Japanese Chinese textbooks & ethics textbooks.
I have to say that the butterfly effect is a thing that really exists in life.
When compiling the morality textbook for elementary school students, the Japanese publishing house "Hirobudo" should have completely imagined that the book would be repeatedly complained about by parents because of an inspirational short story in it, and the protagonist of this story is Ai Fukuhara, who is now on the cusp of the storm.
This ethics textbook is "Elementary School Students" for second-grade elementary school students, and has been adopted by more than 300 Japanese elementary schools since its release in 2020, and 170,000 books are scheduled to be delivered to elementary school students across Japan this year.
("Primary School Students' Morality" series of textbooks, source: Guangzhuotang official website)
The story in this book, "自分で きめた ことだから" (because it was his choice), tells the story of Ai Fukuhara's continuous efforts to practice table tennis and eventually win the silver medal at the Olympic Games.
According to the report of Female 7, the publisher originally compiled this story into the textbook because it felt that it was in line with the moral values of "hope, courage, and hard work", and now the protagonist is deeply involved in the scandal of unrequited and marriage change, so many parents are worried that primary school students will be affected after reading the book, so they have called the publishing house to ask for the deletion of stories related to Fukuhara Ai.
(Because I decided it myself" 书页, Source: Masatora Japan)
On March 19, GuangZhuotang responded in public opinion that the revision of the textbook must be approved by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, and the publishing house cannot unilaterally decide, so whether to delete the story in the end is still under internal discussion.
For this matter, most people's focus may be on whether Ai Fukuhara should be removed from the textbook, but this article still wants to "go off the beaten path" a little, let's put the debate aside for the time being, and from another perspective, let's take a look at what is in Japanese textbooks.
What textbooks are used in Japanese elementary and junior high schools?
In hirata's response, a name was mentioned, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, which is actually a government agency in Japan similar to China's Ministry of Education (but not completely equivalent), and all the teaching books in Japan's elementary, junior high, and high schools are led and reviewed by this agency.
The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology has made it clear that all schools such as elementary schools, secondary schools, higher schools (high schools), and special support schools (schools for children with disabilities) must use textbooks that have been approved by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, and that the compilation of a textbook is generally carried out in a four-year cycle.
In the first year, it is written and edited by major publishing houses, and in the second year, experts from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology hold a review meeting for review, and in the third year, the education committee, the principals of national and private schools will select the books used by the school from among the textbooks that have passed the examination, and distribute them to students every other year (the fourth year) and officially put them into use, so Japanese textbooks are generally updated every four years.
(The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology's Q&A on textbooks replied that textbooks are usually revised sharply every 4 years, and attached a textbook review and selection schedule for 2013-2022)
According to this process, the above-mentioned "Primary School Student Morality 2" will actually be used in April this year, and it is estimated that the publishing house is also very bald when it comes up with such a thing.
In Japan, there are more than a dozen publishing houses involved in the compilation of textbooks, in addition to the above-mentioned Guangshuotang, well-known wenxitang, educational publishing, Tokyo books, Mitsumura books, etc., many large publishing houses will write textbooks for all disciplines, so that when it comes to the stage of school selection, there will not be only a few books to choose from.
(Top: Chinese textbook of Tokyo Books, Middle: Chinese textbook of Mitsumura Books, Part 2: Chinese textbook of Education Publishing Co., Ltd.)
Although these textbooks are based on the general guidelines of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, different publishing houses will have different styles, so the content, typesetting, illustrations, etc. in the books have their own characteristics, as for which book students will use, it depends on the choice of the school.
Because there is no Chinese textbooks of publisher A are used in the selection of books, then other disciplines must use the rules of books of publisher A, so different schools can make very random combinations of textbooks for each subject.
Of course, there will be a difference in sales volume, some popular textbooks will have a relatively high market share, such as the market share of primary school Chinese textbook textbooks of Hikari Mura Books exceeds 50%, which can be called representative of japanese Chinese textbooks This set of books on the Internet is indeed the most widely disseminated, and the Japanese primary school Chinese textbooks that appear on many platforms in China are all in this set.
