2017年3月17日金曜日

教育動向:NEAが連邦最高裁判事に指名されたゴーサッチ氏に懸念表明



アメリカの教育動向(久原みな子)

米国最大の教師組合である全米教育組合(NEA)は、トランプ大統領が欠員の出ていた連邦最高裁判事に指名したニール・ゴーサッチ氏の上院司法委員会での指名承認公聴会を前に、もし彼が承認されれば障害を持つ生徒の権利とその教育が危機に陥ると結論づけたレポートを発表した。また、精神障害を持つ人々の権利の擁護と促進を目指しているバゼロン・センター(Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law)も、同様の趣旨のレポートを発表した。両レポートともに、これまでゴーサッチ氏が連邦第10巡回区控訴裁判所判事としてかかわってきた判決を詳細に分析し、彼がほとんどの判決で障害のある個人の教育法(The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)をはじめとする法律を障がいを持つ生徒にとって不利になる方向に解釈し、それらの法律によって守られるべき権利を逆に侵害してきたと主張している。

終身職である最高裁判事の現在の構成は、保守派とリベラル派が4人ずつとなっており、保守派の法律家として知られるゴーサッチが承認されれば、今後、様々な教育関係の裁判を含め保守派優勢の判決がなされていく可能性がある。なお、ゴーサッチ氏の指名承認公聴会は3月20日から始まる予定。      

       





 

2017年3月10日金曜日

EDU-JPN:Education of Immigrant Children in Japan

 Education in japan(Natalie Collor)

For economic and political reasons, immigration to Japan has seen increases in the last couple decades. The influx of non-Japanese residents has brought along many social issues that Japan is facing for the first time. For example, many immigrants have children with them when they arrive in Japan or birth children while living in Japan. How to integrate these children into Japanese schools has recently generated a lot of press.

After elementary school students enter the fourth grade, they lose the opportunity for Japanese language support provided by the school. This means that students, Japanese or foreign-born, unable to comprehend everyday Japanese will likely struggle to understand what they are being taught and progress at a slower rate. In an attempt to prevent students from falling behind, a special classroom focused on helping students specifically with their Japanese language skills was established at Abeno Junior High School near the tallest skyscraper in Japan, the Abeno Harukas Building in Osaka. This “Center School” is led by volunteers, and is for students in elementary and middle school. They visit the school twice a week for two-hour visits and are instructed one-by-one to ensure their weaknesses are being addressed. In theory, students attending this school can acquire basic Japanese in about a year. However, upon completion of one year of study at this school, some students in junior high school still cannot fully understand all the words used in their classes. Staff of the Center School wish there was more time for instruction to allow students to acclimate completely, since higher levels of education will only be more difficult.

The creation of this Center School led to additional Japanese language centers aimed to help high school students who are not native Japanese speakers. One example is “Saturday Class” created in 2003 by Yoshiko Tsubouchi, a Japanese teacher at Abeno Junior High School, as a way to support children with experience living outside of Japan. Although Tsubouchi was originally a junior high school art teacher, she became a Japanese language teacher in the 1980s after seeing the distress a student from Brazil encounter when he entered her home room class. Watching him struggle inspired her to open a classroom that catered to foreign students’ every need. Tsubouchi, upon receiving permission from the school principal, started holding classes for students on Saturdays. Every Saturday, students from first to twelfth grade with roots places like China, the Philippines, and Thailand gathered at the school to study one-on-one with volunteer teachers. Eventually, word of Saturday classes spread, and in 2005, the volunteer staff began to include preparation for entrance exams in their support for these students.


Several former students attribute their ability to attend and graduate high school and get into college to the center school. Although many of the students were unable to initiate conversation in Japanese on their own or make a single friend when they first moved to Japan and started public schools, the staff at this language school was able to make all the difference. Ms. Tsubouchi believes that whether a student attends high school determines the rest of his or her life, and that passing the high school entrance exam changes students’ lives completely. In total, of the 150 students that had hopes of attending high school, every one of them was able to pass the entrance exam.

The Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare announced that as of October 2015, there were over 91,000 foreign workers in Japan, and it is predicted that children of foreign workers in Japan will continue to increase. According to MEXT records in 2014, nearly half of the nation’s cities, towns, and villages said they have at least one student with foreign citizenship needing special instruction. That totals to 37,095 students, and the study reported that 20% of them were receiving no special instruction at all. In some cases, schools are not given ample time to find ways to assist students with little Japanese language skills. In Iizuka City in Fukuoka, for example, the principal of Chikuho Elementary school was told days before the start of a new term that two students unable to speak Japanese would be attending the school. The school did not have room in its budget to adequately assist these students in their transition. The school and Chikuho Board of Education even requested special assistance from the Fukuoka Prefectural Board of Education, but no help was sent. This elementary school was forced to solve the problem within the school and with the current staff members.

Children of foreign workers are not the only ones for which special Japanese language instruction is necessary. There are even Japanese children with Japanese names and citizenship that need special instruction in Japanese. Example cases include biracial children using a language other than Japanese at home or Japanese-born children returning from living abroad because their Japanese parents were sent to another country for work.


Only time will tell how Japan and MEXT will handle social changes that greatly affect education in Japan. With the rise of many volunteer-run Japanese language classrooms, however, there is hope for uprooted children to attain an education in a language other than their mother tongue.

