How the japanese learn to work 2nd edition - part 1

Chia sẻ: Thái Duy Ái Ngọc | Ngày: | Loại File: PDF | Số trang:21

Thêm vào BST

Báo xấu

88
lượt xem 7
download

Download Vui lòng tải xuống để xem tài liệu đầy đủ

Nếu số lượng là quan trọng thì nó có thể được chỉ rõ bằng cách thêm số lượng (thường bằng một từ đếm) hoặc (hiếm khi) bằng cách bổ sung một hậu tố. Những từ dùng cho người thường được hiểu là số ít. Do đó Tanaka-san thường có nghĩa Ông/Bà/Cô Tanaka.

Chủ đề:

Bình luận(0) Đăng nhập để gửi bình luận!

Lưu

Nội dung Text: How the japanese learn to work 2nd edition - part 1

How the Japanese Learn to Work Education and training has long been cited as a key component of Japanese industrial and commercial success. A recognition of the importance of vocational training, the high standards expected in school and college and the respect for education in Japanese society has produced an extremely able and well-qualified work-force. In this new and extensively revised edition Ronald Dore and Mari Sako provide a comprehensive overview of the Japanese system of education and training. There are chapters on the general education system for children, the types of institutional vocational training and the importance of laying the groundwork for further training. The section on training in the workplace is of particular importance in understanding Japanese success. Also included are chapters on the qualification and vocational skill testing systems and the policy superstructure—the role of the individual, firms and the state. How the Japanese Learn to Work is a valuable contribution to our understanding of why one of the world’s most motivated work-forces has been able to achieve so much. There are valuable insights for both policy makers and businesses, not least of which is the Japanese desire to keep on learning right through their working lives. Ronald Dore is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Performance, London School of Economics and Political Science. Mari Sako is Professor of International Business at Said Business School, University of Oxford.
The Nissan Institute/Routledge Japanese Studies Series Editorial Board J.A.A.Stockwin, Nissan Professor of Modern Japanese Studies, University of Oxford and Director, Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies Teigo Yoshida, formerly Professor of the University of Tokyo, and now Professor, Obirin University, Tokyo Frank Langdon, Professor, Institute of International Relations, University of British Columbia, Canada Alan Rix, Professor of Japanese, The University of Queensland Junji Banno, Institute of Social Science, University of Tokyo Leonard Schoppa, University of Virginia Titles in the series: The Myth of Japanese Uniqueness, Peter Dale The Emperor’s Adviser: Saionji Kinmochi and Pre-war Japanese Politics, Lesley Connors A History of Japanese Economic Thought, Tessa Morris-Suzuki The Establishment of the Japanese Constitutional System, Junji Banno, translated by J.A.A.Stockwin Industrial Relations in Japan: the Peripheral Workforce, Norma Chalmers Banking Policy in Japan: American Efforts at Reform During the Occupation, William M.Tsutsui Educational Reform in Japan, Leonard Schoppa How the Japanese Learn to Work, Ronald Dore and Mari Sako Japanese Economic Development: Theory and Practice, Penelope Francks Japan and Protection: The Growth of Protectionist Sentiment and the Japanese Response, Syed Javed Marwood The Soil, by Nagastsuka Takashi: a Portrait of Rural Life in Meiji Japan, translated and with an introduction by Ann Waswo Biotechnology in Japan, Malcolm Brock Britain’s Educational Reform: a Comparison with Japan, Michael Howarth Language and the Modern State: the Reform of Written Japanese, Nanette Twine Industrial Harmony in Modern Japan: the Invention of a Tradition, W.Dean Kinzley Japanese Science Fiction: a View of a Changing Society, Robert Matthew The Japanese Numbers Game: the Use and Understanding of Numbers in Modern Japan, Thomas Crump Ideology and Practice in Modern Japan, Roger Goodman and Kirsten Refsing Technology and Industrial Development in pre-War Japan, Yukiko Fukasaku Japan’s Early Parliaments 1890–1905, Andrew Fraser, R.H.P.Mason and Philip Mitchell Japan’s Foreign Aid Challenge, Alan Rix Emperor Hirohito and Showa Japan, Stephen S.Large Japan: Beyond the End of History, David Williams Ceremony and Ritual in Japan: Religious Practices in an Industrialized Society, Jan van Bremen and D.P.Martinez Understanding Japanese Society: Second Edition, Joy Hendry The Fantastic in Modern Japanese Literature: The Subversion of Modernity, Susan J.Napier Militarization and Demilitarization in Contemporary Japan, Glenn D.Hook Growing a Japanese Science City: Communication in Scientific Research, James W.Dearing Architecture and Authority in Japan, William H.Coaldrake Women’s Gidayu and the Japanese Theatre Tradition, A.Kimi Coaldrake Democracy in Post-war Japan, Rikki Kersten Treacherous Women of Imperial Japan, Hélène Bowen Raddeker Japan, Race and Equality, Naoko Shimazu Japan, Internationalism and the UN, Ronald Dore Japanese-German Business Relations, Akira Kudo
How the Japanese Learn to Work Second edition Ronald Dore and Mari Sako London and New York
