My Memoir of A Cram School (part 1)

I attended a cram school from 5th to 9th grade. It was run by a monk from a temple. The best students from every elementary and middle school in the city were part of it after passing a tough exam every year. The cram school teacher had a temper and bullied students he didn't like in front of the other pupils, and sometimes even resorted to violence.

He was an eccentric teacher. I remember one interesting incident. It was a weekday evening around 7:30 when the phone rang in the classroom. He stopped the class and talked for a while on the phone. It seemed to be a complaint from a student's mother. He spoke loudly into the receiver. "If you have any complaints, you can have your child leave my school. Yes, I have no problem with that. Even if your child leaves the school, I can keep my monthly income by raising the monthly fees for the other students!"

That's what he always told us and our parents. Every year at the beginning of the new school year, he would gather the parents at the school and intentionally exaggerate his education and school management policy. Parents shuddered every year. In particular, the parents of the new ninth graders, who would take the high school entrance exam a year later, were subjected to harsh words. He said, "This year's 9th graders are not doing particularly well. If your child can't keep up with my classes, I would recommend you to hire a tutor to help them keep up with my classes!"

Every year, I think, that was how he was instilling in parents the fear of their children dropping out of academic society, and to silence their complaints and criticisms of him in advance. My mother even took his words to heart and then said to me harshly that she was going to find me an English tutor at a famous local university, because I had always been a bad student in the cram school (but still passed the promotion exam every year).

Eventually, the college student tutor that was assigned to me was even more one-way and violent than the cram school's teacher. This meant that I became an even bigger victim of corporal punishment at least until my parents finally decided to fire him two months after they had hired him.  That, however, is another story. The teacher of the cram school was a staunch realist who did probably not believe in God or Buddha. I find this ironic when I think of the Tenmangu Shrine in front of the school, a shrine dedicated to the "god of learning". I heard that he died of a stroke a long time ago.

-1-

After World War II, Japan underwent all kinds of legal changes under the order of American General MacArthur, including the revision of the Constitution of Japan. The same was true for the school system. Until Japan's defeat in the war, compulsory education was limited to elementary school. However, the school system was changed to an American system, and middle school was made compulsory, meaning that all Japanese children were required to go to middle school. 

This led to the construction of many new middle schools throughout the country and the establishment of temporary cram courses for future teachers for the new schools. At the same time, middle schools under the old school system were re-established as high schools under the new system.

It should be remembered that in the old school system, middle school was not compulsory. Although entrance examinations were not held in most middle schools under the old system, they were still considered a place where the to-be-elite boys could go. (For your information, coeducation was only available until elementary school. Girls went to their own middle schools.) When the school system was completely overhauled and middle schools were opened to all Japanese boys and girls after WW2, most of the old middle schools became new high schools.

(For the record, the old middle school system was a five-year system that included what is now called a high school course.)

Under the new school system, not only middle schools but also high schools were created one after another, and the schools that were promoted from middle schools to high schools were considered superior to the other newly created high schools because of their prestige and human heritage (as well as graduates). As a prestigious school, they also continued to be recognized by the local population.

After the occupation of Japan by the victorious powers was lifted, and with the combination of good fortunes in the world situation, Japan experienced unprecedented economic growth. Every family became wealthy to some extent and could afford to send their children to high school and even college, which led to fierce competition in high school and college entrance exams.

It was not because the government could not provide enough places for those who wanted to pursue higher education. If they just wanted to go to college, they could find a place to go anyway. But parents wanted their children to go to schools that were slightly higher than their actual grades. Their humble wish eventually led to the half-spontaneous establishment of an educational system in which virtually all middle school students, from the inferior to the super-excellent, were pushed to compete.

This competition was pretty different in urban and rural areas. I was born in the capital of a prefecture, but it was a rural city compared to Tokyo or Osaka. It had a prestigious public high school. People said that if you wanted to enter a prestigious university in Japan and become a winner in the academic society, it was more advantageous to enter this high school. In other words, it was the underlying message that if your child could not get into this prestigious school, he or she could never become a winner in Japanese academic society. (I will not discuss here whether this was really the case or not).

In an ordinary prefecture like the one where I grew up, and not in a big city like Tokyo or Osaka, there was practically only one option for parents who wanted to send their child to a prestigious university with a national reputation. To send them to the best public high school in the prefecture. As a result, in many regions of Japan, the hierarchical nature of high schools increased. While some private high schools became prestigious (depending on how many students they produced each year who were accepted into prestigious universities), public high schools became more hierarchical as well.

