Japanese education spells holistic development

Context: the Indian education system has a lot to learn from Japan.

Learnings from Japan’s education system

• A holistic approach to education: ‘Chi-Toku-Tai’ as the defining features of Japanese schooling, where-
• Chi translates to ‘know’ lay an emphasis on building strong academic abilities. 
• Toku translates to ‘virtue’; refers to mindfulness, self-discipline, and cooperative abilities. 
• Tai translates to ‘body’ and refers to physical and mental well-being.
• ‘Zest for life’: Focuses on holistic ability extending beyond academic prowess to include ‘kansei’, which roughly translates to ‘sensitivity’.
• This approach aims at developing a knowledgeable mind which can appreciate beauty and nature, hold a sense of justice, and respect life and labour.
• Shaping social behaviour: Moral education includes norms that define socially responsible and considerate behaviour towards everyone, including nature.
• E.g. As a summer project, students venture out in nature observing beetles, cicadas, crickets and sketching or noting their characteristics in their ‘insect diary’.
• Students as young as first-graders take turns to clean their classrooms, washrooms, serve school lunches, and water the plants at school.
• Experiential learning and independent thinking: Training children in identifying problems in their local communities such as health ailments, pollution, waste disposal, etc. and coaching them in developing solution road maps. Children may create a disaster preparedness map based on their own research.
• ‘Kaizen’ — the Japanese philosophy of continuous improvement: Include activities such as organising events, maintaining library, etc., and after task completion, students are made to reflect on problems they experienced in the process such as wastage, conflict, etc. and ways to resolve them.
• Culture of ‘Collectivism’: Working as a group and group harmony is fundamental to Japanese society.
• E.g. Games like treasure hunt involving third-graders focuses on keeping the unit together as teams could only move forward when all its members were together and agreed on next strategy.