First published 1989 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002. Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Second edition 1998 First edition © Crown copyright 1989. Published by Routledge by permission of the Controller of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. Revised edition © Crown copyright 1998. Revised by permission of the Controller of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or policy of the Department for Education & Employment or any other government department. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book has been requested ISBN 0-415-14881-2 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-15345-X (pbk) ISBN 0-203-01575-4 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-21022-0 (Glassbook Format)
Contents List of figures and tables vi General editor’s preface viii Preface x Acknowledgements xx 1 The general school system 1 2 Who goes where? 15 3 Vocational streams in the mainline formal education system 42 4 Post-secondary, non-university vocational education and training (VET) 67 5 Training in the enterprise 93 6 Standards and qualifications 134 7 Public expenditure on VET 161 8 Policies and prospects 167 Appendix: Ministry of Education budget for vocational education, 1994 176 Bibliography 178 Index 184
List of figures and tables FIGURES 2.1 Progression routes in the Japanese Educational System, 1994 28 3.1 Sample curricula of university engineering faculties, 1986 61 4.1 Distribution of senmon-gakko students by subject category 83 TABLES 1.1 Educational composition of intake of new graduates in selected industries, 1955–94 2 1.2 Primary school timetable 5 1.3 Junior secondary school timetable 5 1.4 Senior high school course timetables 10–11 2.1 Employers’ attitudes to graduates of high schools: technical, commercial, ordinary 22–3 2.2 Destinations of upper secondary school graduates, 1994 24 2.3 Hensachi distribution of public senior high schools in Iwaki City, 1986 27 2.4 Hensachi distribution of public senior high schools in Tokyo Prefecture, 1983 31 2.5 University places available by subject and rating of university, 1986 34–5 2.6 Sectoral distribution of graduate recruits and ‘quality’ of intake, 1975 and 1990 37
List of figures and tables vii 2.7 University graduate and high school graduate earnings compared (bonuses included): by age group, all manufacturing firms with more than ten workers 38 2.8 Wage differentials by size of establishment 39 3.1 Distribution of vocational courses and pupils (per cent) 42 3.1(a) Curriculum at a technical high school, 1996 48–9 3.1(b) Curriculum at a commercial high school 50–1 3.2 Distribution of university students by course 59 4.1 Post-secondary, non-university vocational schools and colleges: types, schools and pupils 68 4.2 Ministry of Labour training budget, 1996 70–1 4.3 Curriculum of nurse training course 78 5.1 Expenditure on education and training by size of firm (manufacturing only) 98 5.2 Curriculum of the NEC two-year training school for multi-skill technicians 103–5 5.3 Dengyosha Pump Company: proposals for interdepartmental mutual teaching programme 112–13 5.4 Provenance of correspondence courses recognized as eligible for Ministry of Labour support grants 117 5.5 Work-related study programmes: a questionnaire survey 127 5.6 The emphases of training programmes: differences by size of firm 131 6.1 Qualifications controlled by the central government 141 6.2 Skills tested by the Ministry of Labour skill testing system (133 skills) 148 7.1 Distribution of expenditures on education under jurisdiction of the Ministry of Education, 1993 162 A.1 Ministry of Education budget for vocational education, 1994 176
General editor’s preface Japan as the new century approaches is going through a turbulent period, in which some of her most entrenched political and economic institutions and practices are being increasingly questioned. The financial crisis which occurred in the latter half of 1997 affected most of the so-called ‘tiger economies’ of East and South-East Asia, and did not spare Japan. The collapse of several important Japanese financial institutions signalled both that the system was in crisis but also that the government was no longer willing, or able, to rescue ailing institutions. The sense of crisis quickly dulled the lustre of the ‘Asian model’ in the eyes of the world’s media, but also concentrated minds within Japan on the task of reforming the system. The extent to which the system needed reforming remained a matter of sharp dispute, but a consensus was emerging that many entrenched practices which derived from the immediate post-war period of the ‘economic miracle’ needed to be radically rethought. At the end of March 1998, the extent and timescale of the desired revolution remained in doubt. Elements of the old regime seemed to be falling apart, but the shape of the new was still but dimly discernible. Reading the world’s press in the aftermath of the financial crisis one could well derive the impression that East Asia (including Japan) was heading for collapse and that the world could safely direct its attention elsewhere, notably to the dynamic and successful market economies of North America and Europe. Such an impression, however, was greatly exaggerated. Japan and its surrounding region remained a zone of intense economic production and interaction, resourceful and dynamic. Though there was a financial crisis, the economy remained massive in size and diversity, retaining great economic power both regionally and globally. Radical reform was needed, but historical experience suggested that the capacity of Japan to reform itself—even though it might take some while—ought not to be underestimated. If the world thought that the East Asian region could safely be ignored, it was likely to be in for a rude shock in a short span of years.