Japanese cram schools started as private remedial schools for children who failed in classes in middle school. In the past, many more children finished school after graduating from middle school, but as the Japanese economy grew and families' incomes increased, they were able to afford to send their children to high school. In fact, the percentage of children who went on to high school exceeded 90% by the late 20th century.

Previously, children did not have to feel inferior even if they failed in middle school as long as they were not expected to go on to high school, but with the increase in the number of students who failed in classes but went on to high school, two types of cramming increased: remedial cramming for these students and preparatory cramming for students with excellent grades in middle school who wished to improve their grades and go on to a more prestigious school. In addition, it was not uncommon for a single cram school to have several different classes for different grades. There were, of course, students who did not go to cram schools for certain reasons, but virtually all junior high school students in Japan were expected to be competitive, regardless of their grades.

- 2 -

Once upon a time there was a charismatic cram school teacher in Osaka. He began his career as a cram school teacher by teaching a few middle school students in his home, but his reputation soon became so strong that many parents sent their own children, most of whom were boys, to his Irie-Juku school, and many of them were accepted into very prestigious high schools. Irie was a man who placed great importance on spiritual education. He reprimanded students who did not follow Japanese manners and etiquette, and corporal punishment was commonplace.

Parents did not like the idea of their children being turned into racehorses, but at the same time, they wanted their children to win the entrance exams at all costs. The charismatic Irie-Juku cram school catered well to their ambivalent feelings. Irie theorized that cramming education was the same as education in traditional Japanese martial arts such as judo and karate, with the end goal being to develop a high sense of spirituality.

Irie-Juku did not require an entrance examination; it was open to all students. Many eventually dropped out, but almost all of those who studied at the school until the end of 9th grade were accepted into prestigious high schools. Irie seemed to truly believe that "those who cultivate a high spirit will become excellent human beings" as he disciplined the students, but in fact he was practically brainwashing the students and their parents repeatedly with the secret message, "Those who cannot stand my discipline and drop out lack courage. If you drop out of my school, you will not be able to go to a prestigious high school, and in Japanese academic society, your life will be over."

I was not born in Osaka. But the cram school I was sent to was probably an epigone of the cram school in Osaka. However, there were several differences between them. First, the charismatic teacher of this cram school "Hikari no Izumi" ("Fountain of Light" in English), unlike Irie School, did not have any noble educational slogans. Secondly, in this cram school, no student dropped out of school. Students took a promotion test at the end of each school year which also served as an entrance test for newcomers. If someone failed, he was simply kicked out of the school and could come back if he passed the entrance test the next year.

The teachers teaching was not particularly good, and his teaching materials consisted of commercially available problem sets (although they were very difficult). Instead, it was the school's biweekly tests that pushed students to study hard. The program consisted of three classes per week, two on weekday evenings and one on Sundays. As an example, there might be an hour of English class on Wednesday nights at 7:00 p.m., an hour of math class on Friday nights at 7:00 p.m., and an hour and a half of English and math class on Sunday before or after noon. (The day and time of the class differed depending on the student's grade level and course.)

During weekday classes, we would enter the classroom several tens of minutes before the class started and solve some rather difficult test questions that an instructional materials company had prepared for junior high school students. Then there was a class, and once it was over, we continued to solve the rest of the exam questions. Some students finished quickly and put their exam papers in the drop box and went home, while others persisted for nearly an hour to finish their answers. While the students were solving the problems, the teacher was either in another classroom teaching students in another class or in his small office grading his students' papers.

The graded papers were returned to us on Sunday. In addition to the grade, there was also a ranking for the whole class marked on everyone's paper, and if the grade was not high enough, the paper was marked as "Failure." When he thought that our grades were not good overall, those of us who fell below a certain number of points, which the teacher claimed was the minimum passing grade, were ordered to sit upright on the wooden floor and use their chair as a desk for a time that was proportionate to their score. The lower the test score, the longer they had to sit on the floor, so everyone in the class knew who was the dumbest. I once got an extraordinarily bad grade in 7th grade, and I was made to sit on the floor for the longest time of any of my classmates.

I had scored very poorly on the English and the math exam. I remember having to sit on the floor for over an hour, but halfway through I felt so stupid that I stopped sitting on the floor and sat in a chair. Fortunately, the principal didn't remember my actual grades and didn't notice that I had cheated.

- 3 -

In that era, in response to criticism that the entrance exam war was also attributed to the concentration of high-achieving students in a few high schools, various steps were taken in many cities by local boards of education to address this issue. For example, in the city where I grew up, an interesting high school entrance system was put in place at the time. 

[Continued to part 2]