Juku
Juku ( jap. 塾 , short for 学習 塾 , gakushū juku ) are private tutoring or drumming schools , in which around two thirds of all Japanese students take important exams (elementary to high school, sometimes after regular school lessons) in the evenings or on weekends University) or receive tutoring.
Overview
There are advanced courses and normal courses as well as individual or remedial lessons in small groups. Depending on the number of subjects and lessons, the costs range from very affordable to exorbitant and a large educational industry has developed around the juku.
After a so-called "Juku boom" in the 1970s, Juku have gained in weight again in recent years, as the Japanese Ministry of Education reduced the content of middle school and high school curricula in 2002. The end of Saturday classes in schools has also led to a further increase in the number of students in the juku.
Juku operate with many different teaching methods, from online offerings to satellite broadcasts, from lectures to individual and group lessons in a school-like class format. The juku also vary in their organizational form. Even if all Juku are profit-oriented, the forms of organization range from mom and pop Juku , which attracts schoolchildren especially in the immediate vicinity, to the large corporations and franchise companies in the education industry.
In recent years, Juku seem to offer more and more than a solution to the apparently rampant problem of the " school refusal " ( 不 登 校 , futōkō ). This already points to the wrong associations that the term “cramming school” often triggers, since these children refuse to take part in classes in schools, but some of them regularly take part in juku classes.
Whether the supposed misery of Japanese education, which is often incomprehensible from the perspective of foreigners, many journalists and, increasingly, politicians see Juku as an example of a market-based education that is more closely oriented towards the needs of students and parents.
Despite the generally considered important role of Juku in the Japanese education system, there are hardly any sociological research projects on the teaching content of the Juku or its attractiveness for students and parents.
See also
literature
Dieter Dohmen, Annegret Erbes, Kathrin Fuchs et al .: What do we know about tutoring? - State of the art and evaluation of the research literature on supply, demand and effects. Berlin, 2008 Study on behalf of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, p. 120 ff.