appears to be determined by what schools he or she attends, many mothers take extraordinary measures to get children into good schools.
, and more children in the form of siblings and cousins. Children who grew up in that time learned responsibilities through the care of younger siblings. These children relied on themselves in the outside world through much of their childhood lives. In those days, child-raising was more of a private matter, only handled by the child’s surrounding family.
In the 1970s, men’s wages decreased and women left home earlier to find jobs. These women “considered themselves free” after the child’s junior high education. The previous generation did not feel this until after the child had finished high school.
In contemporary Japan, couples are having fewer children, and teaching the children self-reliance. This currently involves consulting child-raising professionals. This new need in professional advice is commonly termed “child-raising neurosis” by professionals today. Reliance on professionals has largely created a new generation of young mothers with low self-confidence
in their own child-raising abilities. Indeed, most Japanese mothers today grew up in smaller families with only one or two children. Their mothers provided them with everything they needed and gave them little to no responsibilities involving their siblings. Thus, that generation of children has now grown up to become mothers who have no idea how to raise their children.
In addition, in contemporary Japan there are also mothers who completely devoted themselves to child-raising. Another subtype, described by Nishioka Rice, is the kosodate mama (子育てママ), who also adds psychosociological elements into child-raising. In addition to providing for her a good education, she also develops an emotional and psychological relationship with her children. One way to do this would be through skinship, which involves being in constant close physical contact with her children. This would, for example, involve carrying her child on her back wherever she goes or bathing with her children every night. Through skinship, ittaikan (一体感) is achieved, a “one-ness and balanced, positively valenced dependency” between mother and child.
When compared to American mothers, Japanese mothers have a stronger belief in effort as opposed to innate ability. A Japanese child sees his effort as necessary to fulfill a “social obligation” to family, peers, and his community. Children are forced to focus on their effort, seeing it as the cause for failure. According to society, if a child does not succeed they were not trying hard enough. This is unrelated to the child’s grades; kids always need to put forth more effort. Mothers pressure children because they are held “strongly accountable” for their children’s actions.
It is pretty hard trying to find a daycare in Japan, and it’s socially looked down upon if a mother sends her child to one. The mother is seen as insufficient, not having the skills to raise a child on her own, or selfish, giving her child over to a caretaker while she pursues her own separate goals.
The term became used in other similar contexts of the Japanese society. For example, the former Ministry of International Trade and Industry
was dubbed kyoiku mama for its approach and initiatives in guiding industrial growth.
, magazines, products, and services for mothers are largely focused on improving the home and raising the children. Thus, the job of motherhood is taken very seriously by mothers in Japan. A common description of a mother’s free time
is “’three meals and a nap’”.
women are the ones who train the children, the next generation of the middle class. In a speech at the 1909 Mitsukoshi children’s exhibition, First Higher School principal Nitobe Inazo
asserted, “The education of a citizenry begins not with the infant but with the education of a country’s mothers.”
In the post-World War II era in Japan, the mother was the creator of a new child-centered world stamped with middle-class values. The mother was linked with the success of the child’s education. A woman was expected to be a “good wife, wise mother” and became the single most important figure in raising the child to become a successful future adult. More than giving birth, mothers needed to put their efforts into raising and teaching their children. Through both her own self-cultivation and also her rearing of the children, the woman was crucial to a family’s ability to claim a place within the so-called middle stratum of society.
As educational credentials became the recognized prerequisite to social advancement in the early twentieth century, kyōiku mama actively looked to the educational system, especially admission into middle school
for boys and higher school for girls, to help improve the family’s social position
. The competition to pass the entrance examination
to middle school and girls’ higher school became intense, creating the social phenomenon
known as shiken jigoku (試験地獄), or examination hell. While risshin shusse (立身出世), or rising in the world, was the clarion call of the mass of the middle class, there was no risshin shusse without a kyōiku mama. For the education mother, making the child into a superior student was a concern that began with the child’s entrance into elementary school at age six and extended to all aspects of the child’s education.
