The boxes were stacked, the goodbyes just about said. After nearly six years in the United States, the Shichijo family was returning home to Japan. But though they are trading Winnetka for Tokyo, the most important part of the three Shichijo children`s lives will remain virtually unchanged.
That`s because Shigeo, 9, his 12-year-old brother Takashi and 14-year-old sister Atsuko all have been students at the Chicago Futabakai Japanese School in Niles on the Park Ridge border.
The Futabakai school is for the children of Japanese nationals working here temporarily. Except for English classes, lessons at Futabakai-even American history-are taught in Japanese, and the curriculum is sanctioned by the Japanese Ministry of Education. The principal and most of the teachers, in fact, have been sent from Japan, their salaries paid by the government.
The 370 Japanese youngsters here, kindergartners through 9th graders, are able to learn the same subjects at the same pace and in the same way as their peers in Japan, though they do get more intensive English instruction. (Most high school students return to Japan for school, though some attend American high schools.)
They even follow the Japanese school calendar, beginning the school year in April and ending in March, 24 days more than Illinois students attend public-school classes.
The Japanese put a premium on their children`s education: Illiteracy is rare in Japan, and 90 percent of Japanese students graduate from high school. (The U.S. rate is 75 percent.)
According to the Japan Information Service, almost 90,000 Japanese citizens are working in the U.S., almost double the 47,000 here 10 years ago. They have more than 10,000 children, Japanese educators here estimate.
The Japanese currently are reevaluating their own rigorous education system, which critics charge emphasizes rote accomplishment over creativity. Nonetheless, ensuring their children`s easy reassimilation in Japan remains a major concern for these ambitious, upwardly mobile Japanese couples who have been sent by their companies to the U.S. to work, usually for just a few years.
”The people who go overseas tend to have good educations and they want to be sure their children have the same options,” explained Merry White, a Boston University professor who has just written a book about the Japanese in the U.S., ”The Japanese Overseas,” (Free Press, $19.95).
”Of course, the Japanese enjoy being here,” White said. ”It`s just there`s tremendous anxiety about their children`s educational futures.”
White explained that in Japan, becoming ”too international” can be a stigma socially as well as professionally. Korin Shichijo, a Mitsubishi International Corp. executive, believes it is jealousy on the part of those who have not had the opportunity to live overseas.
The Shichijo children had attended public schools in Houston, where they had no other option, and for a time in Winnetka, until last year, when their parents decided they needed to better prepare for their return to Japan this year.
Shichijo says he was glad his children were able to live in the U.S., learn English and go to American schools, but that he wasn`t take any chances with their educational futures when he learned of his transfer back to Japan. His children, he explained, are returning to a culture and educational system in which doing well on standardized school-entrance exams, going to the right high school and, most important, the right university can ultimately determine a young person`s professional future.
The three Shichijo children, who enjoyed their time in American schools, say they weren`t required to study as hard as at Futabakai.
”Some American kids work hard. Some don`t. At Futabakai, all of the kids work hard. They are fighting against each other to see who has the highest score,” said Takashi Shichijo.
His father says he was glad they attended American schools-mostly because of the opportunity the experience afforded for them to learn English. But he added he was glad, as they got older, that they had the Futabakai option.
”The opportunities are limited, and the competition is very hard,” said Korin Shichijo. ”Futabakai will make it easier for the children to go back to school in Japan.”
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About 5,000 Japanese nationals live in the Chicago area, representing 470 companies. Their concern prompted the founding of the Futabakai school 10 years ago and has fueled its growth from an original enrollment of 100 to nearly quadruple that today.
It is one of only four such full-time Japanese schools in the U.S.: The others are in Los Angeles and suburban New York. In addition, about 40 Saturday programs scattered around the country stress Japanese language.
Walk into Futabakai`s utilitarian-looking school building, rented from the Park Ridge school district, and you could as easily be in Japan. The children bow to their teacher at the beginning and end of each class. And as is Japanese custom, they may be left unsupervised-even 1st graders-for a period of the class hour to work independently. By delegating responsiblity for order to the students, Japanese teachers believe, the children have the chance to develop leadership and an understanding of the importance of cooperation and mutual effort.
Students sit crosslegged on the floor at the weekly schoolwide assembly, during which a teacher tells the youngsters about his (most of the teachers are male) life. This assembly, too, is Japanese custom, school administrators explain, designed to give the students a sense of unity.
After lunch, the students, unsupervised again, man brooms and dustpans:
They are charged with cleaning the classroom.
Between classes the children throughout the school dash down the hallways laughing and chatting happily in Japanese but dressed in American-style jeans, sweatshirts and tennis shoes.
The students learn most of the same subjects here as do all school children: math, reading, science, social studies, art, music, home economics and gym. But they also study ethics and calligraphy. Most important, to become literate, Japanese children have to master three writing systems, two of which consist of 48 phonetic symbols each and a third composed of approximately 2,000 Chinese characters, which may be pronounced or read differently, depending on their meaning. Written Japanese is a mixture of Chinese characters and Japanese phonetic symbols.
