日本の社会変革は可能か？-「日本の常識は世界の非常識」という一つの例がここにある。その言葉が肌で感じられる東大の動き。世界の激しい経済の動きや変化に、このままの日本では他のアジア諸国にさえ後塵を拝することの自覚と危機感の表われ。
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世界を目指した東大の入試改革
Reform means the world for Todai
Fall enrollment part of wider drive to lure foreign students, diversify
Saturday, Feb. 18, 2012
By MIZUHO AOKI Staff writer, The Japan Times
When Japan's leading university announced in January that it intends to shift undergraduate enrollment from spring to autumn in line with colleges worldwide, the plan created waves far beyond the academic world.
Hoping to blossom: High school students visit one of the University of Tokyo's campuses to take the unified college entrance examinations on Jan. 15. KYODO =写真
The University of Tokyo's move would have a far broader and deeper effect on Japanese society and force authorities to amend long-established practices, notably the season when companies recruit graduates and the timing of various national examinations, such as those medical students take in February to qualify for a medical license.
But the response from government and the business world has so far been favorable, with most officials welcoming the university's efforts to internationalize its operations. The proposed shift comes at a time when fostering a broader global perspective among the nation's youth is increasingly viewed as a priority.
Following the university's announcement, Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu Fujimura instructed administrative vice ministers to ensure the issue is discussed in every ministry, demonstrating the government's support for the plan.
Keidanren, the nation's leading business lobby, also plans to discuss how companies should adjust their recruitment schedules, as well as ways to support high school graduates during the six-month break, or "gap term," that would be created between their graduation and the time they start university. At present, students enroll around two weeks after finishing high school.
The University of Tokyo, commonly known as Todai, plans to introduce the change within five years.
The move is intended to boost the university's global competitiveness against its international rivals and lure more outstanding foreign students, and also to develop a more global outlook among its Japanese student body.
Todai has also set a target of raising the number of overseas students to at least 12 percent of its total student body by 2020.
But some education experts say the enrollment shift alone will not be enough to realize these goals, arguing that Todai must carry out drastic internal reforms if it truly wants to become a more attractive option for overseas students and to change Japanese students' thinking.
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"It's not like everything will be fixed if (Todai) shifts to autumn enrollment," Mineo Nakajima, president of Akita International University, told The Japan Times in a recent interview.
"The important things are its curriculum and factors such as credit transfers (with overseas academic institutions). . . . It also needs to radically change the current mindset of its faculty and employees," he said.
Nakajima suggested that Todai's leaders might benefit from taking a close look at Akita International University, which has made study abroad mandatory for all its students and enrolls new recruits in both spring and autumn.
His other proposals for Todai include adopting the international codes U.S. colleges use for each curriculum to indicate the subject and level of every class, keeping libraries open 24 hours a day so that students have a place to study at all times, and conducting classes entirely in English.
"In the age we live in, I think the key point is whether (a university) can disseminate information in English — the de facto international language," Nakajima said.
"And considering how many faculty members are able to communicate in English, I believe they have to thoroughly change (their current way of thinking). That means Japanese professors teaching Japanese students in Japanese," he said. "That's the first step to changing a faculty's way of thinking."
While Todai is considered the nation's top and most prestigious academic institution, its efforts to internationalize its campuses and student body have lagged behind the world's leading universities.
According to Todai's own data, only 1.9 percent of its undergraduate students were non-Japanese as of last May. At Harvard University the proportion stood at 10 percent in 2009, while 6 percent of undergraduates at Seoul University came from outside South Korea in 2010.
The same can be said of Todai's faculty, whose non-Japanese members accounted for only 2.3 percent of the total — just 88 teachers — as of May 2011.
By comparison, 20 percent of Oxford University's faculty were non-British and 14 percent of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's faculty were overseas nationals as long ago as 2006, according to a report by the Todai panel that recommended autumn enrollment.
To start catching up with leading overseas universities, Todai will kick off a new undergraduate course this autumn — titled "Program in English at Komaba (the undergraduate campus)" — and offering students the opportunity to take all classes in English.
But the course can only accommodate a few students, effectively diluting any real impact it might have on the Komaba campus, said Yuki Honda, a professor of education at Todai.
"The course has only a few dozen (places) for the 3,000 students in the same year," Honda said. "I really wish more foreign students from a wider variety of countries would come and make an impression (among Japanese students). . . . That would make (the academic environment) far more interesting."
Todai's planned reforms are not only being driven by internal panels and faculty members.
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Japan's aging society and declining birthrate are shrinking the pool of potential new students, forcing universities to rethink the way they have traditionally done things and implement radical changes, Todai's Honda said.
