A touchy subject
http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,,1790903,00.html
The proposed introduction of patriotism into the national curriculum
has provoked fear among Japanese schoolteachers, reports Justin McCurry
Monday June 5, 2006
Conservatives in Japan would no doubt take issue with the English
writer Samuel Johnson. Far from being the last refuge of the scoundrel,
patriotism is the ideological weapon with which they are bludgeoning
the country's schools into submission.
By the time the current parliamentary session ends on June 18, the
ruling Liberal Democratic party and its allies should have completed
the biggest overhaul of state education since the US occupation
authorities drew up the Fundamental Law of Education in 1947.
The proposed revisions leave no corner of the Japanese classroom
untouched, but it is the policymakers' insistence that patriotism be
made part of the national curriculum that has most exercised the minds
of editorial writers, and instilled fear into the teaching profession.
Critics of the 1947 law say its stress on individual freedoms has led
to a breakdown in classroom discipline and produced children devoid of
any interest in their country's history or culture. Teaching them what
it means to be patriotic would be the perfect antidote. Couched in
those terms, it is hardly surprising that two-thirds of the public
support the reforms.
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