CHAOS IN THE CLASSROOM What has got into Japanese schoolchildren?

ASIANOW - Asiaweek

CHAOS IN THE CLASSROOM

What has got into Japanese schoolchildren?

By Murakami Mutsuko / Tokyo

CHO MIZUKA IS A BRIGHT 13-YEAR-OLD. When her family returned to Tokyo in 1995 after four years in Beijing, she had no difficulty adapting to the new academic demands. It was her class that she had trouble getting used to a year later. She found that few of her schoolfriends paid any attention in the classroom. Often the frustrated teacher resorted to shouting. Mutual antagonism grew. Mizuka's asthma returned, triggered by the stress. She was caught up in a phenomenon that is roiling the Japanese education system - gakkyu hokai, or classroom collapse.

In many grade schools these days, anarchy rules. Groups of children walk out abruptly in the middle of class. Some don't even bother to enter the classroom and instead hang around in the corridor. Others continue to talk after lessons begin. Often the chatter is so loud teachers cannot make themselves heard. Many students read comics or play cards, turning toward the blackboard only when summoned by name. Entire classes boycott lessons. Some children verbally abuse their teachers. A few beat them up.

The media have focused on gakkyu hokai before. But the issue formally appeared on the national agenda only this year, when speaker after speaker at a conference of the Japan Teachers' Union asked what had happened to the nation's previously attentive, courteous and disciplined schoolchildren. The union followed up with a survey that quickly drew 1,800 responses. One of the findings: One in every three primary-school teachers wants to quit. According to the results released on April 6, more than half this group cited chaotic classrooms as their reason. Another 16% blamed poor relationships with students' parents; 15% put it down to a heavy workload.

One teacher wrote: "My class is pure chaos. This has made me neurotic." In Nishinomiya, west of Osaka, a veteran of the blackboard jungle said: "It takes all my strength to make myself turn up at school each morning. I can barely get a word in. I just watch the class fall apart." The teacher's sense of guilt and failure gave him an ulcer and then drove him to a psychiatrist's couch.

How did things get this way? Parents point to unimaginative teachers still stuck on rote-learning methods. Educators criticize parents for not raising their children with the right values. And everyone blames social change - anything from a loss of national identity to the rise of the nuclear family. In short, kids can't spell R-E-S-P-E-C-T these days.

"Many teachers feel anxious and helpless, and that accelerates the collapse," says union leader Kawakami Yuji. Another problem teachers face is the unending diet of multi-channel television and computer games, which produces easily distracted youngsters. "Children are incapable of concentrating for as long as 45 minutes in class," says Inoue Toshiaki of the Rokko Counseling Research Center in Nishinomiya.

Worse, youngsters growing up in a virtual world become virtual recluses. Inoue argues that this hinders human interaction and healthy personalities. Some anxious parents note how children gathered in a room take up solitary pursuits - playing on a computer or looking at cartoon books - rather than relating to each other. "Children today are relatively immature emotionally," says Ohara Tetsu, a teacher who counsels problem kids in Nishinomiya. In a day that can be typically packed with extra-curricular activities such as piano lessons, math tutoring and computer classes, youngsters get little time to express themselves freely as individuals. They don't fight, but neither do they learn to get along.

Experience shows that this behavior doesn't improve as the children reach early teens. That is when unresolved, hidden frustrations can erupt - sometimes in the form of emotional outbursts (kireru) in class, or in physical aggression. A government report shows that of the 29,000 violent incidents in schools last year, more than half involved students in junior high. And it's not just the usual suspects. Normally quiet children are lashing out over trifling matters, often injuring classmates.

Teachers are at risk too. For some, the government report is a reminder of how a teenager stabbed his high-school teacher to death in the central town of Kuroiso last year. In January, Tokyo teachers who tried to stop youngsters from playing with a fire hose ended up with broken bones. Three 15-year-olds were arrested for assault. "If things go on as they are, violence will only worsen," says popular novelist Ryu Miri, author of a book about a Kobe teenager who shocked the nation two years ago when he decapitated a youngster and left his head outside a local school.

The problem, Ryu feels, is a society that does not value children as they are. Instead, acceptance and approval are too often based on good grades. But there are only so many prodigies. What about the rest? Besides, there is rarely much joy in learning Japanese style. In a survey of 4th graders, a third said they didn't understand what they were being taught.

What are the solutions? Proposals include reducing class sizes to 20 (the current limit is 40). Some people have called for curricula that offer a wide choice of subjects, instead of a set course for all. Relying on teaching teams rather than individuals might help. But when is any of that likely to happen? The Japanese education ministry is a ponderous beast, and any change will not come promptly.

Mizuka's parents are not prepared to wait. They are switching her to an experimental school in Okinawa, where there will be more room for self-expression - and a chance for her to learn that the school years really are the best years of your life.