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Apr. 23, 2004 Creating Independent Thinkers and Actors Hillel Weintraub, Future University - Hakodate

Recently I've had some enlightening conversations with different people about the relationships between people in learning communities in Japan. This is an interesting aspect of Japanese culture to me since I've been working in Japanese schools for nearly 25 years. Perhaps readers of CRN are aware that the Japanese Ministry of Culture, Sports and Education (Monbukagakusho) has long been pushing educational institutions to create learners who can exhibit independence of thought and action. I think that my recent conversations shed some light on why it is not such a simple matter to invent effective styles of learning and I'd like to share my thoughts with you about this. Conversation 1 was about the common situation in many undergraduate schools in Japan - bright students are encouraged to stay on with a professor who they worked with, sometimes for 2 years or more, rather than enter another graduate school to have different experiences with many other students and faculty. The relationship between this professor and students is often one which does not push students to explore their own interests, but rather to develop or research on areas which the professor has his/her expertise in. The student sometimes takes the role of a Research Assistant (RA) which means that s/he has a particular supportive relationship to their professor. Although this certainly happens in Western countries, somehow, I don't think the dependent relationship is pushed so much and students are expected to find their own themes and develop their own independent studies. Conversation 2 was about a person (let's say Ms. A) who had recently gotten a job at a high ranked national university in Japan. I was wondering aloud about how A would get chosen for such a job. The Japanese person I was speaking with conjectured that such a decision was often due to the strong influence of a key supporter (say Prof B) for the applicant. Professor B would likely be a person in the same professional circle as A and with whom A had probably studied with for a number of years. Professor B would often have a strong sense of responsibility regarding A's future work. Conversation 3 was with a colleague who had recently completed his graduate studies in Australia. I told him about these two conversations and his response was that this was really different from the situation in Australia. "Once you've graduated, no one wants to see you again! They're certainly not likely to try to help you find a job, assuming that they do remember you!" Naturally, these conversations don't represent all situations, but perhaps they say something important about general cultural tendencies. Surely there are Japanese faculty who encourage students to go off on their own to learn in different situations, and surely there are Australian faculty who develop a close and supportive relationship with their students. But I think the stories do have something interesting to say about the general trends in both the Japanese and Western learning cultures. Listening to these stories, I became aware of how deeply ingrained in the Japanese culture is the idea of master and dependent novice and its related teacher - and dependent student. in the hierarchical and separated sense. The connection I made with these conversations and the topic of creating independent learners is that as long as the relationship of teachers and students has this strong hierarchy, it will be very difficult for students to become independent thinkers and actors in their life. This is not something that just affects learners when they are in college and graduate school, but rather throughout their learning experiences, where seldom are those involved in learning seen as equal players on the field of lifelong education, but rather as knowers (teachers) and those who are dependent on them for knowledge (students). Surely in the education of young people in Japan some powerful changes are being introduced, such as the integrated studies programs (sogoteki na gakushu no jikan), But the effect from university ideas and the general trend in Japanese culture which creates a large gap between teacher and student and a strong sense of dependence in the student, may greatly minimize the effect of such innovative program. Let's Talk!

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