In fiscal 2011, 39 percent of 572 private universities failed to meet their minimum enrollment quotas, according to a survey by the Promotion and Mutual Aid Corporation for Private Schools of Japan. Japan has 596 private universities in total.
But the University of Tokyo has yet to experience any such enrollment problems, thanks to its revered status.
"Although (Todai) is not ranked that high among universities worldwide, it continues to retain its high status and prestige in this 'Galapagos country,' " Honda said, referring to Japanese students' perception of the school.
"Todai is able to survive even though it is not very capable of sensing or perceiving changes in society, the economy and the international environment," she said.
But while some on Todai's faculty may not feel a sense of crisis now, such complacency may be jeopardizing the university's long-term future, Honda said.
Regarding the gap between terms until autumn enrollment, some experts have expressed concern that it may increase the financial burden on students.
Todai hopes high school graduates will use the extra free time to engage in activities that benefit society, such as volunteering for worthy causes, or take on new challenges to broaden their views, such as corporate internships.
It remains unclear, however, whether the university plans to create such programs or internships at companies, or would provide any financial assistance to those participating in them.
It is also quite probable that the new six-month break will highly confuse many students as it will effectively strip them of any official status and leave them in limbo, Ibaraki University President Yukio Ikeda said Jan. 30.
To discuss the specific details of shifting the time of enrollment, Todai intends to set up two consultative bodies in April — one comprising representatives from 11 leading universities, including Tokyo's Keio University, and Kyoto University, and the other involving members of business groups such as Keidanren.
In January, Todai President Junich Hamada said it will be crucial for Japan's leading universities to cooperate in order to realize the change, given the wider changes to society autumn enrollment would necessitate.
Following Hamada's statement, more than 40 percent of 81 national universities announced they plan to start discussions on whether to start autumn enrollment, a recent Kyodo News poll found. In addition, 10 out of 12 private universities surveyed said they also intend to hold talks on the proposed change.
"I believe there are many problems in Japanese society, such as a narrow sense of values, a rigid way of thinking and intolerance. Internationalizing (universities) is desirable to address these issues and help to change society," Todai's Honda said.
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質の高い教育を低所得層まで市民に幅広く平等に行き渡らせる。市民に質の高い教育を与えることは、民主主義を維持し育てるのに必要不可欠。だからネットやＴＶなど様々な手法が論議される。日本とは教育の内容が違うとすれば、民主主義を議題にした教材が日本では極端に少ないことだろう。
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Why the Online-Education Craze Will Leave Many Students Behind
Free classes from elite colleges like Princeton and Harvard have generated excitement, but they could actually widen the learning gap
By Noliwe M. Rooks | July 30, 2012 | Ｔｉｍｅ誌
You have probably heard some of the hoopla about elite universities offering free online courses through Coursera, a new Silicon Valley start-up founded by Stanford University computer-science professors Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng. In just the past few weeks, Coursera has added has added 12 universities to its lineup, bringing its total to 16, including Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania, Duke and Johns Hopkins.
The company’s website says its goal is to “give everyone access to the world-class education that has so far been available only to a select few,” and, accordingly, much of the news coverage has focused on how this will democratize learning. Two weeks after Coursera announced its initial round of partnerships, Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced a plan to invest $60 million in a similar course platform called edX, and then a third company, Udacity, announced that it too would join the fray.
Despite near universal enthusiasm for such projects, it’s important to take a few steps back. First, although the content is free now, it’s unlikely that it will remain that way for long. According to an analysis of one of Coursera’s contracts, both the company and the schools plan to make a profit — they just haven’t figured out the best way to do that yet. But more important, I am concerned that computer-aided instruction will actually widen the gap between the financially and educationally privileged and everyone else, instead of close it.
This is what has been happening in K-12 public schools. Over the past 10 years, public school districts have invested millions of dollars in various types of online and computer-aided learning and instruction programs, yet few are able to show the educational benefit of their expenditures for a majority of students. Those who benefit most are already well organized and highly motivated. Other students struggle, and may even lose ground.
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In terms of learning on the college level, the Department of Education looked at thousands of research studies from 1996 to 2008 and found that in higher education, students rarely learned as much from online courses as they did in traditional classes. In fact, the report found that the biggest benefit of online instruction came from a blended learning environment that combined technology with traditional methods, but warned that the uptick had more to do with the increased amount of individualized instruction students got in that environment, not the presence of technology. For all but the brightest, the more time students spend with traditional instruction, the better they seem to do.
Supporters of online learning say that all anyone needs to access a great education is a stable Internet connection. But only 35% of households earning less than $25,000 have broadband access to the Internet, compared with 94% of households with income in excess of $100,000. In addition, according to the 2010 Pew Report on Mobile Access, only half of black and Latino homes have Internet connections at all, compared with almost 65% of white households. Perhaps most significant, many blacks and Latinos primarily use their cell phones to access the Internet, a much more expensive and less-than-ideal method for taking part in online education. In short, the explosion of this type of educational instruction, though free now, may leave behind the students who need education the most.
