Although Japanese society has long valued and practiced lifelong learning, it has not yet been successful in building an ethic that prizes learning, teaches creativity, and includes everyone. Bureaucratic and legal mechanisms undertaken in Japan to promote lifelong learning have included the establishment of Lifelong Learning Councils, a system…

Several leaders in education have concluded that the United States should have some form of national achievement testing. Such tests are proposed as part of the "America 2000" education strategy. Believing that the experience of other countries will be useful to educators, policymakers, and concerned citizens, the National Endowment for…

Moral education, a primary component of Japanese education, has no precise equivalent in Canadian education. The focus of moral education is development of personal attitudes and social values. The content of this discipline is a kind of secular humanism which has engendered in the postwar Japanese the values, attitudes, behaviors, and virtues…

This paper discusses the development of new curricula, materials, and equipment in Japan. The first section, "The Development of New Curricula," discusses the National Curriculum Council and the improvement of the content of instruction, including basic directions for improvement, the structure and content of school subjects, and the…

This document traces the history of Japanese education since World War II and explains how the Japanese educational system operates today. Included in the discussion is information about: (1) the 1947 Fundamental Law of Education (which called for equal educational opportunities and compulsory education for nine years); (2) the development of the…