preface
Things outside school are even more important than things inside school, and the famous British comparative educationalist Sadler's views profoundly show that education is deeply influenced by society, economy and culture.
If we want to find the root cause of the generation, development and change of educational contradictions, we must return to the social environment in which education is located and to the various relationships within school education.
Changes in Japan's social economy after World War II
After the war, the whole of Japan went into disorder, and the inherent values of the Japanese collapsed with the occupation of the Americans. The clash between American democratic culture and Japan's traditional authoritarian culture has left the Japanese at a loss, new values have not been established, old values have been denied, and people who have always followed the rules have lost their way.
In this way, the postwar Japanese suddenly liberated themselves from the shackles of traditional values, had a very limited understanding of individualistic values, and made the improvement of living standards their goal. However, when a society completely excludes other values and lacks the restraint of other forces, it cannot suppress the expansion of desire, and people fall deeper and deeper in a disorderly world.
It is conceivable that post-war Japan was devastated, and food shortage became the primary problem facing all parts of the country. Due to wartime bombing, Tokyo may have been worse off than elsewhere.
In the chaos of the black market around the station, hungry and bereaved teenagers became homeless children in the underground passages of the station. Malnutrition was a true portrayal of people's physical condition at that time, and even became a "buzzword". Among street people and those who eat out, there are frequent incidents of death due to malnutrition.
"Tokyo High School" (the predecessor of the Faculty of Liberal Arts of Tokyo University) German professor Eishiro Gumi lived only on rationing, and nothing else went into his stomach, and died of malnutrition. In this case, there were also Japanese people who showed so-called integrity, and in 1947, Judge Yoshitada Yamaguchi of the Tokyo District Court chose to die for refusing to eat black market rice, which caused a sensation in society.
1. The difficult life of the student
In Tokyo, there are many students whose lives are also very miserable. Students who come to Tokyo from all over the world without a home have difficulty maintaining their studies because of problems such as housing, food, transportation, and even school supplies.
The attendance rate of students can reach 60% in good times and only 20% in bad times, and most of the students who miss classes are students from local backgrounds. Some students sell their labor for accommodation, and the cost of living ranges from 150 yen to 500 yen.
Young people who are eating a lot can only eat two meals during the day, because they do not have enough food for about a week a month, so they have to return to the countryside. In 1946, a survey of the food situation of children at the Honmura National School in Azabu Ward, Tokyo, found that 572 people attended that day, and 15 missed school because they did not eat.
There were 23 people who had rice for three meals a day, 70 people with two meals, and 190 people with one meal. More than half of the 289 people used substitute food for all three meals.
In such a living environment, childhood crime became an urban disease in Japan's postwar period. Food rationing is difficult to become a breeding ground for juvenile deteriorating. By 1947, from food hardship crimes to housing hardship crimes, many teenagers moved out of their homes because of the unpleasant life with their parents, and many sex crimes caused by mixed living began to occur.
In response to this new phenomenon, groups related to judicial protection have called for the establishment of "juvenile streets" to provide them with recreational facilities. In 1953, the National Institute of Education of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, and Culture conducted a survey of 3,000 junior high school students in seven prefectures, including Kanto and Yamanashi, in order to understand the impact of the chaotic social situation after the war on the lives and minds of junior high school students.
In the problems of food, clothing, and housing, nearly half of the families cannot guarantee the supply of staple food, and can barely have neat clothes, school supplies, extra meals, toys, etc.
18% have difficulty dressing, 11% do not have enough to eat, 46% have no snacks, 42% have no place to study at home, 45% lack school supplies, 76% lack toys, and 1.3% of the above seven requirements cannot be met. Under such poor living conditions, many people think that taking money from home to buy food is the first step in bad life.
2. Changes in living habits
Japan is a country that dares to learn from foreign countries. With the improvement of economic conditions and the influence of the United States, on the surface, Japanese customs and habits are changing faster than anything else.
The cutting method of national uniforms and military uniforms has been changed, the labor pants worn by rural women have also been transformed into fashionable women's pants, and American styles are displayed in shops, so many goods have given the impression that people who have just returned to Japan are walking on foreign streets. Although feudal ideology still plays an important role, this situation also seems to symbolize the quiet changes taking place in Japanese society.
Affected by this, health and happiness have become the credo of students' lives. They want to live with integrity, have correct and strong beliefs, do meaningful work, help others, do as good as possible, be respected, and study advanced knowledge.
The main troubles of students are lack of professionalism, lack of self-confidence, weak will, inability to do what they want to do well, and lack of confidant friends. Under the new education system, high school students have also eliminated some vulgar habits in their lives, such as the "main gate doctrine" that they must enter through the main gate at all times, and their hair and clothing have become freer.
Without the "iron fist sanctions" and messy dormitories, the dormitories became clean, but you could still see students dressed in shabby clothes due to financial difficulties. The cheers at high school baseball games are gone, and the students seem to be becoming cultured and gentlemanly.
Adolescent subcultural development
1. The subculture created by the development of magazines and comics
In 1946, businessmen eager to make money were already unscrupulous, they saw the scarcity of the cultural market and the unlimited business opportunities in people's needs, and sensational magazines printed on crude fairy paper were gradually born. Because magazines dealing with sexual aspects are readily available, they have a negative impact on teenagers.
In 1952, the National Police Agency's Junior Division conducted a survey of 586 students (260 girls) reading sex magazines at 12 high schools in Tokyo, and the results showed that most high school students read pornographic magazines behind their parents' backs, borrowing 48.6% from friends, 41.2% from their families, and 12.8% from themselves.