Working class
mothers are not as intensely active in their children’s education as middle-class mothers. An ethnographic study by Shimizu Tokuda (1991) portrayed one middle school that faced persistent academic problems in a working-class neighborhood of Osaka. The study illustrated various efforts by teachers to improve the student’s academic performance: providing tests, promoting monthly teacher discussions, painting walls to enhance the study environment, and restricting hours spent in extracurricular activities
. While students’ enrollment in high school slightly improved, academic achievement level remained lower than the national average. This study revealed that students’ academic problems were deeply related to their home environments. Most students had parents who were uneducated and not involved in their children’s education.
Mothers are essentially in heavy competition with other mothers who also want their children to get into the elite universities. In some cases, to make it seem like her own child is not studying as much, mothers will let their child use the parents’ bedroom to study while the mothers watch dramas on the television in the living room
. Other mothers who pass by the house will see the child’s bedroom light off, assuming that the child has shirked his or her studies to watch dramas on the television in the living room. The next morning, the mother will report what happened in the dramas to her child, who will go to school and talk about it to his or her classmates, who will also assume that their friend is a slacker, lowering their expectations of their friend and for themselves. However, when examination time rolls around, the “slacker” will be admitted into an elite school while his or her friends will drop behind.
Kyōiku mama often give their children a big first appearance in the neighborhood through a kōen debyu (公園デビュー), where the mothers “parade their offspring around the neighborhood parks for approval”.
Mothers send their children to cram schools (juku
), where children may stay until 10 or 11pm. Japan has over 35,000 cram schools for college examinations. In addition to cram schools, children are also sent to calligraphy, keyboard, abacus, or kendo classes.
mothers devoted themselves to a smaller amount of children. Parental stress resulted in the commonality of new childhood illnesses; these include bronchial asthma
, stammering, poor appetite, proneness to bone fracture
s, and school phobia. Children were aware they were their mother's purpose in life. Mothers played the role of their children's school teachers while they were at home.
Children are undoubtedly affected by their mothers. Sometimes, a child who grows up with a kyōiku mama turns into a tenuki okusan (手抜き奥さん), literally a “’no hands’ housewife”. Tenuki okusan usually have jobs and are not around the children as much, essentially becoming the female version of the stereotypical absent Japanese father, a “leisure-time parent” or “Sunday friend”. These mothers do not do a lot of homemaking, commonly making large, freezable meals that are easy to reheat the next day in case they are not home to do the cooking or too busy to do it otherwise. Tenuki okusan do not attempt to represent their families in the community through participation in their children’s school PTA and other community functions.
Compared to modern American children, Japanese youths have less suicide, drug use, depression, violence, and teenage pregnancy
. However Japan does have the 6th highest adult suicide rate in the world, surpassed only by former Eastern Bloc
countries.
has admitted that the education system and parental pressure are taking their toll on the children of Japan. Educational reforms that the Ministry of Education has enacted beginning in the 1970s have challenged Japan’s egalitarian school system. In order to decrease academic pressure among students resulting from examination competition, the Ministry of Education cut school hours and increased non-academic activities such as recess and club activities in elementary and junior high schools.
In 2002, the central government reduced school hours again, decreased content, and introduced new curriculum
at all public elementary schools to encourage individual students’ learning interests and motivation. The Japanese Ministry of Education has also published a white paper
stating that children don’t have opportunities like “’coming into contact with nature, feeling awe and respect for life, and experiencing the importance of hard work learning from difficulties’”.
By the mid-1970s, pressure to achieve in children created the need for specialty schools. Seventy-percent of students continued their long school day at Juku or “Cram Schools” after regular school hours ended. In the 1980s, a series of suicides linked to school pressures began. Elementary and Middle school students took their lives after failing entrance exams.
During the 1990s, the economic collapse
in Japan after its global economic dominance in the previous decade led to a loss of motivation by students. The once highly touted academic ratings of Japan in math and science fell behind those of American levels. The stress began to lead to classroom disruption.