2017年2月26日日曜日

教育動向:デヴォス氏が教育長官に就任、その他新閣僚の教育政策への影響は?

アメリカの教育動向(久原みな子)

27日、ベッツィ・デヴォス氏が上院議会での承認投票により正式に教育長官に就任した。上院での投票では、議会の過半数である52議席を占める共和党員のうち2名が承認否認を表明したため、デヴォス承認に反対していた民主党員48名および独立派2名と同数となり、ペンス副大統領が決定票を投じての承認となった。

一方、その他の閣僚および重要な政府ポストも新メンバーが確定した。公共ラジオ局NPRは、デヴォス長官以外に教育に影響を与えるであろうトランプ新政権の顔ぶれを紹介している。例えば、司法長官に就任したジェフ・セッションズは、過去にKKKを支持する発言などをしていたことから承認投票前に与野党が激しく対立。就任後もトランプの移民政策を称賛したり、オバマ政権時に発令されたトランスジェンダーの生徒を保護するための政策を覆そうとする動きが見られる。また公民権団体は、歴史的に教育機関における公民権問題を監督してきた教育省内の公民権局が、セッション司法長官のもとで縮小化されるか、司法省に吸収されるのではないかという懸念を表明している。

また、トランプ大統領が選挙活動中に、移民政策の一環として留学生や研究者に発行されるJ-1ビザなどの発給停止に言及したため、国務省が管轄してきたフルブライト奨学金やそのほかの国際文化交流、学術研究交流への影響が懸念されている。国務長官に就任したレックス・ティラソンは、前職の石油会社エクソンモービルCEO時代には、科学技術教育の重要性を主張し、エクソンモービル財団を通して海外の学校やNGOを支援する活動をしていたが、移民政策の動向とともに今後の展開が注目される。





2017年1月28日土曜日

教育動向:デヴォス教育長官候補の公聴会開催、承認投票は延期

久原みな子(アメリカの教育動向)

トランプ大統領の就任式に先立ち、17日、新政権下の閣僚人事指名承認手続きの一環として、ベッツィー・デヴォス教育長官候補の公聴会が上院医療教育労働年金委員会(Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and. Pensions/HELP Committee)で3時間以上にわたり開かれた。この公聴会で、デヴォス氏は、連邦政府の教育における役割を縮小し、自由市場と学校選択、州、学区、親に権限を与えることによって学校教育を改善できるという考えを明らかにした。共和党議員が支持のコメントを述べる一方で、民主党議員たちからは具体的な政策に関する厳しい質問が続いた。例えば、生徒の学力は、それがどのくらい伸びたかで測られるべきか(growth)、それともある基準に到達したという習熟度(proficiency)で測られるべきかという議論における彼女の立場や、特別支援の必要な生徒の教育に関する連邦教育法(The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act)について聞かれた際には返答に窮するなど、精細を欠く場面もあった。

公聴会に続き、先週行われるはずであったデヴォス氏のHELP委員会での承認投票は、1月31日に延期されることになった。デヴォス氏が、多大な資産を持ち、チャーター・スクールなど学校選択制を推進する財団の理事などを数多く務めていたため、公職者に適用される倫理規定である資産公開や利益相反回避に関する連邦倫理局の審査に時間がかかったためである。民主党議員は、倫理局の審査が完了した後、承認投票までの間に再度公聴会を開くことを要求していたが却下された。上院での承認投票では過半数の賛成(定員100のうち51)があれば候補者が承認されるため、今回のデヴォス氏の承認は、共和党議員全て(52議席)の賛成が得られれば確定と考えられる。


EDU-JPN: Moral Education and the Difficulties of Assessing Students

Education in Japan (Natalie Collar)

In elementary and junior high schools throughout Japan, children are given a special lesson in morals once a week. This subject, called dōtoku in Japanese, has great merit in teaching students to think about how individual actions affect others. The goal of this subject is to develop students’ abilities to see the world in a holistic way, where they recognize differences in values and points of view.

Although moral education is not yet an official subject within the curriculum and students do not receive an official grade for their participation, it will become a graded subject beginning in the 2018 school year. In preparation for this curriculum change, MEXT recently held its second forum in Tokyo to discuss the evaluation of this subject. Roughly 300 instructors and administrators participating in the meeting to speak of their experiences in evaluating students and make suggestions for official grading standards. There was also a panel discussion among three specialists who attended this meeting. They exchanged opinions about how a curriculum ought to be established.

fruit shop MIYAKE

Currently, most teachers face difficulty in uniformly evaluating their students, because moral education is a qualitative class, opposed to most other subjects, which are quantitative in nature. From the experienced teacher’s perspective, there are many legitimate concerns. Some instructors have noticed that if their feedback is too general, students don’t experience personal growth. Other teachers question how important the issue of empathy is in evaluating students, are they trying to see the value of others’ opinions? Another worry teachers have is whether students who are quietly pondering ideas expressed in class may receive a lower grade if the evaluation guidelines are made to reflect those of quantitative subjects. Suggestions of written activities were made in order to give these students a chance to express their ideas and provide content for evaluation. 

Although teachers and school administrators all over Japan are taking great steps toward establishing acceptable evaluative guidelines, this is an ongoing, important task that will likely take more time. However, because of the information-filled society of today, there seems to be some doubt concerning the teachers’ abilities to effectively teach the content and assess students appropriately.