Some people use the danger of inferior shochu to describe the impact of inferior magazines: it doesn't matter if you drink one in two, it is dangerous to drink more than three in two.
Such magazines continued to appear, "Freedom", "Red and Black" was launched in 1946, "Hunt", "Queen", "Smile", "New Freedom" was launched in 1947, "Bar", "Lady", "Heart", "Female Leopard", "Romance", "Pink". "The City That Never Sleeps" was first published in 1948, and "The Couple", "Jeep", and "Joker" were first published in 1949.
There are also many magazines that have sprung up like mushrooms after rain, and although they are often banned, they are generally ignored. Fancy cover, yellow, obscene, absurd content is very demagogic. Inferior magazines, along with jeeps, prostitutes, the black market, inferior shochu, became symbols of this chaotic period.
2. The subculture of the era of film and television popularization
Following the popularity of radio, NHK began broadcasting on February 1, 1953 and Nippon TV NTV on August 28, 1953. Japan has entered the "era of street television".
Around August 1953, a television receiver provided by the Asahi Building was installed on the square in front of Tokyo Station, where people gathered to watch live broadcasts of high school baseball and live broadcasts of professional baseball night games. There are also piles of people watching TV in front of the electronics store. Since then, it has moved from the "neighbor TV era" to the "living room TV era" where every home has a TV.
The impact of television on juvenile bad behavior has been debated, but according to the Japan Television Investigation and Planning Department, the number of crimes broadcast in a week in all programs except reportage programs included 27 homicides (including descriptions of corpses), 75 killings, 4 robbers, and 3 abductions, for a total of 109.
In addition, knives, pistols, etc. appeared a total of 83 times. 65% of all ages in the country can watch television. How do these mass media affect juveniles with bad behavior? The National Police Agency conducted a survey of 1,831 random persons (250 women) from 120 police stations nationwide.
11.7% fell because of the influence of the media, of which 30.4% were influenced by television, 21.9% by magazines and 21.1% by film.
In terms of the way of influence, 27.1% is a means of imitating bad behavior, 16.4% is because of excitement after watching TV or magazines and committing bad behavior, 48.6% believes that it is indirect impact, of which sexual crimes are the most, accounting for 40.3%, followed by robbery, coercion, brutality and injury; The greatest impact is on 15-year-olds.
On the other hand, the Japanese film industry ushered in a great boom after the war, but some films had a different impact. In 1953, "Youth Sex Code" starring newcomer Fumiko Wakao caused a great sensation by promoting "a must-see for female students".
Various companies have produced "Continuing the Youth Sex Code", "Continuing the Youth Sex Code", and also produced "Girl's Examination Room", "Pure-blood Revolution", "Adolescence", "Continuing Adolescence" and so on. This led to protests by women's groups against the studio, which showed thank-you letters from high school students arguing that they were sex education films.
There are problems with the Japanese school education system
On April 1, 1947, Japan implemented the Basic Law on Education and the School Education Law, implementing the 633 school system and institutionalizing compulsory education. National schools became elementary schools, and teachers changed from "instruction" to "teaching".
From 1950 to 1951 after the outbreak of the Korean War, Japanese Minister of Literature Amano Sada, in order to revive moral education and patriotic education, took the "National Practice Essentials" of substance as the revival theory of self-cultivation as the starting point. This is also known as the substantive resurrection of the educational system.
In other words, Japan's conservative government, convinced that the basis of its existence is the political structure that allows the existence of the emperor system, and even the national spirit that supports the emperor system, first advocates patriotic education centered on the emperor and moral education as a means of implementation, and promotes future education policies based on this.
As the report of the Second Education Mission put it, "One of the greatest weapons against communism in the Far East is the inspired Japanese electorate."
In 1951, by directive of Commander Eisenhower, the government decreed that the Advisory Committee on Revision published the "Report on the Education System." Accordingly, the direction of national control marked by the designation of textbooks by the state, the systematization of the educational curriculum, the appointment of the Board of Education, and the strengthening of the powers of the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, and Culture has been clarified. It is valued for its specific direction for Japan's education policy and administration.
In 1952, the financial circles led by Nikkei Union made a statement on education, which attracted widespread attention in society. On October 16, Nikkei submitted a "request for rethinking the new education system" to the government.
Since then, the requirements of the financial and economic circles for education have gradually been directly reflected in the government's education policy and administration. In the same year, Japan enacted the Industrial Education Promotion Act, and then the Sabotage Prevention Act, and began conducting ideological surveys of university teachers and students.
With the help of the U.S. occupation forces, Japan's school education system has been gradually improved on the basis of education-related laws, article 26 of the Constitution stipulates the right to education, the Basic Law of Education clearly stipulates that the purpose of education is to cultivate a sound personality, and education must guarantee to the greatest extent possible the physical and mental development of all educated persons without discrimination.
However, the reality of Japanese schooling is far from the purpose of ensuring the comprehensive development of the personality, and education is still placed in the position of efficiently selecting outstanding human resources who can lead economic development and cultivating tame workers who can support economic development, and has become a means of inculcating a nationalist way of thinking.
Compulsory competition for all children in order to select top students. Daily schooling is implemented to teach children to obey society and join the "good child competition" for this purpose.
The rigidity of the education system and the prevalence of managementism have led to the deterioration of teacher-student relations. Some schools enforce Christian-style early prayers, semi-compulsory purchase of higher-than-market notebooks, no white shirts, and no long hair. The school did not pay attention to the students' grievances, which led to student strikes. Still, in 1952 only 10.6 percent of students hated school. The main reasons for prolonged absence are family poverty and complaints that families do not understand themselves.