In 2001, the National Education Research Institute found that thirty-three percent of teachers and principals polled said that they had witnessed a complete breakdown of class “over a continuous period of time” due to defiant children “engaging in arbitrary activity”. In 2002, the Japanese Education Ministry - pressured by the need to reform, Japan eliminated thirty percent of its core curriculum
. This freed up time for these students to pursue learning in groups according to the students’ chosen path.
Mukatsuku is a term recently becoming popular among students, used to describe sickness with teachers, parents, and life.
Quality of life
The term quality of life is used to evaluate the general well-being of individuals and societies. The term is used in a wide range of contexts, including the fields of international development, healthcare, and politics. Quality of life should not be confused with the concept of standard of...
.
The kyōiku mama is one of the best-known and least-liked pop-culture
Popular culture
Popular culture is the totality of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, images and other phenomena that are deemed preferred per an informal consensus within the mainstream of a given culture, especially Western culture of the early to mid 20th century and the emerging global mainstream of the...
figures in contemporary Japan. The kyōiku mama is analogous to American stereotypes such as the stage mother who forces her child to show-business success, or the critical, self-sacrificing mother who coerces her child into medical school
Medical school
A medical school is a tertiary educational institution—or part of such an institution—that teaches medicine. Degree programs offered at medical schools often include Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine, Bachelor/Doctor of Medicine, Doctor of Philosophy, master's degree, or other post-secondary...
or law school
Law school
A law school is an institution specializing in legal education.- Law degrees :- Canada :...
. The stereotype is that a kyōiku mama is feared by her own children, blamed by the press for school phobias and youth suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
s, and envied and resented by the mothers of children who study less and fare less well on exams.
Factors influencing development of kyōiku mama
In the early 1960s, part-timePart time
A part-time job is a form of employment that carries fewer hours per week than a full-time job. Workers are considered to be part time if they commonly work fewer than 30 or 35 hours per week...
women’s labor began at a few major corporations in Japan and was adopted by other companies within a decade. It became popular among married women in the 1970s and even more so in 1985.
Women’s return to the workplace is often explained in a twofold way: by financial demands to complement the family budget, and by psychological demands to relate themselves to society. However, part-time workers are clearly subordinate to full-time workers in wages and job security
Job security
Job security is the probability that an individual will keep his or her job; a job with a high level of job security is such that a person with the job would have a small chance of becoming unemployed.-Factors affecting job security:...
. In a capitalist society
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
, this economically and socially unequal relationship between full-time male and part-time female workers may well affect the relationship between men and women at home.
In terms of child-rearing
Parenting
Parenting is the process of promoting and supporting the physical, emotional, social, and intellectual development of a child from infancy to adulthood...
, women in the 1960s inspired the media to produce the idiom kyōiku mama, which referred to ‘the domestic counterpart of sararii-man’ (salaryman
Salaryman
refers to someone whose income is salary based; particularly those working for corporations. Its frequent use by Japanese corporations, and its prevalence in Japanese manga and anime has gradually led to its acceptance in English-speaking countries as a noun for a Japanese white-collar...
). This encompassed a major responsibility to ‘rear children, especially the males, to successfully pass the competitive tests needed to enter high school and college’. No such idiom emerged that deemed men ‘education papas’; it was ‘mamas’ who became a social phenomenon.
The education system
The education system is a major reason why mothers become kyōiku mama. Getting a good, steady job in the future very much depends on getting into a good college, which depends on attaining high scores on the national university exams in a student’s last year of high school.As a result, there is a clear map pointing students to the right nursery school
Nursery school
A nursery school is a school for children between the ages of one and five years, staffed by suitably qualified and other professionals who encourage and supervise educational play rather than simply providing childcare...
that leads to the right kindergarten, the best elementary school, junior high school, high school, all of which may be associated with prestigious universities. In order to ensure these results, some parents have been known to commit unethical and/or illegal acts in order to promote their child's success.
