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Japanese Higher Education as Myth
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Comments/Reviews
Description: In this dismantling of the myth of Japanese "quality education," Brian J. McVeigh investigates what happens when state and corporate forces monopolize the purpose of education, and schooling becomes testing for employment, not learning. The book uses Japanese students' opinions and voices, not just statistics and official reports, to describe the problems and issues concerning higher education in Japan today.
McVeigh (who has taught in Japan's higher education system for over eight years) shows that with so much weight given to examinations, students end up "simulating" much of their schooling. Grades reflect administrative expediency rather than academic achievement; class attendence substitutes for actual learning; and reforms attempts reenforce the problems. Thus although Japan's higher education system appears to successfully graduate students every year, it is actually a system of institutionalized mendacity that reproduces the less enviable traits of national statism.
Selected Contents:
List of Tables, Figures, and Abbreviations
Preface
Acknowledgments
1. Introduction: The Potdmkin Factor
2. Myths, Mendacity, and Methodology
3. State, Nation, Capital, and Examinations: The Shattering of Knowledge
4. Gazing and Guiding: Japan's Educatio-Examination Regime
5. Schooling for Silence: The Sociopsychology of Student Apathy
6. Japanese Higher Education as Simulated Schooling
7. Self-Orientalism Through Occidentalism: How "English" and "Foreigners" Nationalize Japanese Students
8. "Playing Dumb": Students Who Pretend Not to Know
9. Lessons Learned in Higher Education
10. The Price of Simulated Schooling and "Reform"
Appendix A: Statistics of Japanese Education
Appendix B: Other Types of Postsecondary Schools in Japan
Appendix C: Modes of Institutional Operation and Simulation
References
Index
Comment(s): "An astonishing aspect of modern Japan is how institutions created toward the end of the nineteenth century aimed at 'catching up to and surpassing the West' remain entrenched well after they have lost their functions. ...Brian McVeigh offers the best analysis of why Japan can't reform its educational system. ... Japanese Higher Education as Myth is indispensable reading for those who need to know what's wrong in Japan and why it will not soon change." -- Chalmers Johnson, author of MITI and the Japanese Miracle
"Brian McVeigh brings a rare combination of anthropological insight, personal experience, and healthy skepticism to bear on an essentially political problem -- the endlessly discussed dysfunction of higher education in Japan. ... With palpable sympathy for his students, the true victims of an educational system geared to non-educational purposes, McVeigh has at last set the true agenda for Japan's university reform -- and in terms so cogent that it will be much more difficult now for Tokyo's bureaucratic and business leadership to argue it the old way." -- Ivan Hall, author of Cartels of the Mind: Japan's Intellectual Closed Shop
Review(s): This book should be top of the reading list for all politicians, bureaucrats and university leaders, not only this semester, but for all future ones until Japan's universities are thoroughly reformed. The Daily Yomiuri
McVeigh comprehensively shows that the role of higher education in Japan is being played imperfectly. The prime value of this work will be to increase the pressure for real change. Proceedings
McVeigh's excellent analysis of institutional dysfunction focuses on how learning is sacrificed and students are poorly served by the simulated schooling that passes for higher education in Japan. ...a sobering reminder about Japan's future, as chances for a more robust civil society rest on the efforts and initiatives of tomorrow's graduates. Japan Times
...students of anthropology, sociology, comparative education, and the catch-all field of "Japanese Studies" should find McVeigh's thesis provocative, his analysis of the problems confronting many daigaku compelling, and his description of their effects on individual students and Japanese society illuminating. The History of Education Quarterly
...McVeigh's book is a provocative addition to the debate on Japanese higher educaiton and should be compulsory reading for anyone in the field. Journal of Japanese Studies 30:1
    
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