From the article of 'Petrel'
No.703 / November 29, 1998

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// EDITORIAL //

The Ministry of Education has presented the new course of study.

Why is it that despite having talked about a "revolution" in education throughout the past ten years, the stupid bureaucrats at the Ministry have not only managed to achieve no results, they have taken steps that have worsened the educational situation, and are now taking such steps. They don't reflect on this point, but just repeat the same stupid actions.

Today, education as well as the state and society are rapidly deteriorating in the same way.

Now the expressions "classroom collapse" and "classroom breakdown" are being used openly, and the concept of "school collapse" has also appeared.

In fact, there is "school collapse" in the literal sense, and what was once called the site of education now resembles a battleground ruled by lawlessness and chaos. The leadership and authority of the teachers is already gone, and there is now a situation where the choice seems to only be between forceful repression or continued lawlessness.

Fewer and fewer children are able to understand the classes (or even try to understand them), while the small number who do understand hold out no expectations for the school courses.

Of course the cause of this situation is essentially the limited education in class divided society, but this is also the result of education becoming increasingly separated from real activity and society, and the retreat into education for education (for the sake of exams and professions).

The necessity of education fundamentally springs from society. The basis is the social task of educating a person to live within society.

Seen historically, of course, the "public" education which started with the education of the children of the ruling class and the "national education" which began along with the formation of the capitalist nation state was essentially for the benefit of the bourgeois class.

However, historically speaking, national education was once progressive. This developed from the necessity to refashion the working class to suit the needs of capital, and adapt the working class to modern productive power.

At first national education was progressive and scientific thought and knowledge was considered important. Moreover, education had yet to loose its healthy social content.

However, this was only the case while the bourgeoisie was still progressive. With the end of capitalism's stage of free competition and the arrival of monopoly capitalism corruption and reaction was strengthened and this progressive quality was forever relegated to the past.

In place of a scientific viewpoint, an idealistic one began to be emphasized, and instead of a social standpoint, the trend grew towards education as a goal in itself (education for tests and careers, and education for the individual's profit and future).

In order to revive education it is thus necessary to connect education to society and life. However, it is completely impossible to accomplish this under the rule of capital.

In fact, if the individual child instead of being considered as fundamentally one member of society, is considered to be essentially an individualistic existence, how can a truly "social" education be possible.

The seemingly reasonable proposal to decrease the content of education to create more "space" is not the answer. This will only lead to a general decrease in scholastic ability. The bourgeoisie would probably say that a decrease in scholastic ability is not an essential problem (for them it isn't), but for us the elimination of important elements from the knowledge of future workers is not something that can be overlooked as insignificant.

The Ministry's Bureaucrats plan to decrease the content of education by up to thirty percent.

For example, of the 1,000 Chinese characters (Kanji) that elementary students must now learn how to read and write, the writing of 180 will be moved to the junior high school level.

The number of English words that third year junior high school students must now learn will be reduced from 1,000 to 900.

In mathematics as well the educational content will be drawn back in the name of "reducing the burden" . There will also be remarkable regression in science.

Does the Education Ministry expect us to believe that educational collapse can be fought by means of this reform?

The reason given for dropping the description of the Renaissance is that this is something which didn't occur in, or is not directly related to, Japanese history. This is their standard for determining what knowledge is important. The meaning of the Renaissance is left out, and they call this creating more educational "space". What "history" are they thinking about? They can't be serious!

Since these "reforms" only apply to public education, the gap between private schools will become increasingly large, and public schools will be more and more at a disadvantage in terms of higher education examinations. By reducing the standards for public education while leaving "examination war" in place, this reform of the educational content will only exacerbate and deepen the contradictions and cracks in the educational system.

Do they actually think that they can help prevent the collapse of public education through these "reforms"? If they actually believe this they are a bunch of soft-headed fools; if they don't they are criminally irresponsible.

Of course we don't recommend or support "cramming education", but we do intend to expose how the power of capital has increasingly robbed education of its substantial content and meaning leaving it vacuous, and we will ridicule these illusory and stupid proposals to fight the collapse of education.

To connect education with life and society does not rob education of its scientific content. Quite the contrary. Education would come to have a more substantial and rich content.

The stupid bureaucrats at the Ministry of Education have been the ringleaders at the forefront of the disintegration and collapse of education. These same people, totally ignorant of their own responsibility, are leading Japanese education towards further collapse and decay, and once again piling up stupid actions and schemes. There is no way that they can ever be forgiven for this.

(Translated by Roy West)