- Specific case: A restaurant owner paid a $95,000 bribe in an attempt to get his child enrolled in Aoyama GakuinAoyama Gakuinis an educational institute in Tokyo, Japan, which comprises Aoyama Gakuin University, Aoyama Gakuin Women's Junior College, Aoyama Gakuin Senior High School, Aoyama Gakuin Junior High School, Aoyama Gakuin Elementary School, and Aoyama Gakuin Kindergarten....
, a prestigious kindergarten. Because of the kindergarten’s affiliation with an elite university, parents are willing to go to extreme lengths to get their children enrolled. Aoyama Gakuin has room for 40 new students a year. Every year, it receives more than 2000 hopeful applicants. The tests the potential students have to take are known to be extremely difficult. Keep in mind the students are only three or four years old.
The issue is compounded by the notion that most important job positions in business and government are held by graduates of Tokyo University
University of Tokyo
, abbreviated as , is a major research university located in Tokyo, Japan. The University has 10 faculties with a total of around 30,000 students, 2,100 of whom are foreign. Its five campuses are in Hongō, Komaba, Kashiwa, Shirokane and Nakano. It is considered to be the most prestigious university...
. In addition, which university a student attends is also believed to affect one's choices for a future spouse. Because a child’s life appears to be determined by what schools he or she attends, many mothers take extraordinary measures to get children into good schools.
Changing family structures
The older generation of Japanese grew up in larger households than those normally found in Japan today. Back then, ikuji (child-raising)(育児) included a larger surrounding environment, made up of more relatives and extended familyExtended family
The term extended family has several distinct meanings. In modern Western cultures dominated by nuclear family constructs, it has come to be used generically to refer to grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins, whether they live together within the same household or not. However, it may also refer...
, and more children in the form of siblings and cousins. Children who grew up in that time learned responsibilities through the care of younger siblings. These children relied on themselves in the outside world through much of their childhood lives. In those days, child-raising was more of a private matter, only handled by the child’s surrounding family.
In the 1970s, men’s wages decreased and women left home earlier to find jobs. These women “considered themselves free” after the child’s junior high education. The previous generation did not feel this until after the child had finished high school.
In contemporary Japan, couples are having fewer children, and teaching the children self-reliance. This currently involves consulting child-raising professionals. This new need in professional advice is commonly termed “child-raising neurosis” by professionals today. Reliance on professionals has largely created a new generation of young mothers with low self-confidence
Self-esteem
Self-esteem is a term in psychology to reflect a person's overall evaluation or appraisal of his or her own worth. Self-esteem encompasses beliefs and emotions such as triumph, despair, pride and shame: some would distinguish how 'the self-concept is what we think about the self; self-esteem, the...
in their own child-raising abilities. Indeed, most Japanese mothers today grew up in smaller families with only one or two children. Their mothers provided them with everything they needed and gave them little to no responsibilities involving their siblings. Thus, that generation of children has now grown up to become mothers who have no idea how to raise their children.
In addition, in contemporary Japan there are also mothers who completely devoted themselves to child-raising. Another subtype, described by Nishioka Rice, is the kosodate mama (子育てママ), who also adds psychosociological elements into child-raising. In addition to providing for her a good education, she also develops an emotional and psychological relationship with her children. One way to do this would be through skinship, which involves being in constant close physical contact with her children. This would, for example, involve carrying her child on her back wherever she goes or bathing with her children every night. Through skinship, ittaikan (一体感) is achieved, a “one-ness and balanced, positively valenced dependency” between mother and child.
Societal views
In Japan, a mother who works is commonly seen as selfish in a society where child-raising is linked so directly with the physical closeness between mother and child. This emphasis can be a cause of the development of kyōiku mama who always worries about her children’s educational success. This produces children that society views as lacking self-reliance, antisocial, and selfish.When compared to American mothers, Japanese mothers have a stronger belief in effort as opposed to innate ability. A Japanese child sees his effort as necessary to fulfill a “social obligation” to family, peers, and his community. Children are forced to focus on their effort, seeing it as the cause for failure. According to society, if a child does not succeed they were not trying hard enough. This is unrelated to the child’s grades; kids always need to put forth more effort. Mothers pressure children because they are held “strongly accountable” for their children’s actions.