It’s not hard to understand why the chance to watch lectures, pass tests and even get a formal certificate from an elite school would stir excitement. Until now, most students would never have the opportunity to experience any part of what happens on these elite campuses. But as the recently released Pew report on the American Dream makes clear, a four-year college degree is the only type of educational intervention that promotes upward mobility from the lower-middle class. If we really want to democratize education, finding creative ways to realistically open up colleges to different communities will do more to help than a model that, despite its stated intentions, is more beneficial for students who are already wealthy, academically prepared and highly motivated. We ought to make sure that everyone has access to the same opportunities, or we will further widen the opportunity gaps we mean to close.
Rooks is an associate professor at Cornell University. The views expressed are solely her own.
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日本と瓜二つのアメリカの韓国人移民の教育熱心。
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Korean students, parents do their pre-college homework
An Ivy League school? Or one in the UC system? Thousands of people of Korean heritage swarm the 2012 College Fair in Irvine, hoping to find the
By Anh Do, Los Angeles Times September 16, 2012, 9:42 p.m.
He's only 11. Still, BJ Bae blended in with the thousands of people of Korean heritage who swarmed an Orange County college fair this weekend. He stopped to sign up for a concentration test so "I can know what job might be good for me."
Angela Kim, 10, headed straight for the Stanford University table, then UC Berkeley, then Columbia University. "We have lots of choices," she said confidently.
The mothers of both children tagged along, stuffing handbooks into their bags, promising to review them together when they get home.
"I'm just stunned by how early the parents are preparing their kids," said Jay Tsai, a recruiter for Yale University, as he surveyed the crowd at the 2012 College Fair in Irvine. The event, sponsored by the Korea Daily newspaper, drew more than 4,000 people — even in 100-degree heat.
Koreans and other Asians placing a premium on academic achievement and college preparation is not new. But to Tsai, the intense interest and the young age of some of those at the event seemed to signal something that is new.
"This tells me it's getting more competitive than ever before," he said.
Ed Johnson, a veteran admissions officer for the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, called it an "amazing gathering." He was eyeing students with top-notch SAT scores and "a motivation to serve," he said. "And, in fact, Korean families have so much motivation. They raise the standard."
Around him, participants were crossing off checklists, consulting a map of the event included in the Korean paper's 100-page guide and trying to figure out where to go. They fanned across the campus of Bethel Korean Church to chapel rooms, lecture halls and the gym, learning the nitty-gritty of financial planning and what's required by Ivy League schools as opposed to University of California campuses.
Private tutors and consultants tried to lure them with their services, including how to get college application essays exactly right.
"We give that extra push. Sometimes, kids have the grades already, but they're confused when they sit down to express their feelings," said Gina Kim, operations analyst for Flex College Prep, which has offices in Arcadia, Irvine and L.A.'s Koreatown. Buyers snapped up $10 copies of a guide written by her firm's chief executive: "Getting In: Insider Tips on College Admissions for Immigrant Families."
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"A lot of Korean families want the brand-name school," Kim said. "We actually try to listen to the student's opinion. We want the student to thrive."
Anna Seok, who manages Admission Masters Educational Consulting Group, offers prep packages from $450 to $4,500. Among them: GPA management. Students and instructors can talk weekly and chart progress.
Students can join clubs devoted to subjects ranging from speech and debate to robotics and NASA — the kinds of extracurricular activities appealing to recruiters.
"We help Korean families find out what type of learner their child is," Seok said, "and from there we work with them to succeed."
Among those working the crowd was an overseas television crew taping a one-hour special on the fair, now in its seventh year. It's one of four such events in the nation.
"This is very important for Korean American society," said Jeongkie Kim, director of EBS America, an education channel. "While many people can be here, many more people can't be here, and parents from Korea aim to send their children to college in the U.S. That is the big goal."
In the cafeteria, Sukha Kim and his son, Ryan, ate $2 ramen sold by the Irvine Korean Parents Assn. "I want my son to have a broad knowledge of everything," said Kim, of Los Angeles. Ryan, a freshman at John Marshall High School near Griffith Park, said he does mental exercises between classes to refresh his memory. He also reads the New York Times, looking for words his doesn't fully understand. "I write it down on index cards to study," he said.
Outside, David Hong, a junior at Tesoro High in Mission Viejo, waited to meet celebrity guest Victor Kim, winner of "America's Best Dance Crew" on MTV. "It's hard to meet our parents' expectations," he said, "but I try my best." He has a 4.0 grade-point average and is tutored in biology, Spanish and pre-calculus. For college, he's leaning toward a chemistry major — or something in sports. "Not as a player," he said, "but analysis or commentary. My dad might like that better."
