Issues of Transformation in the Ideas of Curriculum Reform, Curriculum Standards and Textbooks －A Japanese Perspective

In recent times, the Japanese government has faced difficulties in reforming school and social education despite the amendment of the Fundamental Law of Education 2006. With the revision of the main laws of education, the government has been transforming the public education system in terms of “educational accountability” by establishing a national test related to national curriculum standards. However, in Japan, there has been much less criticism of standard-oriented education than there has been in the U.S. or Europe.Interestingly enough, the educational problems in public schools are almost all found at the upper grades of elementary school and all grades of junior high school with young adolescent students aged 10-15. In the past two decades, Japan has been in the midst of a so-called “Age of the 3rd Educational Reform.” We have been coping with school refusal, bullying, and delinquency, along with lower than expected student scores on OECD/PISA 2003 and 2006, which mostly occur among students of the age range mentioned above.Therefore, in 2008, the government revised the National Course of Study, the national curriculum standards, in order to raise thinking abilities effectively as the core of the “Zest for Living” campaign. Under the new laws concerning public education, the revised curriculum standards stressed compulsory education, moral education, language activities, mathematics and science education, traditional culture education, experiential activities, and foreign language activities in the elementary curriculum.In addition, mastering basic knowledge and skills, increasing the number of hours of instruction per week, enhancing learning motivation, and establishing learning habits are all emphasized. All of these should help reach the final objective of improving thinking abilities. However, the Central Council for Education has not discussed our middle level education in any thorough way, though junior high school students are standing at the crossroads of their lives and suffer considerable stress.