Contents
- 1 Education of foreign students going to an elementary school or a junior high school is not compulsory education
- 2 There are a lot of problems happening in school caused by the fact that non-Japanese children are not forced to receive Japanese compulsory education in Japan
- 3 The government basically leaves these problems to municipalities
- 4 The Japanese government needs to have a recognition that Japan will gradually turn to be an immigrant nation in the future
Education of foreign students going to an elementary school or a junior high school is not compulsory education
Someone may know this fact for the first time. The constitution of Japan guarantees children the right to receive compulsory education on Clause first, Article 26th and it also regulates the duty for parents to let children receive education on Clause 2nd.
However, children who are subject to receiving Japanese education as compulsory education is only limited to those who have Japanese nationality. In short, non-Japanese children with no Japanese nationality are not forced to attend compulsory school in Japan.
Non Japanese children, who were even born and raised up in Japan or even came to Japan when being as old as compulsory education age, are treated like they are given a chance to receive just potential educational benefit that non-Japanese children can go to Japanese school where other Japanese students learn, and can receive Japanese education as well but are not forced to go to school.
There are a lot of problems happening in school caused by the fact that non-Japanese children are not forced to receive Japanese compulsory education in Japan
There are quite a lot of problems happening in school in Japan due to the fact that non-Japanese children are not subject to receiving Japanese compulsory education in Japan.
Especially, learning something in Japanese in school has a lot of difficulties for non-Japanese children to overcome. Depending on the municipality, it reveal its real intention that it really wants children to come to school after they can understand Japanese perfectly. Actually, one-sided admission refusal has occurred in some municipalities so far.
And also, the problem of non-Japanese students’ extreme minority in a class room is really serious. Not only non-Japanese students can be isolated socially but also class progression speed is really influenced by the Japanese understanding level because Japanese schools, which lean totalitarianism, always need to slow down class progression speed to keep in line with the student with the lowest understanding level to some extent.
Under the circumstance that each municipal administration can’t make full preparation to receive non-Japanese children for public school education, it faces the difficulties of how to educate non-Japanese children in public school.
The government basically leaves these problems to municipalities
The government continues to take the stance that each municipality leads to solving these problems initiatively by figuring out what actually non-Japanese parents require to the municipal administration for their children’s education.
There are not few opinions that the government is not really serious about tackling the problem of non-Japanese children’s education as the reason that municipalities can’t overcome facing difficulties against how to let non-Japanese children fairly educate properly . If the government wants to extend acceptance of the number of foreign labors with the background of shortage of manpower, it needs to guarantee children’s education responsibly. This point of view is right argument for municipalities that receive children to let them educate in Japanese public school.
The Japanese government needs to have a recognition that Japan will gradually turn to be an immigrant nation in the future
The situation that non-Japanese residents increase in the future is unlikely to change significantly. So, the number of non-Japanese children born and raised in Japan is also quite unlikely to reduce. Moreover, children, born between Japanese and non-Japanese, also increase. In some cases, non-Japanese single parent raise up a child after divorce. In contrast, there is a case that Japanese single parent takes care of non-Japanese child.
In this way, there are a lot of cases that don’t apply to the framework of “guaranty of the right to receive Japanese education” and “the duty that nations let children educate, whom they take care of”.
If non-Japanese children became grow-ups and ended up making a living independently in a Japanese society without being guaranteed the opportunities to receive appropriate education, they would have to bear hardship to survive in Japan from day to day and this harmful influence will spread around a Japanese society.
The government needs to accept the reality that non-Japanese labors working in Japan takes charge of raising up the next generation that contributes to a Japanese society with Japanese spirit. Japan will turn slowly to be an immigrant nation in the future. In anticipation of that, the government need to propose a policy to close educational inequality between Japanese children and non-Japanese children.