The compleat education: Japan's international schools get high grades for academic standards, diversity, and values

Japan, Inc., Jan, 2005 by Nobuya Ochinero

INTERNATIONAL SCHOOLS in Japan are selective, and the types of students who attend these schools you perhaps will not find in Belchertown or Hicksville USA.

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IT IS A DIVERSE CROWD, with students from all over Europe, Asia, Africa and America. The teachers are highly competent (most have at least a Masters in education) and the schools are virtually free of the sorts of substance abuse that plague schools in students' home countries. Testament to the high caliber of these schools is that most of their students, more than 90 percent, go on to four-year European or American universities including such elite institutions as Oxford, Harvard, and MIT. But they offer more than high academic standards, and are also recommended for their diversity, respect for Japanese culture, and inculcation of values.

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An international school education comes at a high price. For example, tuition and one-time non-refundable fees add up to [yen] 2,742,000 ($26,620) for students matriculating at the American School in Japan (ASIJ), in Chofu, 14 kilometers west of Tokyo. That figure exceeds tuition at Harvard, $26,066.

Is the cost worth it? I believe it is. An international school education gives students not only a solid education in English, but also sound values, the tools to think and fond memories of Japan, such that nothing about Japan or the Japanese will ever seem alien or unfamiliar.

Sending the kids to an International school is not an option for many parents in labor-of-love jobs like teaching, journalism and translation; in other words, the moiety of the foreign community not having the expat package that includes school tuition and fees, and membership in, say, the American Club and the Yokohama Country & Athletic Club.

For parents not on the corporate dole the Japanese school system is an option. Japanese public schools have the virtue of being tax supported, ipso facto, virtually free, perhaps the only expense being for school lunch, or kyushoku.

How is the education at Japanese schools? Top quality. Japanese students consistently perform near the top in sciences and math on international comparative tests.

But can mom and dad help junior with his homework? Yes, if they read Japanese--the point being that non-Japanese parents will have trouble plugging into the Japanese school system if they are not literate in Japanese. If they are not, the PTA, parent-teacher conferences, report cards--in short, the interface of guardian and school--will be bumpy.

Needless to say, language poses a formidable barrier to the foreign couple's sending their children to a Japanese school. In fact, it is rare enough that the non-Japanese child who attends a Japanese school is the sort of story beloved of the local press.

Virtually always a foreign parent sending a child to a Japanese school will have a Japanese spouse; that is, the child will be of mixed parentage. This can be difficult for the non-Japanese parent, since he or she may feel estranged from an alien system of education, and acceding to the choice of Japanese school can be tinged with melancholy, as the child will acquire local cultural patterns and the Japanese language as the mother tongue. Any parent lives vicariously through their child, and, if they look back with nostalgia on their own childhood, will try to replicate their early experiences through their child. Further, they will realize their child, immersed in a Japanese environment and the way of kanji, will perhaps never achieve complete facility in their own tongue (English is not taught until the seventh grade); or have a profound feel for their country's ways and culture. Their child will probably live always in Japan. Language is destiny.

Some parents take this in stride. "My son is Japanese," says Rick Sutton, a Canadian who teaches English. He and his Japanese wife placed both their children in Japanese public schools. He believes that in general kids are "resilient" and that the "educational system is not that important." He admits that he wanted to send his children to an international school, yet he believes that the Japanese school experience and the hardships of being different and not fitting in could be positive for his children. Through adversity he wants his children to learn and understand that they are neither Canadian nor Japanese but probably somewhere in-between; he wants his children to grow up being aware of themselves as unique, self-governing individuals who are unbiased and broad-minded. Since this can also be achieved in an international school environment, perhaps the only true advantage to sending a child to a Japanese school is that he or she will master spoken and written Japanese.

Many international schools have religious affiliations, but all are ecumenical in outlook. For example, St. Mary's and Seisen, Roman Catholic boys' and girls' schools, respectively, accept students of a salad of religious backgrounds. While the Catholic schools offer religious education and encourage conversion, religious indoctrination is not their primary purpose. All international schools fundamentally believe that a solid education, in English, within a culturally diverse environment, prepares students to face with courage and dignity the role they will play in the rapidly changing world of today.