BJ Bae, the 11-year-old from Plaza Vista School in Irvine, said he handles homework on his own because his mother, Mina Yoon, is busy with her 3-year-old. "We came here to understand how college works," she said.
Michael Chen, visiting from Seoul, heard about it and made time to attend. His mission: Comparing music programs at Yale and Stanford. His daughter began playing the cello at age 5.
"Wherever she desires to go to school," he said, "we want to get her there."
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Yamanaka wins Nobel Prize / 19th Japanese laureate honored for developing iPS cells
(Oct. 8, 2012)The Yomiuri Shimbun
Shinya Yamanaka, who developed induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, has won the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, which he shared with a British scientist, the Swedish Karolinska Institute announced Monday.
Yamanaka, 50, won the prize for developing and establishing reprogramming technology that can revert somatic cells to their undifferentiated, or embryonic, state.
The British scientist, Sir John Gurdon, 79, is known for successfully cloning frogs in 1962.
Yamanaka, the 19th Japanese Nobel laureate, will receive half of the 8 million Swedish kronor (about 95 million yen) prize money during a ceremony in Stockholm on Dec. 10.
Using a method of introducing certain types of genes into mouse skin cells, Yamanaka in 2006 developed iPS cells that rejuvenated to a state close to that of fertilized ova from mature adult cells. He successfully generated human iPS cells in 2007.
His groundbreaking work opens up possibilities in a wide range of fields, such as the development of regenerative medicine and treatments for intractable diseases.
iPS cells are highly versatile, and able to replenish every type of body cell except for those in the placenta.
Their capacity to multiply almost indefinitely has led to expectations they could have a number of practical applications.
It is hoped they will assist the development of regenerative medicine to replace tissue damaged through injury, such as damage to the spinal cord, or through illness, such as diabetes or Parkinson's disease.
They might also help clarify mechanisms that bring about the onset of intractable diseases and assist in the development of treatments for such illnesses.
Yamanaka is the second Japanese recipient of the physiology or medicine prize. The first was Susumu Tonegawa, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in 1987.
Yamanaka was born in Osaka Prefecture in September 1962.
After graduating from Kobe University School of Medicine, Yamanaka became an assistant at Osaka City University Medical School, then a professor at Nara Institute of Science and Technology.
Authoritative Parenting versus Authoritarian Parenting
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Authoritative parenting is very different from authoritarian parenting. While authoritarian parenting can often have adverse consequences for a child, authoritative parenting is often considered by experts to be the best method of parenting.
What is Authoritative Parenting
Authoritative parenting is a parenting method in which you clearly establish yourself as an authority to be respected, but in which you are also responsive to your child’s needs and maintain a nurturing home in which your child feels comfortable making mistakes and questioning rules.
Authoritative parents set clear guidelines and rules for their children. However, these rules are set with their child’s needs in mind. Children are encouraged to question the rules in order to fully understand them, and arbitrary rules do not exist. Disagreements are handled respectfully, and children believe that punishments- when handed out- are fair and understand that their parents are enforcing the rules because they love them.
What is Authoritarian Parenting
Authoritarian parents, like authoritative parents, establish themselves as an authority. However, the key difference is that authoritarian parents are not responsive to their children’s needs. Rules are rigidly enforced, and punishment is often harsh and may include physical punishment such as spankings.
Children of authoritarian parents do not usually feel free to question or challenge, as unquestioned obedience is often required in an authoritarian home. Furthermore, authoritarian parents often set unreasonable expectations and children may begin to feel that they need to be perfect or fulfill these expectations in order to be loved.
Being Authoritative versus Authoritarian
It can be difficult to walk the fine line between being authoritative and authoritarian. The key is in the way you relate to your child. Authoritative parents lead by example, and hold themselves to the same standards as they hold their children. They speak respectfully to their children at all times and expect, rather than demand, the same in return.
Instead of trying to instill rote obedience, as authoritarian parents do, authoritative parents attempt to raise children who can think for themselves and make the proper decision. Like authoritarian parents, they set clear boundaries and rules and children understand that they must exist within these boundaries. However authoritarian parents may set rules ‘because I said so,’ while authoritative parents take the time to talk to their children, explaining rules, and rewarding positive behavior.
Authoritative parents too have high expectations for their children, but they work with their children to achieve these expectations instead of simply getting angry when a child falls short of the measure. This primary difference, between responsiveness and rigidity, is the key distinction between authoritative and authoritarian parents and can make all the difference in a child’s upbringing. http://www.superpages.com/supertips/authoritative-parenting.html
