Rethinking Schooling for the 21st Century

emphasis on similarities (Rose, 2015, pp. 93-97). 36 Chinese textbook depictions
of contemporary Japan allude to a notion of ‘eastern culture’ (dongfang wenhua),
but in highly stereotypical terms — while emphasising the Chinese origins of
many aspects of traditional Japanese culture. Overall, Rose concludes, China
and Japan are ‘generally not portrayed as fellow constituents of a shared “East
Asian” region or cultural sphere,’ with curricula in both countries featuring ‘little
discussion of the nature or extent of their shared cultural traditions, beyond
references to the (one-way) transmission of culture from China to Japan in the
distant past’ (p. 100).
Gender
What do prevalent conceptions of nationhood and development imply for gender
relations? Much rhetoric on the role of women in development has tended to
view this matter instrumentally; women have often been implicitly depicted
as ‘mothers of development’, with the value of girls’ education defended by
reference to its utility in ‘reducing poverty, containing population growth,
engendering public health, and strengthening the nation’ (Ross, 2006, pp. 29-30).
On this matter, official curricula have little to tell us: issues of gender equality
Issues of gender equality
barely rate a mention in
curricular documents
for any of the major East
Asian countries
barely rate a mention in curricular documents
for any of the major East Asian countries (see
Appendix II-5). In the case of China and Japan,
the issue appears almost entirely absent from
such documents; in Korea, it rates a passing
mention only in the curriculum for middle school
Social Science. But this curricular ‘blind spot’ is
itself highly significant.
Concern for gender equality has typically taken a low priority in Japan’s public
policy agenda; Japan typically comes at the very bottom of developed-country
league tables for female employment, the gender pay gap and other measures
of equality (OECD, 2012). Curricular documents indicate no concerted drive to
transform entrenched attitudes in this area. This does not imply the complete
neglect of such issues in textbooks. These feature many images of women,
often stereotypical (nurses, teachers, shoppers, homemakers, receptionists
and so forth), but sometimes less so. The Teikoku Shoin Civics (Koumin) text,
for example, features a picture of the athlete Yoshida Saori (brandishing a
Japanese flag at the London Olympics) (p. 166) and a text box on Ogata Sadako,
the former (female) head of the UNHCR (p. 183). But the same text features only
one short paragraph explicitly addressing the theme of gender equality (p. 43),
which simply outlines relevant Japanese legislation and exhorts everyone to ‘take
responsibility’ for promoting equality. Tokyo Shoseki’s Civics text goes somewhat
further, devoting almost a whole page to this theme, and presenting a text box
36 By contrast, references to Korea, according to Rose, still tend to emphasise similarities with
Japan (2015, p. 96).
Rethinking Schooling for the 21 st Century:
The State of Education for Peace, Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship in Asia
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