The Consideration Needed In Promoting Homeschooling in Japan
The Consideration Needed In Promoting Homeschooling in Japan
THE TOTALITARIAN VIEW/GROUP-ORIENTED MINDSET
The totalitarian view has been nurtured in the Japanese society by Shintoism, Buddhism, Confucianism and Bushido (the way of the warrior). Japanese society has also been highly centralized since the begining of the Tokugawa Shogunate/regime in the 17th century. The modernization of Japan, carried out from the 19 century and onwards, was strongly influenced by German statism. Old idelologies such as Shintoism, Confucianism and Bushido, were incorporated into the Japanese version of statism. This statism is still the foundational ideology of Japan. Education plays a vitally important role in promoting statism in Japan. The government-controlled educational system in Japan aims to make Japanese children statists who believe that the state is their Messiah. Japanese people rely on the Shintoistic, Buddhistic, and Confucian civil government as their savior, although it almost always betrays their trust.
The Japanese society is basically totalitarian. Each individual person is regarded as a cogwheel, or at best, subordinate to the society to which he belongs. This leads to the centralization of power. The decentralized, bottom-up social system is quite foreign to the Japanese people and society.
In this context, the Japanese usually define themselves according to their society. Schoolchildren usually identify themselves according to the schools they attend. Men usually regard themselves as company-men as they hand out business cards.
The "I believe what my company/school/group believes" mindset is quite common among the Japanese. If one seeks freedom from the bondage of this mindset, others assume that he is dropping out of the race. They usually fear being different from others. Freedom and Independence are the most difficult concepts for the Japanese to understand and put into practice. In short, the Japanese people and society are quite socialistic.
DISINTEGRATION OF THE FAMILY
Because of sugar-coated socialism in Japan, families are regarded as secondary. This has been paving the way towards the disintegration of the family.
In Japan, fathers are intensely occupied with their work. Typical white-collar workers wake up early in the morning and leave for the office at around 7 am, returning home almost at midnight. Mothers often work part time while children attend the public schools. The family members can be together at home only at midnight. This includes many Christian families as well.
Christians often also disregard the value of the family at the cost of institutions such as companies, schools, and clubs. Japanese Christians are strongly influenced by the socialistic/statistic values. The activities of churches can also hinder the integration of Christian families. For most families, Sunday is the only day when all of the family members can be together. But church activities such as men's meetings and youth groups play a role in disintegrating the familes. Most people have no idea that family is the most foundational covenantal unit in society.
In my article "Why Japan?" I wrote about this subject :
So far within the evangelical circles, one on one evangelism was mainstream, and this resulted in individualism in the church. In terms of evangelism, the approach towards families are weak. Theology that backs up the covenantal nature of the family(such as a father/husband is a covenantal head of a family) is not well accepted and rooted among Christians in Japan, which leads to the weakness of the Christian families in Japan. In most cases, Christian families are not well integrated for the cause of the kingdom of God. Husbands mostly spend their time with their colleagues in the company, and wives are quite often out for part-time jobs. Children are mostly taken care of by public schools. Then the distinction between the Christian and non-Christian is blurred. This disintegration makes families weak in respect of being covenantal units not only in the ecclesiastical community but also in the Japanese society as a whole. In other words, Christian families do not function properly. Thus we see the difficulties in establishing Christian families as covenantal units in the society.
This leads to the fact that we have great difficulty in having strong leadership not only in families but also in the ecclesiastical community. Children cannot have their Christian father as their role model. They cannot learn leadership from their father. Then they grow up to be leaders who are not well grounded on the solid doctrines of the Scripture. They are moved by the humanistic, syncretic, or seclusive mind-set. The fact that we lack good leaders is one of the main causes of the failure of Japanese Christianity.
Fathers are not taking the responsibility for educating their children. They are too occupied with their work. This results in boys not being raised by their fathers, but by their mothers. This is one of the reasons for the feminization of the boys in modern Japan. Unless the fathers take charge of education, homeschooling will not succeed.
HOMESCHOOLING, THE NARROW AND STRAIT GATE FOR JAPANESE CHRISTIANS
When many people hear the term "Christian home education," they struggle to understand it. Because of the Japanese totalitarian mindset, even Christians regard the family as somehow subordinate to social institutions such as churches, schools, and companies. To them, it is quite natural that the government takes responsibility for their children's education. This is almost a religious belief. Even Chiristians trust the government in a religious manner to some degree. Many Christians fail to recognize the anti-biblical statism they have unwittingly adopted. They disregard the value of the family in favor of companies, schools, clubs, and even the activities of churches. Few pastors even have "Bible time" with their families.
These Christian families fail to realize that God has given them the Dominion Mandate. Failing to recognize God's call to the family leads to the lack of understanding of the value of the family. This results in the lack of vision for the future, especially in raising children. In this context, they regard education as simply a means for their children to get jobs and become part of the secular world.
Many Christians fail to understand the fact that the father is the covenantal head of the family, in the relationship between God and man. As I have written before, the responsibility of education lies mainly on the shoulders of mothers, whether they are Christians or not. In most cases, we see mothers in charge of their children's education whether they send their children to public schools or "church schools" (very small Christian schools run by local churches). Even in homeschool settings, mothers take the initiative.
