Current reform of Japanese school curricula

Current reform of Japanese school curricula

A new subject called "comprehensive study" will be introduced in spring next year at elementary,junior high school in Japan.This course will emphasize students to get hands on their own experience by going beyond the borders of conventional subjects.The subject requires no text book and the content of the study is to be chosen freely at each school.I think conventional curricula in school should be reduced and time for comprehensive studies should be devoted into.Current school system in Japan is that children in same grade study same content.Under such uniform curricula,teachers can't freely select appropriate teaching method ,depending on how much children understand the content.Teachers have laid aside their students who don't understand enough as they do.Actually it is reported that 30% of elementary school children,50% of junior highschool students and 70% of high school students can't keep up with class room studies.Students who can't keep up with class room studies tend to lose their eagerness for studying and come to dislike studying and in some case finally come to refuse going to school.In order to improve this situation,we need to revise the education system to teach the students until all of them can understand perfectly trier curricula.And we should make a more flexible educational system in which students can independently select the content which they want to study.Then students will be able to consider which field they fit and enjoy their study.As our society underwent a great change,it has become more difficult to find out problems and solutions.Students don't fully understand the meaningfullness of studying.Education system depending mainly on study by rote has reached a limit.Through comprehensive studies,students can go beyond the borders of conventional subjects and learn first-hand knowledge based on studying positive actual experience.It is important to combine the conventional studies and the comprehensive studies ,instead of choosing only one between them.There are some opposing arguments against this idea.One of them is that once comprehensive study is introduced,time for conventional studies are reduce and contents which students have to learn are reduced ,in result scholastic ability of students will decline.But the percentage of students who go on to a high school is more than 90% at the present time in Japan.The lowest necessary knowledge or technical skill for students hasn't to be cramed into only in 9 years of compulsory education.And special classes for excellent students who can understand completely should be made so that they can study higher standard of content as they like.