japanese snack review : Moral Education in Japan

japanese snack review  : Moral Education in Japan

In the United States, moral education has been always at issue in schools, although the methodology and the content have changed over the past years. Especially after World War II, moral education was largely impacted on by social and cultural change, and it also had a huge influence on the society.
Today, moral education became one of the biggest concern of the public since our society is facing an increasing amount of juvenile crime. According to the twenty seventh annual Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll of the Public's Attitudes Toward the Public Schools, the American public has pointed out to "lack of discipline" as what it sees as the biggest problem for local public schools (Elam & Rose, 1995). In 1983, 2,951 children and teens in the United States died from gunfire. Ten years later, in 1993, 5,751 people under the age of 20 died at the hand of a gun - a 94 percent of increase. A new report by the Children's Defense Fund, based on data from the National Center for Health Statistics, reveals that
the "morally unthinkable" killing of children by guns has not only become common, it continues to escalate. The report also finds that the 5,751 youths killed in the United States in 1993 were more than three times the total number of gun homicides in Australia, Belgium, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Holland, Norway, Spain, Switzerland, and Finland combined.
Furthermore, more preschoolers than police officers or US soldiers shot in the line of duty were killed by guns in 1993 (The Christian Science Monitor, 1995). James Fox, Dean of the criminology department at Northeastern University, says teens are much more threatening than adults because they will kill over trivial matters - a jacket, some sneakers, a dirty look, and murder is just not the taboo for them that it once was (Urschel, 1995). Today, the most urgent task is to build a moral society, and educators ought to take the leading roles in it.
This paper is intended to present the essence of Japanese moral education in a historical and philosophical context and give implications for American education in such trouble. Japan is one of industrialized countries, implementing moral education under the strong administration of the government.
Sometimes Japanese moral education is viewed as the counterpart of the one in the United States in terms of the perception of values. Japanese education aims to preserve social values and transmit them to the next generation, while American schools try to be neutral in terms of values. Often the philosophical foundation of Japanese education is introduced to other countries with some distortion due to the unpleasant period in the modern history and cultural misunderstandings. However, Japanese moral education currently implementing can give meaningful suggestions to American education facing moral confusion

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