the-gnosis.com

This is an essay by renowned manga artist and thinker Kobayashi Yoshinori.(小林よしのり） One of the most fascinating and interesting personalities in Japan, he has always been willing to shock and go against the majority opinion. He has been called conservative, and super right wing by many in the western media, but that description doesn’t fit him well. This essay was published in his book “The nightmare called public opinion”

The Truth About Spoiled Children

“Relaxed Education” and the “widening gap between the rich and the poor”

“Relaxed education” was an educational reform put into place under the assumption that the gap between the rich and the poor would vastly widen.

It began after the 1970’s, when the fierce competition during entrance exams and the standardized educational system was under criticism.  The national council on education responding to inquiries from the then prime minister, Yasuhiro Nakasone, made clear their policies of “liberalization of the schools” and “liberalization of education”.

In response the ministry of education began planning to implement “relaxed education” in the 1990’s.

These educational reforms tried to value children’s “willingness to learn by themselves” and respected children “just as they are” and their “individual freedom”.

The creation of “comprehensive study time” which greatly cut time away from regular subjects was criticized for creating a decline in academic standards. The ministry of education said that they had begun to rethinking these plans but the “liberalization of education” continued unchanged.  At the end of last year (2005) during the regulation reform meeting, yet again another report on “reforms for children” was worked out, and the government made a cabinet decision to do as much as they can to honor the decision. According to the report people without educational licenses such as housewives, business people, and engineers will be able to teach now.

The goal is for children to be satisfied and have fun learning, and the teachers are to help this process along. The teachers and the students are to establish a cooperative relationship.

Well it seems we have a most generous and childishly deceptive reform where the children are the stars. This reform is to insure that children never lose that sense of “omnipotence” that they have when they are infants and to inflate their ego even further.

The report also includes plans for a “school choice system” where there are many special types of schools that can be freely chosen by children and guardians.

It goes so far as to introduce a “Teachers Assessment System” that is done by students and guardians and even can be put up on a webpage.

These “reforms for children” which “respect individuality” are in actuality ways to raise “many types of individuals that can be utilized in the neo-liberal economy”.

If you can’t do it, that’s OK?!

“Relaxed education” launched with a plan to cultivate Japanese living in a global village, promote learning on your own initiative, respect individuality, and create personalized schools.

When it was announced that other subjects would be cut, conservative critics criticized the plan saying that if you cut pi to only 3 children’s academic scores will decline. However the problem wasn’t the choice between “relaxed education or academic scores”.

Nobody realized that that the result of this change in educational policy would be an “approval of an increased disparity between students”.

The age when every student would receive the same education came to an end. What began was an education that would be determined by each family’s economic status, cultural level, and passion. This will be directly reflected in children’s future, and create a vast widening of the classes.

Perhaps I could restate it so that it is easier to understand. A small and wealthy part of the population will prime their children to be the future elites of society by sending them to schools that will encourage learning. Meanwhile the vast majority of people in the middle and lower class will have to send their children to public schools where children with no ambition to learn and their parents will be made to believe that this is all for the best by using pretty words like “respecting individuality”.

The journalist Takao Saito, who interviewed Shumon Miura, the then chairman of the education curriculum council, went so far as to say “The real purpose of starting “relaxed education” was that it was just another way of starting elite education without having to say so.” and “The idea is that those that can’t succeed, don’t have to.”

“Relaxed education” was also demanded by the financial world. They needed people who could adapt to a “neo-liberal” society left to market fundamentalism with the ultimate responsibility resting on the individual.

“The widening gap between the classes” is the necessary result of the path of Americanism called globalism that Japan chose to walk down. To continue on this path the reforms were enacted just as educators and the business world demanded.

A society where only the effort of the rich is rewarded

Even though “economic recovery” is proclaimed everywhere the gap between the rich and the poor is getting wider. There are 1,040,000 households receiving livelihood protection [*financial aid],  23.8% of families have zero savings, there are 16,500,000 people who don’t have full time employment, 640,000 people with no jobs, 240,000 people have applied for bankruptcy, there are 25,000 homeless, and every year there is a new record set of the number of people who commit suicide.

Prime Minister Koizumi has declared that “A widening of the gap of rich and poor isn’t a bad thing.” And also “Being jealous of success and getting in the way of those with talent are habits that must be discouraged.” What the prime minister and other politicians don’t realize is that something more frightening is going on. The feelings of “jealousy of success” by young children of lower classes are almost gone.

“Jealousy of success” has positive and negative effects. Isn’t “jealousy of success” also the motivation for competition? “Equality of opportunity” doesn’t exist for children of lower class families when they start life with a disparity.  Politicians are too thickheaded to realize that “desire to strive” only comes to and “hope” and “effort” only offer results for the children of rich families.

Feelings of jealousy are being lost in the so called “lower classes”.  When they “stop” learning they can still affirm themselves by saying that they have found their “individuality”.  Politicians and the economic world’s ideas of “self-responsibility” have been realized in the creation of the so called “losers” of society.

That is how the gap between the rich and the poor will be and remain enormous.

There are 780,000 wealthy families in Japan with financial assets over 100 million yen and 2,460,000 families that are ready to join the upper class with over 50 million yen in assets. If these families started to buy luxury items, the economy would probably recover.

But by creating a monopolistic capitalism, increasing and making permanent the gaps between big corporations and small medium sized businesses, part time workers and full time workers, the cities and the countryside, and by taking away “equality of opportunity”, will the people’s fears of the future really be eased?

Japan isn’t becoming a society where “if anyone works hard they are rewarded.” It’s becoming a society where only the effort put forth by the rich is rewarded.

Most people aren’t looking to have huge success in life. They want to work hard, marry, have children, make a family, and plan for a comfortable retirement. They just want to live a “normal” life.

The underlying principal of education is “forced normality”

I think that the real aim of education is “forced normality”.  I won’t say that elite education shouldn’t exist, but the role of adults is to make a society children can hope to live a normal life. Rebelling against this “forced normality,” some will be destined to drop out. I was one of those. When you can’t help but to show your talents to the world through some method, you don’t have to obey “forced normality”.  That is what “individuality” really is.

Being an “individual” and “individuality” are different things. Everyone is wonderfully “different” and “individual” from everyone else, but individuality is created by and has a purpose within a society.  “Individuality” rebels against society’s restraint and emerges out of that struggle.

The middle class in Japan used to be the personification of a “hope for a normal life”. Being rewarded for your efforts is something that should not be monopolized by societies “winners”.

We have to create a society where even people in the lower classes, with struggle and effort, can escape from their environment. Creating an environment under the banner of “self-responsibility” where people no longer feel the ambition to improve their surroundings and are unable to escape their own class is unfair. The ones who are talking about “self-responsibility” while at the same time stealing “equality of opportunity” are Koizumi, Takenaka, and the Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy.

When a country destroys the middle class, the guarantor of a hope for a normal life, the customs of that country will not take root in it’s people. However this is not just a problem of social order, if you include problems such as retirement funds, public lifestyle assistance, and social security the country itself will no longer be stable.

Words like “unfettered individuality” “diverse individualities” and “self-responsibility” are still mantras in education today. There was also recently a hit song that had the lyrics “I don’t want to be number one; I want to be only one.” This song that plays to the lower classes need for self affirmation is in reality a hymn to the omnipotent market fundamentalism called “neo-liberalism”.  This truth will and must be realized very soon, and we must stage a rebellion against this trend.