Moral orientations of schoolchildren in the United States and Japan

Comparative Education Review

Volumn 43, Issue 1, 1999, Pages 64-81

  Ban, Tsunenobu ^a   Cummings, William K ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0033249365     PISSN: 00104086     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/447545     Document Type: Article

References (39)

1. Emile Durkheim, Moral Education (New York: Free Press, 1961). Also see John Glenn, The Myth of the Modern School (Amherst, Mass.: University of Massachusetts Press, 1982).
2. Emile Durkheim, Moral Education (New York: Free Press, 1961). Also see John Glenn, The Myth of the Modern School (Amherst, Mass.: University of Massachusetts Press, 1982).
3. For the Japanese case, see Ivan Hall, Mori Arinori (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977);
4. for the United States, see Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America (New York: Basic, 1969);
5. Freeman Butt, A Cultural History of West-em Education (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1955).
6. William K. Cummings, S. Gopinathan, and Yasumasa Tomoda, The Revival of Values Education in Asia and the West (Oxford: Pergamon, 1988), point out that the upsurge of interest in values education is evident throughout the modern world. For a treatment of the United States, see
7. Warren A. Nord, Religion and American Education: Rethinking a National Dilemma (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995).
8. National Commission on Excellence in Education, A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1983).
9. See William J. Bennett, The Book of Virtues (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993).
10. Other works reflecting the new public interest are Robert Coles, The Moral Life of Children (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986); and Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982).
11. Other works reflecting the new public interest are Robert Coles, The Moral Life of Children (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986); and Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982).
12. Monbusho (Ministry of Education), "Interim Report of the Central Council for Education: To Cultivate Children's Sound Minds That Develop a New Era" (March 31, 1998).
13. Ministry of Education, Guide of Study for Moral Education (Tokyo: Ministry of Education, 1989).
14. In addition to Bennell, the following were given special consideration: Barry Chazan, Cotemporary Approaches to Moral Education (New York: Teachers College Press, 1985); Linda Eyre and Richard Eyre, Teaching Your Values (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993) ; Andrew Garrod, ed., Learning for Life - Moral Education Theory and Practice (New York: Praeger, 1992); and Thomas Lickona, Educating for Character (New York: Bantam, 1991). Also of interest was the October 1993 issue of Phi Delta Kappa that featured a survey of U.S. values.
15. In addition to Bennell, the following were given special consideration: Barry Chazan, Cotemporary Approaches to Moral Education (New York: Teachers College Press, 1985); Linda Eyre and Richard Eyre, Teaching Your Values (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993) ; Andrew Garrod, ed., Learning for Life - Moral Education Theory and Practice (New York: Praeger, 1992); and Thomas Lickona, Educating for Character (New York: Bantam, 1991). Also of interest was the October 1993 issue of Phi Delta Kappa that featured a survey of U.S. values.
16. In addition to Bennell, the following were given special consideration: Barry Chazan, Cotemporary Approaches to Moral Education (New York: Teachers College Press, 1985); Linda Eyre and Richard Eyre, Teaching Your Values (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993) ; Andrew Garrod, ed., Learning for Life - Moral Education Theory and Practice (New York: Praeger, 1992); and Thomas Lickona, Educating for Character (New York: Bantam, 1991). Also of interest was the October 1993 issue of Phi Delta Kappa that featured a survey of U.S. values.
17. In addition to Bennell, the following were given special consideration: Barry Chazan, Cotemporary Approaches to Moral Education (New York: Teachers College Press, 1985); Linda Eyre and Richard Eyre, Teaching Your Values (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993) ; Andrew Garrod, ed., Learning for Life - Moral Education Theory and Practice (New York: Praeger, 1992); and Thomas Lickona, Educating for Character (New York: Bantam, 1991). Also of interest was the October 1993 issue of Phi Delta Kappa that featured a survey of U.S. values.
18. There were also idiosyncratic themes: peace, internationalism, and ecology were additional themes prominent in the Japanese materials, and individual rights and personal autonomy were prominent in the U.S. material; for the research reported here we have focused on the common themes.
19. Lickona.
20. Ibid., p. 45.
21. See Yasumasa Tomoda, "Foreword," in Patterns of Value Socialization in U.S. Primary Schools: A Comparative Study, by Yasumasa Tomoda et al. (Osaka: Osaka University, Faculty of Human Sciences, 1997), pp. 1-4.
22. A number of recent comparative studies have related family and school context to academic achievement; see Archie E. LaPointe, N. A. Mead, and G. W. Phillips, A World of Differences: An International Assessment of Mathematics and Science (Princeton, N.J.: Educational Testing Service, 1989); H. W. Stevenson et al., "Mathematics Achievement of Chinese, Japanese, and American Children: Ten Years Later," Science 259 (1993): 53-58; Harold Stevenson, Hiroshi Azuma, and Kenji Hakuta, eds., Child Development and Education in Japan (New York: W. H. Freeman, 1986); and the review essay by Leigh Burstein and John Hawkins, "An Analysis of Cognitive, Noncognitive, and Behavioral Characteristics of Students in Japan," in Japanese Educational Productivity, ed. Robert Leestma and Herbert J. Walberg, Michigan Papers in Japanese Studies (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1992), pp. 173-224. This is the first quantitative study we are aware of that relates these contexts to moral orientations and behavior.