General editor’s Preface ix The Nissan Institute/Routledge Japanese Studies Series seeks to foster an informed and balanced, but not uncritical, understanding of Japan. One aim of the series is to show the depth and variety of Japanese institutions, practices and ideas. Another is, by using comparisons, to see what lessons, positive or negative, can be drawn for other countries. The tendency in commentary on Japan to resort to outdated, ill-informed or sensational stereotypes still remains, and needs to be combated. Education is a field where the Japanese experience has attracted much interest since the 1980s, with several Western countries looking to Japan for models at the same time as pressure for reform has been growing within the Japanese education system itself. In this revised edition of their book first published in 1989, Professors Dore and Sako investigate vocational training and its place in Japanese education and industry. Perhaps the most important lesson they draw is that in Japan vocational training is taken extremely seriously and that enormous efforts are made to ensure that even those at the lower levels of the ability range are educated and trained to the highest practicable level, so that the emergence of a semi-literate, semi-numerate, barely employable underclass is effectively prevented. The sheer richness of the vocational training environment, both in a wide range of educational establishments and in the workplace, is ably demonstrated in this book, as is the culture of education and employment which underpins the vocational training exercise as a whole. J.A.A.Stockwin Director Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies University of Oxford
Preface By the mid–1990s the conviction that the improvement of vocational education and training was a prerequisite for improved national ‘competitiveness’, had taken deep root in the politics of Britain and, to a slightly lesser extent, the United States. In the search for foreign models, Germany and its apprenticeship system held pride of place. Businessmen’s study tours of Japan tended to concentrate on management systems and shop- floor organization—just-in-time delivery, continuous improvement, quality circles. But there was also a growing realization that the in-house training systems which supported these techniques of management were as important as the techniques themselves, and that the whole Japanese system of vocational education and training was worthy of careful examination. A century ago, the study tours went in the other direction. In the early 1870s a delegation of senior Japanese statesmen spent nearly a year touring, and studying, the United States and Britain. They visited centres of government, of commerce and, in Britain especially, of industry. The recently republished record of that visit (Kume 1978) with its detailed sketches and descriptions of industrial processes, contained numerous reflections on what it was that made Britain and America so prosperous while Japan remained so poor. It was not so much, the delegation concluded, in industriousness that the difference lay, nor in natural resources. It lay rather in the application of science to production, in planning, organization and disciplined skill. The delegation’s return confirmed the conviction of Japan’s leaders that the road to a secure and respected place in the international system lay in a national endeavour to ‘catch up’ in the accumulation of industrial skills as much as in the accumulation of industrial capital, that Japan was at the beginning of a long apprenticeship. One of the first tasks of their ambassador
P reface xi in London was to recruit a group of young Scotsmen to found the first Tokyo college of engineering. And cultural lags are such that only in recent years have these perceptions begun to change. The manifest reversal in their rankings in industrial power began only in the 1980s to make the Japanese more, as it made the British less, complacent. The prolonged recession of the 1990s did a lot to erode that new-found self-confidence, although these swings of mood had more effect on what the management journals said should be done than on what people actually did. Still, as Chapter 5 suggests in some detail, a Japanese factory is more likely than a British factory to be a learning organization. The ruling assumption is more likely to be: ‘We’ve still got a long way to go to reach satisfactory levels’ rather than ‘We’re doing pretty well’. A recurring need for special training programmes is taken for granted. They do not have to be justified on the grounds that ‘these boffins keep coming up with something new and we jolly well need to keep up’, but are perfectly acceptable even when they are presented as getting people up to long-established levels of satisfactory competence. And