education

I am going to present here the entire text of resolution 121 along with associated comments. I realize I am a day late and dollar too short on this topic. After all, the resolution is a done deal.

Why didn't they have hybrid-half-study-guide-half-manga when I was a kid! And that's not all! According to Wire Magazine:

Recent News:

• 10 teachers lose 'Kimigayo' lawsuit against Tokyo, The Japan Times; "The Tokyo District Court on Wednesday rejected a lawsuit by 10 high school teachers who were denied postretirement employment after they refused to sing the national anthem during graduation ceremonies in March 2004 ... Presiding Judge Hiroyuki Samura ruled 'the directive does not deny the plaintiffs' rights.' Samura ruled that singing the national anthem in school ceremonies does not force reverence of a specific ideology because it is a 'ritual practice.' He also said the annulment of the teachers' re-employment contracts was a 'legitimate exercise of discretionary power" because the plaintiffs had committed a violation of their duty.'"

Opinion:

The judge has rejected the plaintiffs claim because singing the national anthem is a ritualistic activity. So it's not an ideology. You know, in a kind of bizarro world like this, we can pretty much pick and choose whatever we want to be an ideology. How about if my child rearing philosophy precludes having my children engage in rituals? Especially those that promote group solidarity to a symbolic Emperor, who was in the not so distant past considered a God? Issues like this just can't be solved so long as education is nationally centralized. While I go so far as to support home education, at a very minimum people in their local area need to decide this, not centralized bureaucrats with an obvious far right ... well, ideology.

• 2007/06/19 Ruling party lawmakers dispute 'Rape of Nanking' death toll, AP via IHT; "A group of about 100 lawmakers from Japan's ruling party claimed Tuesday that after a monthslong review they have determined the number of people killed by Japanese troops during the infamous 'Rape of Nanking' has been grossly inflated."

Nariaki Nakayama an ex-education minister under Koizumi Junichiro and 100 other lawmakers have produced yet more evidence which shows the death toll at Nanking was no where near the 200,000 to 300,000 usually reported -- and instead was more like 20,000. Their new source of evidence is a document submitted to the League of Nations by the nationalist Chinese government condemning the Nanking killings. This document places the number of those killed at 20,000. Nariaki Nakayama is current head of the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform, an organization once headed by Shinzo Abe, that has continuously called for less masochistic history text books in Japanese schools. This year marks the 70th year anniversary of the slaughter and several films are set for release concerning it. As I write this, the Associated Press story concerning this has already appeared nine times at Google news (link). The story in Japanese, appears only once at Yahoo! Japan news. My guess is this story will get carried far and wide in the foreign press and then will get more air time in the Japanese press. The story in the Japanese press will mostly consist of the foreign reaction, and not the actual claims made. We'll see how this develops.

Education problem:

• 2007/06/19 Parents from hell give schools a hard time, the Yomiuri Shimbun; "Public primary and middle schools and boards of education across the country are agonizing over how to deal with parents who make unreasonable requests and complaints, according to the findings of a Yomiuri Shimbun survey."

To see Maya's Koizumi's risqué video on YouTube, which I refrained from putting directly into this blog, click here.

The Asahi Shimbun reports:

An Upper House special committee Friday passed a bill to set up a national referendum system--required to revise the Constitution--but did not include a minimum voter turnout limit.

Here are the main points of the bill:

• National referendums will only be held over constitutional revisions;
• The referendum voting age would be 18 or older;
• Central government bureaucrats would face legal restrictions on political