Traditionally, Japanese culture is organized around groups. Adults view children that have problems with group behavior and interpersonal relationships as the deviant ones. Adults most highly value social cooperativeness in children because they hold this trait to be more important than individual interests. The "bad" children are those who reject the life of the group in favor of an egocentric, individualistic existence. Little emphasis is placed on teaching children to think of themselves as individuals within society. Japanese children that are extremely group oriented may have acquired those values of obedience and conformity at the price of autonomy and social understanding.
This is an even bigger problem when combined with modern Japanese parents' obsession with creating an academically superior child. The good child is considered to be the one who can respond to adult expectations and excel in school by receiving high grades. This has caused extreme competitiveness among Japanese students. This competitiveness, and the conflicting expectations for modern children to be the best in school but also serve the traditional purposes of the group, confuses children and causes frustration. This contributes to other social problems such as bullying and truancy.
CLASSROOM DISINTEGRATION
The elementary school system in Japan had enjoyed a long history of success until recently. There has been a breakdown of discipline in classrooms that is referred to as Gakkyu hokai, or class disintegration. Teachers are unable to control their classrooms and chaos often erupts. Researchers argue that the traditional teaching methods of elementary school are too inflexible and that lessons have become too boring for today's Japanese youth. The strict rules and regulations that are in place stifle children's opportunities to construct their own standards of appropriate behavior. Elementary school life is controlled to the smallest detail. Also, class size may be too large for one teacher to both educate and teach social values. Educators have suggested that schools must not only hire more teachers and reduce class size, but also rethink the system of forcing scheduled lessons on children, and instead explore more interesting teaching methods. For more on recent educational reform, go to the Elementary School page
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