As I have mentioned in my article "Educational Refugees," people pull their children out of public schools due to negative causes, such as bullying. They then face two alternatives: homeschooling and church schooling. Many Christian parents find the option of church schooling more attractive. The idea of church schooling fits the Japanese group-oriented mindset. By allowing parents to delegate their responsibilities to workers and teachers, the church schools blur the parental commitment to education. Church schools sometimes even go towards the direction of second-class public schools or "public schools located at local churches." These church schools are still modeled after public schools due to the humanistic and secular epistemology, teleology, and expectations from parents. (Those parents who delegate parental responsibilities to the church schools expect the schools to become alternative public schools).
Therefore, homeschooling is the most difficult alternative even for Christians.
THE PREREQUISITES FOR CHRISTIAN HOMESCHOOLING
Starting Christian homeschooling demands the following factors:
1) Each Christian laying his foundation on the freedom and liberty in Christ
2) Recognition of the fact that God has given the Dominion Mandate to families
3) Realizing that God has commanded fathers to teach their children
4) Parental commitment to educating their children
5) Fulfilling parental responsibility in educating and discipling children without delegating the core part of education (especially character building) to others, such as teachers of church schools
6) Understanding what the Christian family is and its value
7) Laying out the Christian epistemological and ethical foundation, making the antithesis between the Christian and non-Christian worldviews clear
8) Holding the vision of Christian education; namely, raising the next generation for the cause of the kingdom of God.
PITFALLS IN THE JAPANESE HOMESCHOOLING MOVEMENT
-Weak Christian Community in Japan
Homeschooled children need a Christian community in which they can grow, study, work, marry, form their families, and raise their children.
There are no Christian communities here in this sense. People say that Christian communities exist here, but in most cases, this only means that the church members live in the same neighborhood. There are few business owners, few homeschooling families, and many weak churches.
It is extremely difficult for boys to intern and receive job training from Christian fathers. Most of them go into the corporate track, which effectively makes them nothing more than 21st-century slaves.
Most of the Christians here are white-collar workers, enslaved under mortgage loans, and struggling to get financial liberty (or don't even think about financial liberty). This is one of the main causes of the weakness of Japanese churches.
Boys cannot learn to become dominion takers.
Girls are expected to become homemakers, and it seems to us that higher education for girls is something additional.
But there is a problem in Japan. Even though girls want to be homemakers, they cannot find spouses. The Japanese church has been failing to raise Christian men since the beginning of its history. One of the elders here described this situation as "one truckful of Christian ladies to one Christian man." We see many godly Christian ladies stay single all their lives working in the corporate track. Their financial status is often on the verge of the poverty line. Many of these ladies end up compromising and marrying non-believers; and in many cases, the married couples and their children never attend church any more.
One homeschooling mother told us, "I want my daughter to get a good profession, because she will most probably have to stay single her whole life. She has to be independent."
Another homeschooling mother said, "Unless we can find a spouse for our daughter, she cannot be a homemaker."
-Weak Theological Foundation
When we introduce homeschooling to Japanese, we first have to define what the family is. To do this, we have to explain what covenant is. The word "covenant" in Japanese, keiyaku, simply means "contract." The Japanese language is rooted in the Buddhistic/Shintoistic worldview. When Christians share their belief, they must start with groundbreaking work, which requires a great amount of time. The fact that the Japanese society has little Christian background makes the this groundbreaking work extremely difficult. In many cases, people start homeschooling with a poor theological foundation.
-Weak Teleology, Epistemology, and Methodology
When the homeschoolers here lack vision, methodology, and good examples, they mostly go toward either of the following directions:
1) "Being un-schooled," which results in them being uneducated with absolutely no academic discipline.
They will have a big risk of becoming NEET's--
Young people who are Not in full-time Education, Employment or Training (NEET). We see this phenomenon among grown-up Japanese homeschoolers from time to time, and this is a big stumbling block for the homeschooling movement in Japan.
2) "Public school system at home," with non-Christian curriculum with secular worldview
Homeschoolers cannot afford a Christian educational methodology in the Japanese language. Christian curriculum and textbooks are nearly nonexistent, partly because of the size of the market here. Children raised in these settings cannot become epistemologically self-conscious Christians. They cannot become good workers for the Kingdom of God because of their humanism-stained worldview.
CONCLUSION
Unless we can establish good alternatives, more and more Japanese homeschoolers may give up Christian homeschooling by going back to the public school system or joining some secular community.
If we fail to show the Japanese people workable plans, examples, and vision, they will not be motivated to start homeschooling here.
The hurdle is high, but resources are lean.
The homeschooling movement in Japan has been already distorted and thwarted by the group-oriented mindset of the Japanese, which appears in the form of institutions such as church schools and "hybrid schools."
Since last April, Paideia Network's homeschooling intro seminar has been dealing with subjects such as "Covenant Family," "Parental Discipleship," and "The necessity of a working Christian Community."
Japanese Christians have been failing all the tests given by the Lord so far. Throughout the history of Japanese Christianity, churches have been failing to obey the Lord, by compromising with liberalism, idolatry, and secularism.
For Japanese Christians, Christian homeschooling is the final test from the Lord. If we fail it, there will be no future for Christianity here.
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Shu Suzuki