It is pretty hard trying to find a daycare in Japan, and it’s socially looked down upon if a mother sends her child to one. The mother is seen as insufficient, not having the skills to raise a child on her own, or selfish, giving her child over to a caretaker while she pursues her own separate goals.
The term became used in other similar contexts of the Japanese society. For example, the former Ministry of International Trade and Industry
Ministry of International Trade and Industry
The Ministry of International Trade and Industry was one of the most powerful agencies of the Government of Japan. At the height of its influence, it effectively ran much of Japanese industrial policy, funding research and directing investment...
was dubbed kyoiku mama for its approach and initiatives in guiding industrial growth.
Media
Housewives are surrounded by popular media that encourages their actions. Daytime televisionDaytime television
Daytime television is the general term for television shows produced that are intended to air during the daytime hours on weekdays. This article is about American daytime television, for information about international daytime television see Daytime television....
, magazines, products, and services for mothers are largely focused on improving the home and raising the children. Thus, the job of motherhood is taken very seriously by mothers in Japan. A common description of a mother’s free time
Leisure
Leisure, or free time, is time spent away from business, work, and domestic chores. It is also the periods of time before or after necessary activities such as eating, sleeping and, where it is compulsory, education....
is “’three meals and a nap’”.
Class distinctions
Kyōiku mama, preparatory preschools, and heavily academic curricula exist in Japan, yet they are relatively rare and concentrated in urban, wealthy areas of the country. Kyōiku mama are also prominent in the middle-classes. Middle-classMiddle class
The middle class is any class of people in the middle of a societal hierarchy. In Weberian socio-economic terms, the middle class is the broad group of people in contemporary society who fall socio-economically between the working class and upper class....
women are the ones who train the children, the next generation of the middle class. In a speech at the 1909 Mitsukoshi children’s exhibition, First Higher School principal Nitobe Inazo
Inazo Nitobe
was a Japanese agricultural economist, author, educator, diplomat, politician, and Christian during Meiji and Taishō period Japan.-Early Life:Nitobe was born in Morioka, Mutsu Province . His father was a retainer to the local daimyō of the Nambu clan. His infant name was Inanosuke...
asserted, “The education of a citizenry begins not with the infant but with the education of a country’s mothers.”
In the post-World War II era in Japan, the mother was the creator of a new child-centered world stamped with middle-class values. The mother was linked with the success of the child’s education. A woman was expected to be a “good wife, wise mother” and became the single most important figure in raising the child to become a successful future adult. More than giving birth, mothers needed to put their efforts into raising and teaching their children. Through both her own self-cultivation and also her rearing of the children, the woman was crucial to a family’s ability to claim a place within the so-called middle stratum of society.
As educational credentials became the recognized prerequisite to social advancement in the early twentieth century, kyōiku mama actively looked to the educational system, especially admission into middle school
Middle school
Middle School and Junior High School are levels of schooling between elementary and high schools. Most school systems use one term or the other, not both. The terms are not interchangeable...
for boys and higher school for girls, to help improve the family’s social position
Social position
Social position is the position of an individual in a given society and culture. A given position may belong to many individuals. Social position influences social status...
. The competition to pass the entrance examination
Entrance examination
An entrance examination is an examination that many educational institutions use to select students for admission. These exams may be administered at any level of education, from primary to higher education, although they are more common at higher levels....
to middle school and girls’ higher school became intense, creating the social phenomenon
Social phenomenon
Social phenomena include all behavior which influences or is influenced by organisms sufficiently alive to respond to one another.-See also:*Forms of activity and interpersonal relations*List of sociology topics*Social fact-References:...
known as shiken jigoku (試験地獄), or examination hell. While risshin shusse (立身出世), or rising in the world, was the clarion call of the mass of the middle class, there was no risshin shusse without a kyōiku mama. For the education mother, making the child into a superior student was a concern that began with the child’s entrance into elementary school at age six and extended to all aspects of the child’s education.
