The Education Ministry plans to reintroduce Saturday classes starting on a monthly basis by the 2017 academic year in an effort to improve students’ scholastic ability. What do you think about this?

It's not the length of time students have to sit there while the teacher drones on and on and on in a monotone.

It's the content of the lessons that needs looking at.

For a start the curriculum has to reflect students' needs. A child or teenager will be an adult one day. Work out what information he or she is going to need to survive in society and give them that information. High School students particularly have to deal with totally useless and inapplicable data.

Involve the student in the learning process. Get discussions going. Get students writing essays. Expressing their opinions, developing their ideas.

Make lessons relevant, interesting for the student and above all, understandable.

Dang it, this ain't right. The kids in Japan already have too little free time, they need free time to enjoy themseleves, this is a bad idea, i'll tell you what.

Since when did the Ministry of Education had any sense? They just want to churn out yet another robotic industrial workers. They are living in the past.

Make the school day a bit longer and be consistent about not changing the schedule. Saturday classes are bad for everyone, except maybe the conbini on the way home from school where the kids will buy snacks because it will be just before lunch time.

More time sitting at a desk does not improve scholastic ability. By making both teachers and pupils more jaded, it lowers scholastic ability and more important, strips out the joy of learning and replaces it with drudgery.

Weekends are for families, both kids and teachers need two days off to spend quality time with their loved ones and to recharge ready for Monday.

Cut out all the unnecessary stuff that goes on at school, make the school day 8 till 4 instead of some days 2, some days 5, other days anytime inbetween, put some structure into the school day and let the kids have their Saturdays free to follow their own interests.

Lock the doors to the schools on Friday evening and don't open them again until Monday morning. Go live your life! Teachers included.

More time is not a substitute for proper teaching.

Hearing some parents, I get the feeling that this is less about education and more about babysitting. Sure is gonna give me less time with my own child. So sad :(

I think it's a fabulous idea.

After, it's a given and proven that if something is failing, that doing more of the same will ALWAYS work out better.

More of the same. That should do it

They need extra time to indoctrinate the students with Abe's right-wing propaganda. I wonder if the teachers will be getting a 20% pay rise?

If working on Saturday is such a good idea, let's see the politicians do it too. Hold Diet sessions six days per week throughout the year, with a few weeks off in summer. It will keep the politicians from committing crimes.

J-education,

Got news for ya! If you cant do your job Mon-Fri, adding Saturdays AINT GOING TO HELP! Except make it worse!

Thank god I didn't grow up in Japan!

Insane. Not only will it do nothing at all educationally, it will prevent families spending weekends with their children, which appears to be what 80% of Japanese families want. I am not following this.

Involve the student in the learning process. Get discussions going. Get students writing essays. Expressing their opinions, developing their ideas.

When they say "scholastic ability", they really mean the ability to take tests, not their actual intelligence or level of practically useful knowledge. Tests (since they have to be standardized and "fair" rather than being effective) find it hard not to overly favor rote learning, and for that increasing quantity of hours is indeed somewhat effective.

But I agree that the ability to score 100 on a stupid paper test is not everything. Family life and overall growth is important. Flush the idea and try something else, I say.

The truth is that they are terrified of anyone having any time to spend for themselves. Keep everybody busy and exhausted all the time from a young age and they will grow into the kind of people that don't ask questions or criticize. You see parents shoving their children into narai goto every day of the week from when they are not long out of womb. Japanese society seems to have a real fear of free time.

It's pretty simple really. The education standard has not changed since they stopped Saturday school. It was failing long before then. If you have ever worked in a Japanese public Jr or Sr high the failings of the system are very obvious. No control and no consequences for students. Teachers in fear of monster parents. Easy tests to keep the averages up. Rampant intimidation and bullying by teachers. Dirty and poorly maintained school buildings. The list goes on!

News flash for the education ministry: More is not better! Better is better!

I've heard that practice doesn't make perfect: perfect practice makes perfect. If you just keep doing more of the same and not getting proper results, you need to re-evaluate your game plan, not just keep doing more of what isn't working. Then again, I've heard that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Sounds sort of familiar.

And they have not even had Saturdays off for one full generation yet!

Are they going to give this a chance?

Besides, even cutting Saturdays they still need less of a whole bunch of stuff. But there they are again thinking they need more! And that was part of the original problem!

What are the falling standards they identify? Most adults I speak to know pretty-near nothing about anything. They know nothing about history, including their own, they know nothing about geography or religion. Many Japanese believe Israel is Islamic. Ask a few. They struggle with arithmetic, don't understand basic biology, are generally hopeless at English, clueless on science, economics and politics, and have very poor communication skills. Why on earth do they think even heavier doses of the same thing will be positive for the next generation? It's absolutely nuts.

And listen to this...they are even given homeworks in the summer.

