When we talk about morality being the foundation of education, we are also talking about fairness, and the Japanese have made it their policy to make the playing fields of education as level as possible. Unlike in many countries such as the US and even in Nigeria where students’ economic background usually determines the quality of the education students will receive, since the affluent will almost always attend schools founded by high property taxes with state of the art facilities and the best of staff to help them succeed, Japan’s government makes sure that areas with low income levels and property values get good teachers and schools with good facilities too. This is a practical representation of Jeremy Bentham’s Utilitarian Moral Theory of doing what’s most good and least harmful for the majority, as the whole country will benefit for having good teachers and not just a privileged few. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in a survey conducted in 2017 found that in Japan, only about 9% in the variation of student performance is explained by a student’s socio-economic background compared to the OECD average of 14% and 17% in the US. Of course this would be found to be much higher in a developing nation like Nigeria, if such a survey was to be conducted here. As a result, fewer students struggle or eventually drop out of school in Japan. The country’s high school graduation rate is 96.7%.
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Interestingly too, as pointed out by Andreas Schleicher, who oversees the OECD’s work on education and skills development, it’s the number one country in the world where poorer children are more likely to grow up to be better off in adulthood. Schleicher then went further to say, “Japan is one of the few educational systems that does well for almost any student” because “disadvantage is really seen as a collective responsibility.”
(Above is an excerpt from Oladapo Akande’s Masters in Ethics project titled ‘The Moral Foundation of Education’)
_______________ Oladapo Oritsemeyiwa Akande, a weekly newspaper columnist for several years, is a University of Surrey graduate with a Masters in Professional Ethics. An alumnus of the Institute for National Transformation and author of two books: The Last Flight and Shifting Anchors. Ghost writer of a third book LinkedIn: Oladapo Akande oladapo.akande@edutimesafrica.com
EduTimes Africa, a product of Education Times Africa, is a magazine publication that aims to lend its support to close the yawning gap in Africa's educational development.