Working class
Working class
Working class is a term used in the social sciences and in ordinary conversation to describe those employed in lower tier jobs , often extending to those in unemployment or otherwise possessing below-average incomes...
mothers are not as intensely active in their children’s education as middle-class mothers. An ethnographic study by Shimizu Tokuda (1991) portrayed one middle school that faced persistent academic problems in a working-class neighborhood of Osaka. The study illustrated various efforts by teachers to improve the student’s academic performance: providing tests, promoting monthly teacher discussions, painting walls to enhance the study environment, and restricting hours spent in extracurricular activities
Extracurricular activity
Extracurricular activities are activities performed by students that fall outside the realm of the normal curriculum of school or university education...
. While students’ enrollment in high school slightly improved, academic achievement level remained lower than the national average. This study revealed that students’ academic problems were deeply related to their home environments. Most students had parents who were uneducated and not involved in their children’s education.
Contemporary kyōiku mama
Many Japanese mothers today dedicate all of their time to getting their children from one entrance exam to another. At the national university entrance exams, held in Tokyo, most mothers will travel with their children to the examination hall. They will arrive and stay at a nearby hotel, grilling their children on last-minute statistics and making sure that their children are not late to the exam.- Specific case: Some mothers are also beginning their children’s education at even younger ages. A 30-year-old mother in Japan says, “’This is my first baby, and I didn’t know how to play with her or help her develop’”. She sends her 6-month-old daughter to a pre-pre-school in Tokyo. A headmaster at another pre-pre-school claims that the school, for children one year or older, helps to nurture and develop the curiosity in children through” tangerine-peeling or collecting and coloring snow”.
Mothers are essentially in heavy competition with other mothers who also want their children to get into the elite universities. In some cases, to make it seem like her own child is not studying as much, mothers will let their child use the parents’ bedroom to study while the mothers watch dramas on the television in the living room
Living room
A living room, also known as sitting room, lounge room or lounge , is a room for entertaining adult guests, reading, or other activities...
. Other mothers who pass by the house will see the child’s bedroom light off, assuming that the child has shirked his or her studies to watch dramas on the television in the living room. The next morning, the mother will report what happened in the dramas to her child, who will go to school and talk about it to his or her classmates, who will also assume that their friend is a slacker, lowering their expectations of their friend and for themselves. However, when examination time rolls around, the “slacker” will be admitted into an elite school while his or her friends will drop behind.
Kyōiku mama often give their children a big first appearance in the neighborhood through a kōen debyu (公園デビュー), where the mothers “parade their offspring around the neighborhood parks for approval”.
Mothers send their children to cram schools (juku
Juku
Gakushū juku are special private schools that offer lessons conducted after regular school hours and on the weekends....
), where children may stay until 10 or 11pm. Japan has over 35,000 cram schools for college examinations. In addition to cram schools, children are also sent to calligraphy, keyboard, abacus, or kendo classes.
Effects on children
In the 1950s, full timeFull time
Full-time employment is employment in which the employee works the full number of hours defined as such by his/her employer. Full-time employment often comes with benefits that are not typically offered to part-time, temporary, or flexible workers, such as annual leave, sickleave, and health...
mothers devoted themselves to a smaller amount of children. Parental stress resulted in the commonality of new childhood illnesses; these include bronchial asthma
Asthma
Asthma is the common chronic inflammatory disease of the airways characterized by variable and recurring symptoms, reversible airflow obstruction, and bronchospasm. Symptoms include wheezing, coughing, chest tightness, and shortness of breath...
, stammering, poor appetite, proneness to bone fracture
Bone fracture
A bone fracture is a medical condition in which there is a break in the continuity of the bone...
s, and school phobia. Children were aware they were their mother's purpose in life. Mothers played the role of their children's school teachers while they were at home.