what has certainly not changed is the assumption, which grew quite naturally out of that century-long preoccupation with Japan’s backwardness, that the state has a vital role to play in raising the nation’s standards of vocational competence. In the standard theory of liberal democracy, the state’s involvement in vocational training is justified only on the grounds of market failure. Training has a lot of external economies which you cannot, except through taxation and collective public action, get the beneficiaries to pay for—the benefits nurses get from having doctors to work with, the benefits employers get from having sick employees cured, the benefits we all get from having competent soldiers to defend us, etc. Hence, although we can still rely to some extent on the market to provide individuals with what they want—i.e. opportunities to develop the talents they need to sell in the market in order to get the income they desire—the market needs a lot of supplementation by the state. Of course, that argument from individual interests has never, anywhere, been a complete account of the reasons why liberal democracies have interested themselves in vocational training. National considerations—to strengthen ‘national champion’ firms against their foreign rivals, to raise the nation’s strategic power—have been powerful concerns in Britain ever since alarm at Germany’s industrial strength began to grow at the turn of the century. But still, in so far as one can measure the balance in such matters,
x ii Preface individualistic arguments about opportunities for self-development have tended to dominate in Britain. But hardly so in Japan. For the last hundred years, the national need to build up skills has been part of a collective national drive to strengthen Japan’s international position. At first it was a matter of national survival. That assured—by the time the delegation returned in 1872—the objective became to make the country strong enough, in the first instance, to persuade foreigners to amend the ‘unequal treaties’ which they forced on Japan in the 1850s, a quarter-century struggle still well remembered today, and the subject, not surprisingly, of a multi-billion yen movie in 1986. Japan’s international position today, and her ranking in the various pecking orders of international competition, are beyond all except the wilder dreams of the Japanese of the 1880s—or of the 1950s, for that matter. But still, old assumptions and old motivation patterns persist. After a century striving to be accepted as an equal, the inertia of the striving reflex sets new goals—to become first among equals. Hence the journalistic popularity of newspaper polls about Japan’s standing—is she ahead, behind or level with the US in cell fusion techniques, in laser semiconductors? How does Japan compare with Germany in the development of new operatic forms? Hence the assumptions about the role of the state in vocational training which have shaped Japan’s current VET institutions over the last century remain largely unchanged, even if a lot of their manifestations today smack more of bureaucratic nannying than of leadership in a concerted drive for success. This circumstance will be reflected in many of the succeeding chapters—in what is said about the guiding philosophy of the general education system, and especially apropos of the state’s role in setting standards of vocational competence which will be described in Chapter 6. The other thing about Japanese society which powerfully shapes the system to be described—another product of history and culture—is the kind of moral feelings the Japanese have about needing to be good at their jobs. Whether because of the efforts of state agencies to preach the national need for competence over the last century or for some other reason, the Japanese do tend to feel that competence is a moral duty and not just a means of earning money by giving satisfaction, that sloppiness is a sin and not just something to avoid because it puts you in danger of getting the sack. That also counts for something. It is a factor in the response which private firms show to government initiatives, and in the initiatives they take without prompting. It is a factor in the response of the individual workers to enterprise
P reface xiii programmes. It is a factor, too, in the vigour of the private enterprise training sector described in Chapter 4. But the important role played by these cultural factors in shaping the Japanese vocational education and training (hereafter VET) system does not mean that there are no lessons to be learned from it. There may well be, to begin with, hints to be found in individual institutional devices for financing training and motivating take-up. There seems, also, to be a good deal which might be learned from nuts-and-bolts pedagogical practices in Japan, though on that we have very little to say in this book. What we hope we do show however, is a different way in which one can learn by examining Japan. Confrontation with a system built on assumptions somewhat different from our own brings those assumptions into relief. It causes us to question ideas which we might otherwise never question, and to think of possible alternatives we might never have thought of—solutions, one might even say, to problems