some old memoir

I graduated from elementary school in March 1970, which means I belong to the generation that is 50 years older than the author of 'To All Those Who Underestimate the University of Tokyo'. The differences in specifications between the author and me during our elementary school years are as follows: (1) I entered a public elementary school in Kamigyo-ku, Kyoto (Ninna Elementary School) in April 1965 and moved to an elementary school in a suburban bedroom town (Oyamazaki Elementary School) in September of my fifth year. (2) My parents were both teachers, so the values in both the school and home environments were completely the same for me. In other words, I didn't have the opportunity to learn the basic culture of Japanese society of "omote and ura" before entering the real world. (3) Because my parents were teachers, they couldn't send their own child to a cram school. In other words, at that time, the Ministry of Education viewed educational institutions that complemented school education outside of school hours as highly unfavorable, and in a sense, cram schools were seen as a shady existence, so it would have had a negative impact on the teacher's position to send their own child to such a place. (4) At the aforementioned Ninnaa Elementary School, only about one in 100 students were attending cram school. The reason for this was that only about 1% of the families of the students attending this elementary school had the economic ability to send their children to cram school. Also, in the educational environment, there was a yakuza boss's son in my year, and all the students were frightened, so much of the teachers' energy was focused on dealing with the violent incidents of that student, and education tended to take a backseat. (5) Based on the above, I think I was in an environment where the principle of competition, such as attending cram school to compete for grades, was almost absent. And the report card was evaluated on a five-point scale, with only science being a 4, and the other subjects being 1, 2, or 3. However, by the second year of elementary school, I had read about 100 books such as "Science Book" (Sekai Bunka-sha). From the third year, I read "Jiro Monogatari" and the world famous masterpieces rewritten for children (especially "Jane Eyre" left a strong impression) when I had free time. On the other hand, I didn't like the atmosphere of the class itself in elementary school, so I didn't listen much in class. (6) In the end, until I took the university entrance exam, I didn't take school classes seriously, partly because it was difficult to concentrate in the noisy and distracting group environment. As a result, for me, studying is something that is done alone by finding books, which is a somewhat unique style compared to people today. Nevertheless, I did manage to enter the University of Tokyo, for what it's worth.