During their first year in elementary school, they learn to read and write the two 48-character phonetic systems, according to a U.S. government report on Japanese education. Then each year they learn about 200 Chinese characters.
It is an arduous, complex undertaking, but the children seem to take it in stride. For many, it is still easier than trying to understand what is going on in an American classroom.
”It`s easier to study in Japanese than in English,” explained Atsuko Shichijo, adding that there also were fewer social barriers than in an American school. ”They`re (classmates) all the same as me here,” she said.
”It`s not much different from school in Japan,” added Atsuko`s friend Hiroko Kanagawa, who is also 14 and arrived from Japan just last year. ”You have to study as hard.”
That is exactly the point. Japanese parents willingly pay $3,000 yearly for tuition and transportation for their children to learn in this
environment. They transport the children to designated bus stops, some several miles from their homes, and accept that the students will have to commute up to an hour each way to school, coming from as far as Palatine, Deerfield, Hoffman Estates and the North Side of Chicago. Once home in the evenings, the children will routinely face several hours of homework, from an hour or two for 1st graders to as much as five hours for 9th graders.
The school encourages the children to become involved in community activities. Some do participate in sports or make friends with non-Japanese children in their neighborhoods, but their fluency in English varies tremendously-one English teacher noted that learning English doesn`t seem to be a priority for the children-and the language barrier often limits that kind of cultural assimilation.
The parents seem glad for whatever exposure their children have had to American life. ”It`s a chance I never had,” Korin Shichijo said. But the families seem more concerned about keeping the youngsters` educations on track in the Japanese system.
”(Futabakai) teachers push them very hard here, and I have to push them very hard,” said Kuniko Dohi, who has one daughter at Futabakai and another at Wheeling High School. ”American teachers don`t care as much … In American schools, students don`t have to study as hard to get good grades.”
There are so many Japanese parents eager for their children to have exposure to this environment that the school has more than 850 youngsters enrolled in the all-day Saturday program that stresses Japanese language, history and culture. Some come from as far as Lake Geneva, Wis., or South Bend, Ind.
Most days, the Japanese children at Futabakai get at least some contact with Americans: their English teachers. It is a cultural education for the teachers, as well.
”We have a much freer and easier relationship with them (than their Japanese teachers),” explained teacher Virginia Gibbons. ”Everything is a lot more rigid downstairs (in the Japanese classes).
”I love these kids,” added her collegue Madeleine Tsuchiya, who is married to a Japanese and has taught in Japan. ”They have the discipline of Japanese kids, but they have the will to learn. The Japanese learn by rote and memorizaton. American kids are very independent … In Japan they never take the initiative. They only input when teachers call on them.”
Some teachers who came here from Japan say schools in Japan are too crowded, complain about the bureaucracy and note that these youngsters, perhaps because of their American experience, seem more open to opportunities than do their peers at home.
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A major study of Japanese schools, undertertaken by the U.S. Department of Education and released last year, linked Japan`s economic success to the rigor and efficiency of its primary and secondary schools, noting that the ties between schools and the job market are closer and more effective than in most other industrialized nations.
The report notes that Japanese society is ”education-minded to an extraordinary degree: Success in formal education is considered largely synonymous with success in life.”
Americans, the report says, in looking at the success of the Japanese educational system, should consider how the Japanese stress parental involvement from the preschool years on. They should recognize the necessity of ”strong motivation and high standards, and of focusing resources on education priorities,” as well as ”maximizing learning time.” The value of a ”competent and committed” teaching force must also be recognized.
In a statement accompanying the report, U.S. Education Secretary William Bennett said: ”Japanese education works. … It has been demonstrably successful in providing modern Japan with a powerfully competitive economy, a broadly literate population, a stable democratic government, a civilization in which there is relatively little crime … and a society wherein the basic technological infrastructure is sound and reliable. … ”
But all Japanese don`t agree with that glowing assessment. Some educational experts say publicly they can`t understand the praise lavished on them by Americans. The Japanese educational system, in fact, has in recent years come under attack within Japan by an Ad Hoc Education Reform Council for stressing learning by rote, hampering creativity and failing to develop character in its students.
Japan, as a result, has embarked on its most ambitious education reform since 1872, when the principle of equal education was adopted from the U.S and the system modeled after those in Prussia and France. Japanese leaders now contend that reform is necessary to increase creativity and original research in today`s competitive high-tech world.
”Japan has caught up industrially with the rest of the industrialized nations,” said Futabakai administrator Okano. ”They feel they have to take leadership. … They feel it is necessary for Japanese children to develop
(creativity) … in the sense of solving world problems.”
He added that Futabakai teachers and administrators hope that these children`s experience living in the U.S. will broaden their perspective and help to educate them toward that goal.
The Shichijos, meanwhile, are simply concerned that their children not have problems readjusting to life in Japan. Teenager Atsuko isn`t worried.
”They`re all the same-all kids,” she said.