we never realised we had. COMMON ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT VOCATIONAL TRAINING WHICH JAPAN BRINGS INTO QUESTION Here, for example, is a list of some of the assumptions which are often—not universally, to be sure, but often—implicit in the VET policies and the VET policy debate in Britain and North America, assumptions the validity of which the example of Japan undoubtedly calls into question. (i) That the provision of training courses and of the opportunity to enter them—individual learning accounts, training vouchers, etc. —is the most important contribution the state can make to its citizens’ skill acquisition. The Japanese, by contrast, seem to believe that the the state has two prime functions in this field: (a) to ensure the basic trainability of all its citizens—giving them confidence in their ability to learn and competence in the use of language and numbers—what in Britain and North America are nowadays often called the ‘core skills’. It is now well-known that the most striking difference in core-skill attainment of British or American children on the one hand, and of Japanese and German children on the other, is among those in the bottom half of the ability range. That is one reason why Japan does not have a ‘youth unemployment problem’ and so spends very little on the sort of ‘social rescue’ schemes to which Britain’s Training and
x iv Preface Enterprise Councils devote the bulk of their expenditure—on the implausible grounds that it is improving the nation’s competitiveness, (b) to provide both the possessors of skills and those who might want to employ them, or be their customers, with the public facility of a testing and certification system. The approach is traditional; tests test only the testable, and certificates certify only that which is tested. Japan has not yet been invaded by the ‘total occupational competence verified on the job’ ideology of Britain’s National Council for Vocational Qualifications, and its certification system is largely free from the expense, the jargon and the bureaucratic organization which that entails. See points (v) to (viii) for further elaboration of this theme. (ii) That industry must use its board and council memberships to influence the school and higher education system to be more responsive to industry’s needs. The school and university system under the aegis of the Japanese Ministry of Education keeps industry very much at arm’s length. Vocational high schools and engineering faculties have fewer links with industry than their counterparts in this country. Engineering research is further towards the ‘basic’ as opposed to the ‘applied’/‘developmental’ end of the spectrum in Japan than in Britain. The countervailing factors are (a) the performance of the school system in providing mastery of the basics, (b) the acceptance by employers that the responsibility for detailed job-oriented training is theirs, (c) the heavy involvement (in quite arduous quasi-voluntary leg-work) of private industry engineers in devising curricula and setting standards for the skill tests operated by ministries other than that of Education—MITI, the Ministries of Labour, Construction, Health and Welfare, Communications, Transport, etc. These exercise a powerful influence on all post-employment training. (iii) That training is best provided by specialists in training. Japanese firms rely relatively less on courses provided by training firms or outside consultants, more on mutual teaching, off-the-job as well as on but more often the latter, within the firm. Consequently there are fewer people employed as full-time teachers of particular vocational skills than in Britian. A fortiori, there are far fewer people employed in the ‘training industry’ more narrowly defined —i.e.,
P reface xv those (organizers of courses, officials of certifying bodies, academic experts, etc.) whose expertise is, not in any particular subject matter in which people are trained, but in the practice of training itself. (iv) That expenditure on off-the-job training is a good measure of the extent to which a firm is a ‘learning organization’. Apart from the mutual teaching/on-the-job training just mentioned, Japanese employees get a good deal of their training inexpensively through correspondence courses—of a traditional (pedagogically low-tech) kind. (v) That vocational qualifications primarily tell one what their possessors have learned. No-one really believes that Volkswagen employs German youths coming out of a bakery apprenticeship because they have acquired some transferable skills in measuring quantities and mixing ingredients which might come in handy in the paint shop. Yet discussions of VET often proceed as if that were the case. In fact, in any society, qualifications, especially at lower and intermediate levels, are often read largely, even primarily, as indicators of personality factors—application and willingness to ‘fit in’ —and of general learning ability. The transparency of this use of the vocational qualifications delivered in the general school system in Japan (vocational high schools and engineering faculties)—the transparency due to the commercial mock test and standardized score (hensachi) system and the high quality of research into recruitment processes in Japan—prompts one to