23. A number of recent comparative studies have related family and school context to academic achievement; see Archie E. LaPointe, N. A. Mead, and G. W. Phillips, A World of Differences: An International Assessment of Mathematics and Science (Princeton, N.J.: Educational Testing Service, 1989); H. W. Stevenson et al., "Mathematics Achievement of Chinese, Japanese, and American Children: Ten Years Later," Science 259 (1993): 53-58; Harold Stevenson, Hiroshi Azuma, and Kenji Hakuta, eds., Child Development and Education in Japan (New York: W. H. Freeman, 1986); and the review essay by Leigh Burstein and John Hawkins, "An Analysis of Cognitive, Noncognitive, and Behavioral Characteristics of Students in Japan," in Japanese Educational Productivity, ed. Robert Leestma and Herbert J. Walberg, Michigan Papers in Japanese Studies (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1992), pp. 173-224. This is the first quantitative study we are aware of that relates these contexts to moral orientations and behavior.
24. A number of recent comparative studies have related family and school context to academic achievement; see Archie E. LaPointe, N. A. Mead, and G. W. Phillips, A World of Differences: An International Assessment of Mathematics and Science (Princeton, N.J.: Educational Testing Service, 1989); H. W. Stevenson et al., "Mathematics Achievement of Chinese, Japanese, and American Children: Ten Years Later," Science 259 (1993): 53-58; Harold Stevenson, Hiroshi Azuma, and Kenji Hakuta, eds., Child Development and Education in Japan (New York: W. H. Freeman, 1986); and the review essay by Leigh Burstein and John Hawkins, "An Analysis of Cognitive, Noncognitive, and Behavioral Characteristics of Students in Japan," in Japanese Educational Productivity, ed. Robert Leestma and Herbert J. Walberg, Michigan Papers in Japanese Studies (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1992), pp. 173-224. This is the first quantitative study we are aware of that relates these contexts to moral orientations and behavior.
25. A number of recent comparative studies have related family and school context to academic achievement; see Archie E. LaPointe, N. A. Mead, and G. W. Phillips, A World of Differences: An International Assessment of Mathematics and Science (Princeton, N.J.: Educational Testing Service, 1989); H. W. Stevenson et al., "Mathematics Achievement of Chinese, Japanese, and American Children: Ten Years Later," Science 259 (1993): 53-58; Harold Stevenson, Hiroshi Azuma, and Kenji Hakuta, eds., Child Development and Education in Japan (New York: W. H. Freeman, 1986); and the review essay by Leigh Burstein and John Hawkins, "An Analysis of Cognitive, Noncognitive, and Behavioral Characteristics of Students in Japan," in Japanese Educational Productivity, ed. Robert Leestma and Herbert J. Walberg, Michigan Papers in Japanese Studies (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1992), pp. 173-224. This is the first quantitative study we are aware of that relates these contexts to moral orientations and behavior.
26. This tendency has been seen in many international studies. For example, in the Youth Activity Survey conducted by the Prime Minister's Office of Japan, on every question relating to satisfaction (with friends, family, school, and work) ,Japanese young people consistently expressed a lower level of satisfaction than American youth. As one illustration, 55.6 percent of the American males expressed much satisfaction with current friendships compared with 43.9 percent for the Japanese male students. See the Prime Minister's Office, Report of Youth Activity Survey (Tokyo: Ministry of Finance Printing Office, 1991).
27. Takeo Doi refers to this permissiveness as amaeru in The Anatomy of Dependence (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1973); Catherine Lewis among others discusses the complementarity between indulgence at home and discipline at school in "Cooperation and Control in Japanese Nursery Schools," Comparative Education Review, vol. 28, no. 1 (February 1984), 69-84.
28. Takeo Doi refers to this permissiveness as amaeru in The Anatomy of Dependence (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1973); Catherine Lewis among others discusses the complementarity between indulgence at home and discipline at school in "Cooperation and Control in Japanese Nursery Schools," Comparative Education Review, vol. 28, no. 1 (February 1984), 69-84.
29. Parenthetically, it should be observed that about two-thirds of the children in both societies report they fight with their brothers and/or sisters. Is there any relation between bullying in schools, a matter of current concern, and the even more frequent incidence of bullying in the home?
30. Other studies asked about the real experience of being picked on: whereas 39.1 percent of Japanese students answered yes, they had been picked on, 58.1 percent of American students answered in the affirmative. Japanese Institute for Child Study, Report on Lower Secondary Students Survey in the US and Japan (Tokyo: Japanese Institute for Child Study, 1985).
31. Although the Japanese grading system was once based on the statistical rate of a normal curve, it is now left to teachers' initiatives.
32. Our interviews with Japanese teachers revealed that they were reluctant to stress abstract virtues such as "respect others" and "accept others," believing these to be too ideological and too closely associated with the external political debate about moral education; they instead preferred to focus on more concrete behaviors such as "listening when another student is talking," which is a contextualized specification of the virtues of respect and acceptance of others.
33. Initially, separate analyses were conducted by country and gender; in that the factorial patterns for these more detailed analyses were essentially similar, we report results here based on the combined analysis.
34. 2 is greater for the United States, and influences such as negative feelings, low achievement, and failure to help around the house are most closely associated with this factor.
35. See n. 12 above.
36. Chie Nakane, Japanese Society (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1970). Also see Teruhisa Horio, Educational Thought and Ideology in Modern Japan (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1988).
37. Chie Nakane, Japanese Society (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1970). Also see Teruhisa Horio, Educational Thought and Ideology in Modern Japan (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1988).
38. See Eshun Hamaguchi, Kanjin-shugi no Shakai Nippon (Tokyo: Toyo-keizai, 1982).
39. An irony requiring further exploration is the interest of American parents and teachers in articulating abstract virtues, whereas, according to our data, American young people are most open to moral lessons that emerge from real-life stories they hear in discussions of current events and in chats with friends. Concerning values education, there may be a communication gap between the generations in the American system.