Children are undoubtedly affected by their mothers. Sometimes, a child who grows up with a kyōiku mama turns into a tenuki okusan (手抜き奥さん), literally a “’no hands’ housewife”. Tenuki okusan usually have jobs and are not around the children as much, essentially becoming the female version of the stereotypical absent Japanese father, a “leisure-time parent” or “Sunday friend”. These mothers do not do a lot of homemaking, commonly making large, freezable meals that are easy to reheat the next day in case they are not home to do the cooking or too busy to do it otherwise. Tenuki okusan do not attempt to represent their families in the community through participation in their children’s school PTA and other community functions.
Compared to modern American children, Japanese youths have less suicide, drug use, depression, violence, and teenage pregnancy
Teenage pregnancy
Teenage pregnancy is a pregnancy of a female under the age of 20 when the pregnancy ends. It generally refers to a female who is unmarried and usually refers to an unplanned pregnancy...
. However Japan does have the 6th highest adult suicide rate in the world, surpassed only by former Eastern Bloc
Eastern bloc
The term Eastern Bloc or Communist Bloc refers to the former communist states of Eastern and Central Europe, generally the Soviet Union and the countries of the Warsaw Pact...
countries.
Government regulations
The Japanese Ministry of EducationMinistry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (Japan)
The , also known as MEXT or Monkashō, is one of the ministries of the Japanese government.The Meiji government created the first Ministry of Education in 1871....
has admitted that the education system and parental pressure are taking their toll on the children of Japan. Educational reforms that the Ministry of Education has enacted beginning in the 1970s have challenged Japan’s egalitarian school system. In order to decrease academic pressure among students resulting from examination competition, the Ministry of Education cut school hours and increased non-academic activities such as recess and club activities in elementary and junior high schools.
In 2002, the central government reduced school hours again, decreased content, and introduced new curriculum
Brown University
Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...
at all public elementary schools to encourage individual students’ learning interests and motivation. The Japanese Ministry of Education has also published a white paper
White paper
A white paper is an authoritative report or guide that helps solve a problem. White papers are used to educate readers and help people make decisions, and are often requested and used in politics, policy, business, and technical fields. In commercial use, the term has also come to refer to...
stating that children don’t have opportunities like “’coming into contact with nature, feeling awe and respect for life, and experiencing the importance of hard work learning from difficulties’”.
Brief history of Japanese education and related stress
Post War Japan in the 1950s made it a “national mission” to accelerate its education program. Children of this era had to distinguish themselves from peers at an early age if they hoped to get into a top university. Entrance exams for these children began in kindergarten.By the mid-1970s, pressure to achieve in children created the need for specialty schools. Seventy-percent of students continued their long school day at Juku or “Cram Schools” after regular school hours ended. In the 1980s, a series of suicides linked to school pressures began. Elementary and Middle school students took their lives after failing entrance exams.
During the 1990s, the economic collapse
Economic collapse
There is no precise definition of an economic collapse. While some might consider a a severe, prolonged depression with high bankruptcy rates and high unemployment an economic collapse, others would additionally look for a breakdown in normal commerce, such as hyperinfalation, or even a sharp...
in Japan after its global economic dominance in the previous decade led to a loss of motivation by students. The once highly touted academic ratings of Japan in math and science fell behind those of American levels. The stress began to lead to classroom disruption.
In 2001, the National Education Research Institute found that thirty-three percent of teachers and principals polled said that they had witnessed a complete breakdown of class “over a continuous period of time” due to defiant children “engaging in arbitrary activity”. In 2002, the Japanese Education Ministry - pressured by the need to reform, Japan eliminated thirty percent of its core curriculum
Core Curriculum
The Core Curriculum was originally developed as the main curriculum used by Columbia University's Columbia College. It began in 1919 with "Contemporary Civilization," about the origins of western civilization. It became the framework for many similar educational models throughout the United States...
. This freed up time for these students to pursue learning in groups according to the students’ chosen path.
Mukatsuku is a term recently becoming popular among students, used to describe sickness with teachers, parents, and life.