look harder at these aspects in other countries too. Most people would acknowledge in principle that courses do get ability-labelled by received impressions of the ‘calibre’ of the students who get on them. They would acknowledge that this label affects (i) student motivation, (ii) pedagogical effectiveness, (iii) the likelihood that employers will offer graduates the jobs for which they have been trained, and (iv) their effectiveness in those jobs if they get them, and that effects in each of those dimensions feed back on the others. These considerations do surface in our debates, but always covertly. The anybody-can-be-taught- anything-provided-the-teacher’s-good-enough ethos of the training industry all too often dominates—in Britain, for instance, in discussions of Training Workshops for the unemployed and of the Youth Training Scheme. In Japan the transparency of the screening functions of some vocational courses
x vi Preface (vocational high schools) and the absence of screening functions in others (nationally tested vocational skill training) highlights the crucial importance of those screening functions which VET planners ignore at their peril. (vi) That the state has a role in testing and certifying occupational competence only where public health and safety are involved or, possibly, in order to improve the working of the labour market. Japanese Ministries are active in testing for the additional purpose of raising standards of competence—of plumbers and printers, cooks and computer- programmers—in the interests of national efficiency. (vii) That the definition, testing and certification of occupational standards is best left either to self-regulating bodies of practitioners, or to the training institutions. Japan acts more often on the assumption that only the customers have an unalloyed interest in maintaining high standards—the customers represented most often by the state, sometimes (as with welding) by the employers of the people they certify. (viii) That the certifying of occupational competence is primarily a matter of certifying whole-package occupational roles: i.e., licences to practise— as a plumber, as a systems engineer, as a craftsman fitter, as a dentist. While Japan also has a wide range of ‘whole role’ qualifications (state examinations for doctors, midwives, architects, etc.) this is very widely supplemented by what one might call the boy-scout-badge approach—the certifying, particularly at lower and intermediate skill levels, of discrete isolable skills, like the ability to drive a heavy goods vehicle, or to handle certain types of dangerous chemicals, or to use a turret lathe, or to install jacuzzi baths. The substantive content of these certification packages is determined by the logic of the job function. There is no need to fit it into a system of ‘modules’ or ‘credits’ with each credit guaranteed to represent X contact hours and Y credits adding up to the qualification of Master- Whumpfer. This results in less padding or skimping of training content, more functionally defined training, more flexibility in individual combinations of
P reface xvii skills, and an easier linking of pay to performance rather than to some conventionally defined ‘skill status’. TRAINING AND COMPETITIVENESS It is not hard to imagine a certain kind of response to all that—and one from which one cannot withhold a certain sympathy. ‘OK. We see all that. Those are just the sort of points which would be made by people like you who have been seduced by this insidious Japanese tendency to see all matters in terms of national interest and efficiency, and not at all in terms of individual self- fulfilment, of providing the bases for individual competence and a sense of self-efficacy. And didn’t you yourselves start off this introduction by explaining why Japan came to be so special in regard to competitiveness?’ That is true. But the ‘competitiveness imperative’ has come to be an important factor in discussions of education and training in Europe and North America too. It began to hit Britain as its manufacturing import bill started to soar in the 1970s. In the US, it became the subject of Congressional cries of pain, wide-ranging reports of the Office of Technology Assessment and commissions of inquiry sponsored by the White House in the mid–1980s, as the fear came to be ever more stridently voiced that the US might be losing its manufacturing supremacy to Japan. Changes there have been. Britain, for instance, has tried to improve the quality of basic education, particularly for the bottom half of the ability range, by insisting on a state-prescribed core curriculum and introducing universal testing of attainments in language and arithmetic. But these efforts have been relegated to second place in the debates about education, which have been dominated by questions of parental choice of school and selection. Individual self-fulfilment, as individuals or their parents define it, is still the dominant concern, and the large sums of government money spent on training, are, for the most part—barring a few courses on the taking of which social security is made conditional—spent on the provision of opportunities for individuals to take or leave. Perhaps that is as it should be in a individualistic democracy, though if we downgrade the collectivist objective of national competitiveness, we should perhaps draw the logical conclusion and rethink our devotion to the principle of free trade and open competition across open borders. But if