Chinese textbook that is used as a Japanese textbook
At present, the main courses of Japanese elementary schools are Chinese, arithmetic, English, morality, society, etc., of which Chinese textbooks also have a certain popularity and sales in China, some Japanese enthusiasts in the beginning of learning Japanese, think that the japanese primary schools use Chinese textbooks will be more in line with the logic of language learning than "New Standard Day", "Everyone's Japanese" and other Japanese books, so they buy these books as teaching materials.
Here we take the elementary school Chinese textbook of HikariMura Books as an example to show you some of the contents of the book.
In the Chinese textbooks of the lower grades, the written vocabulary appears in the form of pseudonyms, including the "Chinese" on the cover and the words "こくご".
There will be fifty notes in the book
Relatively simple poetry
Short conversations of everyday life
Perhaps it is precisely because there are more and more Chinese buying Japanese elementary school textbooks Chinese, and now there are books such as "Learning Japanese from Japanese Elementary and Secondary School Textbooks" in China.
Chinese textbooks in the upper grades of Japanese elementary schools began to have a large number of Kanji, involving essays, mythological stories, poems, and columns for learning Kanji.
(B station netizens Jiu I まさひ shared the primary school sixth grade Chinese textbook catalog, the same below )
(Spring Festival)
(Short article)
(Kanji square for learning Kanji vocabulary)
After entering high school, Japan's Chinese textbooks have also been further upgraded, and the compulsory textbooks have been subdivided into modern texts and classical texts, in addition to elective textbooks for classical literature and modern literature.
Up master "Baibai Kunibun" opened a set of Japanese high school Chinese textbook "Chinese Synthesis" in 19 years, and the kankan was published by Tokyo Books, and the official website of the publishing house is still published in this version.
From the table of contents, we can see that the textbooks of modern texts have four types of articles: caprice, novels, reviews, and poetry.
(Source: Tokyo Books official website)
Among them, there are many works by famous artists such as Ryunosuke Wasagawa, Haruki Murakami, and Osamu Dazai.
In the textbooks of the ancient texts, there are Japanese ancient texts and Chinese ancient texts (known as Chinese), and the ancient Japanese texts are mainly monogatari, japanese songs, diaries, and haiku poems, such as The Tale of Ise and Manyoji.
Ancient Chinese texts include Analects, Historical Records, Ancient Poems, Fables, etc., but they are all relatively simple texts and poems, such as Chunxiao, Guan Bao's Friendship, Learning Without Thinking, Sai Weng Lost Horse, etc., and the most difficult is probably to the extent of Chinese junior high school language.
(The content of the Tokyo book edition of "Chinese Synthesis Classics" shared by other netizens)
(Meiji Academy edition of "Chinese Synthesis Classics", ancient chinese and Chinese texts, source: Meiji Academy official website)
The difficulty of taking the Chinese text of the elective textbook has increased a lot, and there have been longer contents such as "Long Hate Song" and "Teacher's Table".
In addition, the appendices of high school Chinese textbooks of many publishing houses have a timeline of the history of the development of Japanese literature and the history of the development of Chinese literature.
(Chronology of the History of Modern Modern Literature, Japan)
(Chronology of Chinese Literary History)
From these, it can be seen that ancient Chinese literature still plays a pivotal role in the study of Chinese in Japan today.
It's not just moral textbooks
In 2015, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology published the criteria for the approval of ethics textbooks.
Although Japanese elementary and junior high schools have also set up ethics-related courses before this, morality is not treated as a subject, but is taught in the form of "moral time", one class hour per week, more like an extracurricular physical and mental health education.
The revised approval standards have more comprehensive requirements for moral education and moral textbooks, such as not mixing ideological accounts, emphasizing the avoidance of extreme views, ensuring impartiality, and synchronizing with children's physical and mental development, so that moral education truly becomes a discipline into children's curriculum.
After the release of the standard, 8 publishing houses started the preparation of ethics textbooks, and in 2018, all the secondary school ethics textbooks of these 8 publishing houses passed the review and were put into practical use in 2019.
A very important point in promoting the discipline of ethics is the serious problem of school bullying in Japan, so the textbooks of these 8 publishing houses all involve the theme of bullying and bullying.
(NHK News report, subtitles to the effect that all (ethics) textbooks from 8 publishing houses include descriptions of bullying themes)
(To a world without bullying, a deceptive content by The Dok-chu-chun (a world that is not bullied))
There are also discussions that extend from bullying: the situation when there is a conflict with a friend on SNS, and the SNS becoming a platform for violence.