If the logic of the Education Ministry is true, then this must apply to other similar situations also. Everyone knows that the crime rate is going up, so have the cops come on duty 6 days a week. The bureaucrats haven't been able to cut through the red tape or cut down on misuse of funds for restoring Northeastern Japan from the quake and tsunami of 2011, so they should come in 6 days a week. Politicians haven't been able to pass important laws due to time constraints (bickering), so they should come in 6 days a week and that's 6 days a week all through out the year. Come to think of it the education system with all it problems with teachers hiding and covering up bullying issues with students and teachers alike should be coming in 6 no 7 days a week until these issues are resolved. And then if it shows that just adding more time does help, then we can discuss how best to use that additional time at school. But in my opinion in the end if the discussions are carried out extensibly, we'll come to the conclusion that trying to make everyone into a math genius won't make the kids function better in the world today, we have computers for that now. It's people who can understand why things are done the way they are done today, but if need be to also be able to see that it can be changed to make things better. Creative minds that can put together many different existing components to come up with a unique device that people will have a use for maybe even if they didn't think they needed it.

Yeah it's not gonna work.

Back when I was into swimming competitions, mostly the team with best swimmers won against the team with more swimmers. Quality over numbers.

More time in classes will turn into more juku after school , more work for the teachers (most already work seven days a week), more stress for both pupils and educators and less time to spend time with the family or pursue other passions. The Ministry might end up getting the opposite results of what they're looking for.

Before they do anything else, they ought to upgrade the Education Ministry. It is a bottom rung ministry, only above Agriculture, and the people they choose for it are not the best people. I am being polite. These bottom feeders have an unbending formula for all educational issue: add more time. To teach absolutely fifteen classes universities are forced to teach on holidays and the academic year is forcibly extended. This has not improved the quality of university education one bit. Guaranteed Saturday classes will do nothing to improve Japanese miseducation, which depends way too much on role memorization. Where are Japan's Steve Jobs? They have been smothered by Japanese schooling.

And when the Saturday plan fails again they will introduce Sunday school to take up the slack - what a joke, I don't want my children anywhere near the j-education system

Why not make school 24/7?

Based on the Monbusho's logic, all kids will become geniuses!

exactly serendipitous.. hell, they may even invent an 8th day so kids get an extra day of studies!

Don't they spend enough time in school? What with weekdays, Saturday special classes and sports training on Sundays... give them a break.

When they say "scholastic ability", they really mean the ability to take tests, not their actual intelligence or level of practically useful knowledge. Tests (since they have to be standardized and "fair" rather than being effective) find it hard not to overly favor rote learning, and for that increasing quantity of hours is indeed somewhat effective.

It's based on the Global standardized test (PISA) where the test also measures the critical and analytical skills of students. Although Japan is ranked in the top 10 in all three of the subjects (mathematic literacy, reading comprehension, science literacy), it's gone down since 2000.

Yutori education policy failed for the simple reason that less hours are spent on basic fundamentals with more emphasis on completing the curriculum.

nigelboySep. 28, 2013 - 12:53AM JST

Yutori education policy failed for the simple reason that less hours are spent on basic fundamentals with more emphasis on completing the curriculum.

Student is the last one to be blamed.

PISA rating is somewhat misleading, but Japan ranked 4th place in November 2012. Not too bad. Yutori education is not only one to be blamed. A quality of teacher is important as well. Teaching smart in Creative Learning environment is a key.

Student is the last one to be blamed.

Please read my post carefully. I never blamed the students.

PISA rating is somewhat misleading, but Japan ranked 4th place in November 2012. Not too bad. Yutori education is not only one to be blamed. A quality of teacher is important as well. Teaching smart in Creative Learning environment is a key.

I agree. There should also be advanced courses/class to combat the Yutori's "no child should be left behind" policy.

Yes, why bother looking at quality of classes and teachers when you can just give longer and more crappy lessons. I would be livid if I was a parent. IMO, weekends are for quality time with the family. The sad thing is, many families are probably very happy to be getting rid of Jr on Saturdays now.

Mombusho doesn't understand education. It isn't the number of hours in the classroom that matters, it's the length of the students' hair, the color of their underwear, and the length of the girls' skirts. Plus, whether the teacher is actually singing the national anthem or merely lipsyncing. These are the important details.

Hours in the classroom is, however, good practice for the hours students will spend at a desk pretending to be working in a company after graduating.

The education ministry is out of touch with the needs of today's children but to be fair this is happening everywhere in the world. These kids are born into the digital generation and like it or not they think differently from us. We are looking at our education systems and coming to the conclusion that they are failing because we are evaluating and testing students on past needs and a traditional way of learning that has no utility anymore. These politicians and to some extent the parents and teachers are reactionary in the extreme and they have no idea what the needs of the students are. It is time for us to re-evaluate the entire philosophy of education to fit in with a digital world. e.g. Cramming facts into our heads or doing mental arithmetic is becoming less and less relevant or necessary. These politicians want the students to have more redundant skills but they will never be motivated to learn them because they are redundant. It's time for the bureaucrats, parents and teachers to wake up, not the students.

Saturday is just the chance to make the children even more 'dronelike' than they really are............

Most teachers in Japan are very hard working, but sorely undertrained. Most often, they have less than a month of practical training before graduating from college. After that, they are not encouraged to take higher degrees, to get more qualified in different subjects, or to do any professional development. No wonder the kids AREN'T all right.

Sheer idiocy! As the Pink Floyd song says, "Leave those kids alone...all we are is just another brick in the wall".

Drove past FIVE schools today. ALL had teachers and kids there. Crazy. Good to see those parents parenting. Ahem.