x viii Preface large amounts of taxpayers’ money are to be spent on improving skills, it is as well that it should be well spent. As the preceding paragraphs have tried to suggest, it is by no means obvious that this is the case. THE PLAN OF THE BOOK These are the thoughts which have determined the emphases of the book which follows. We begin with the general education system and stress not just the sheer quantity and intellectual quality of what goes on there, but also the moral quality and prestige status of the teaching and learning process, reflected as it is in the status and pay of teachers. Chapter 2 is about who goes where—about the all-important screening processes within the system which determine which children, of what ability levels, are channelled into what types of school and why employers have very different expectations of a vocational school in a rural area and of a school with identical curriculum, staff and equipment in a big city. The next two chapters give the factual picture of the three main types of institutional vocational training; the vocational high schools and vocational faculties of colleges and universities within the system supervised by the Ministry of Education; the public vocational schools under other Ministries and local governments; and the wide range of private vocational training schools, mostly offering one- or two-year courses for 18-year-old high-school leavers. At both the high school and the university level, explicitly vocational courses absorb about a third of the students. The courses tend to be wide- ranging and comprehensive rather than specialized—the assumption being that one is laying the basis for further learning rather than producing a complete product. The other two types of school provide more specialist courses; the private sector being numerically the most important (absorbing about one-fifth of high-school graduates), but of uneven quality. Training within industry is the subject of the longest chapter, Chapter 5. The practices of Japanese firms cannot be understood, of course, except in the context of Japanese ‘lifetime employment’ practices but it is not by virtue of large budgets devoted explicitly to training that Japanese firms are differentiated from British or North American firms. They are ‘learning organizations’ because of the high level of mutual teaching-learning which goes on—partly pre-programmed in initial training periods, partly arising out of the introduction of new processes and products. It is partly self-directed by employees and there is a flourishing correspondence course industry (using
P reface xix quite traditional methods) which serves it. A lot depends on attitudes—the modest acceptance that everyone has much to learn, the acceptance by all supervisors that teaching is a part of every supervisory role. Those attitudes, in turn, are much dependent on the social characteristics of Japanese enterprises which, as compared with enterprises in Anglo-Saxon countries, are rather more like communities and rather less like markets where one sells the minimum effort for the maximum gain. The qualification system and the vocational skill testing system are treated in some detail in Chapter 6. We show the extensive nature of the system, and elaborate some of the points made above—especially the Consumer Association/abuse of monopoly point about who validates standards (the practitioners or the trainers or the independent representatives of the customers) and the packaging point (‘whole role’ diplomas or ‘boy-scout-badge’ certificates) —the latter, of course, having a lot to do with pay systems which are steadily changing in Britain in a Japanese direction—i.e., more person- related and less job-related—without the change being much reflected in training practice. The last three chapters are about the policy superstructure. Chapter 7 gives details of financing and attempts the unusual task of an overall assessment of who (state, enterprise or individual household) finances how much of the national VET effort. It includes both the expenditures which normally enter into GNP calculations (like the salaries of trainers in both public and private sectors) and those which do not (like individuals’ many hours of home study) and should at least prompt some reflection about the importance of the latter. The last chapter briefly describes recent policy trends—if anything reinforcing existing patterns—and the penultimate describes the fragmented and uncoordinated nature of Japan’s policy-making process. Rampant sectionalism and inter-ministerial rivalry are the price one pays for the energy and dedication which Japanese civil servants display in perfecting their own department’s programmes. That is only one of the trade-offs which the book outlines. There are few simple solutions in the VET business. NOTE As a rough guide to the translation of the yen cost figures in the book, recent figures for the purchasing power parity equivalent of ¥1,000, as calculated in the Penn World Tables, were £2.60 and $4.60 in 1986; £3.35 and $5.32 in 1992.

CÓ THỂ BẠN MUỐN DOWNLOAD