(NHK News reports, subtitles to the effect: A conflict with a friend while exchanging arguments on mobile phone SNS)
Of course, there is certainly not only one topic of bullying in the moral textbook, in addition, there are many topics that have been continued from the previous moral time, such as the pursuit of truth, respect for life, patriotic education, social responsibility, and inheritance of traditional culture.
(Guangshodo edition of the "Private たちの道徳 Junior High School" catalog, this book is a transitional book for ethics classes when the ethics textbook is not officially released, Source: Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology official website)
It is worth mentioning that in addition to the above content that belongs to the traditional sense of morality, there are also 4 publishing houses of moral textbooks that introduce LGBT-related topics, such as gender cognitive disorders, hoping to enable children in the growth and adolescence to harvest popular science about LGBT from moral education and be able to correctly understand this group.
(The content of the morality textbook about gender cognitive disorders is "だから歌い続ける" (so keep singing))
It can be seen that Japanese moral textbooks are mainly based on moral education, but they are not limited to morality in the narrow sense, but they introduce different topics very well with the times to cultivate students' diverse moral views.
Similarities and differences between Japanese textbooks and Chinese textbooks
The national conditions and educational policies of China and Japan are not the same, so there will certainly be very big differences in textbooks, and one of the most intuitive differences is the design style.
Japanese textbooks have a large number of pictures with a very beautiful style, and these pictures not only have illustrations to prevent reading fatigue, but also many pictures that play a role in annotating and helping to understand.
(Annotated image from the Tokyo book Chinese Synthesis)
(Annotated figure in Hikarimura's book Chinese V)
At the same time, Japan has also taken advantage of manga by introducing various colors of manga into the textbook, and these manga have manga specially drawn for the textbook.
(A cartoon about bullying in an ethics textbook, screenshot from NHK News)
There are also well-known manga IPs
("Big Dipper God Fist", "Lion of March", "Strange Doctor Black Jack" in moral textbooks, source: People's Daily News)
Reading a textbook like a comic, it's still funny to think about.
Similarly, the textbooks of the two countries are very extensive in content, and the teaching materials will include multi-level, multi-faceted, and multi-national content, which is naturally most obvious in Chinese textbooks.
For example, Chinese language books have included works by Japanese writers such as Xing Xinyi's "Hello - Out" and Shiga Naoya's "QingbingWei and Hulu", while Japanese textbooks include Lu Xun's articles in the modern text section in addition to the ancient Chinese text mentioned above.
(The Tokyo book "Selected Modern Texts B" includes Lu Xun's "Mr. Fujiwara", Source: Tokyo Books official website)
(Teba netizen Meng Onion Zhiyin shared Lu Xun's "Hometown" in the Japanese junior high school Chinese textbook)
In the theme of the article, it is also family affection, fraternity, science fiction, art, etc. have appeared, which is very rich.
In addition to the content, there is actually one thing in common between the two countries regarding the textbook.
That is to say, textbooks are free in the compulsory education stage, in order to reduce the economic burden of students, which actually shows that China and Japan attach great importance to the popularization of national education.
Resources:
He Qi, Japanese Hikari Mura Book Edition Elementary School "Chinese" textbook research
White Mandarin, what!? Chinese Japanese high school students have to go to class? Unboxed Japanese high school Chinese textbooks
Global Network, Japan's Ministry of Culture, Sports, Science and Technology published the standards for the approval of ethics textbooks
Foreign elementary and junior high school education, Naraku, from "stressing morality" to "learning morality": a new progress in the reform of japanese elementary school ethics textbooks
Global Network, Japanese Ideological Character Teaching Materials introduces school bullying and LGBT community content
※ This content is the independent opinion of the author and does not represent the position of Nippon Pass. The pictures in this article are from the network.
- Ends -
《Harano Song》
Sun: Naoko Kudo
Selected as a Japanese junior high school Language Textbook* class
From the first grade onwards, the traditional passages in Japanese elementary school textbooks
Songs are reserved for the final of the All Japan Elementary School Singing Competition
In the 36 years since its release, it has been reprinted 103 times