IIJI has its work set out for it........Internet lags in Japanese
schools
BY MICHAEL ZIELENZIGER
Mercury News Tokyo Bureau
TOKYO -- Masako Toyanaga's fifth-graders got excited when the
Internet arrived in their classroom.
''It's easy and fun to use,'' 10-year-old Arika said as she clicked
through a Web page to track the delivery of a package.
''I can even search for new information from foreign countries,'' added Seiji, her classmate at
Fujimigaoka Elementary School. ''With books, the information is older.''
Since the Internet was unleashed in the school a month ago, Toyonaga has dramatically changed the
way her 35 pupils learn about computer technology.
''Before, we were just teaching students about the computer itself, how to use the keyboard and the
mouse, things like that,'' she explained. ''But now we can actually use the computer as a tool for
research and study.''
Unfortunately, Toyanaga's wired classroom is a rarity in Japan.
Despite the proliferation of high-tech gadgets in this industrial powerhouse, Japan's schools lag far
behind their U.S. counterparts in embracing computers and the Internet. Only an estimated 10
percent of elementary and junior high schools in Tokyo and Osaka, the two largest cities, are
connected to the Net. That pales in comparison to the United States, where more than 85 percent
of all schools are wired, according to a national survey in November.
The listless pace with which the Internet is being introduced in classrooms reflects, in part, the
cultural barriers that have slowed its adoption in Japan. In a nation where hierarchy, order and
seniority remain powerful forces, and where information is more likely brokered than shared, the
freewheeling architecture of the Internet is deeply unsettling.
Here in Tokyo's Suginami Ward, one of the capital city's wealthiest neighborhoods and home to the
Japanese headquarters of Silicon Valley's Hewlett-Packard Co., Toyanaga's was the first grade
school to gain Internet access. Only three of the district's 44 grade schools have been wired, all on
an ''experimental'' basis.
''Whenever we have meetings, the teachers say we need Internet access immediately,'' said Hiroshi
Mikome, the head of information technology for Fujimigaoka Elementary. ''But the school
authorities, they're scared.''
In the rigid and highly bureaucratic public school system, resistance to the Internet runs especially
deep. The Ministry of Education has set a ''national goal'' that all of Japan's schools should have
Internet access by 2002. But the ultimate power to wire the schools lies not with the national
government but with neighborhood education offices, which have powers similar to those of local
school boards in the United States, with one key difference: They are not elected, so they are not
directly accountable to parents.
Many of these local educational fiefdoms, like the one here in Suginami Ward, are apathetic -- and
often downright hostile -- to bringing the World Wide Web into the classroom.
''The Internet isn't everything,'' sniffed Masaho Ono, board of education supervisor in Suginami,
who supervises 44 elementary schools and 23 middle schools. ''It's just one part of the curriculum.
Face-to-face education is far more important.''
Until December, the ward maintained ''information disclosure'' rules that prohibited any computer
inside the ward from being connected to computers outside. This even prevented the ward from
linking to Tokyo's other wards in an earthquake information-exchange network.
Although the 23-year-old statute was revised in December after nearly two years of debate, ''We
take the issue of privacy very seriously,'' Ono said, suggesting a fear that vulnerable children could
be manipulated or exploited through e-mail.
In nearby Ota Ward, a blue-collar neighborhood of small factories and workshops, school
supervisor Harumi Matsumaru said putting the Internet in classrooms is not high on her agenda,
either.
''Our ward mayor has his own priorities. He is more interested in earthquake preparedness,'' she
said, using a euphemism to describe pork-barrel public works projects. ''For us it's an issue of how
we use limited taxpayer money.''
Like the mayor and the rest of Ota Ward's government officials, she works in a gleaming, new,
16-story high-rise with no computer networks or Internet connections.
Matsumaru worries, moreover, that if students begin freely using the Internet, they will get harassing
e-mail from fellow students.
''If a student uses e-mail,'' she asked, ''how can a teacher censor it?'' She said the teachers' union
would resist opening each school to the outside world. And, she asked pointedly, how would using
the Internet help students prepare for college entrance examinations, in which they are quizzed
relentlessly on basic facts and not asked to think?
''Our entire examination system still depends heavily on rote memorization, which you learn from
teachers,'' Matsumaru said. ''So I'm not sure our schools are ready to shift to an individual-style,
Internet-style education.''
Like many others, she worries that grade-school children already spend too much time in front of
the TV and playing video games.
''As it is, children don't play enough outdoors. I'd rather see children play outside and talk with
others than spend all day watching TV or using the Internet.''
This attitude frustrates Masafumi Ishigaro, an enthusiastic 35-year-old who teaches 7- and
8-year-old students in Setagaya Ward and can't get his classroom wired.
''The education board is very far away from the front lines'' of teaching, he said. ''When it comes to
leading-edge technology, they are very good at stopping us but not at helping us.
''Our problem is hierarchy. I don't think the educational board is afraid of the Internet, so much as
they are ignorant. They have no idea how to utilize Internet technologies as a communications tool.''
Ishigaro uses a hamster pen and an aquarium, among other tools, to stimulate his students'
imaginations. But he said that among his fellow teachers, ''there's some prejudice that using the
Internet is dangerous and that connecting to the outside world is dangerous.''
''The Education Ministry has an active vision of the future educational system, but the local schools
boards have no idea about it,'' said Akira Hashimoto, the Web master for Yukigaya Elementary
School in Ota, where he's launched a pilot program on using the Web. ''Most of these local
education committee members don't have computers, so they have no idea what the Internet is.''
Hashimoto has helped his students design a home page that tells visitors about the ward and
Japanese culture. He's posted some of the children's artwork on the site. And he's created a ''sister
school'' Internet connection with the Bentley elementary school in Salem, Mass.
(www.bentleyschool.org/), although he's careful not to post students' names or addresses.
But every time Hashimoto revises his Web page, he must get the education committee's permission.
And because his supervisors don't know how to use computers, Hashimoto must print out every
page of the Web site and take it to the education board's offices in city hall so the board can review
it.
''If I printed out everything, it would run to more than 100 pages!'' said an exasperated Hashimoto.
''They want me to print it out and fax it all.''
And while the Bentley school in Massachusetts boasts 112 computers for nearly 700 students,
Hashimoto has only 11 computers for 526 pupils.
''I'm very worried about this,'' Hashimoto said. ''We're falling behind'' other countries.
''This is the difference between Japan and the United States,'' Hashimoto said. ''In America,
individuals have power. They don't worry about laws, they just go ahead and do things.
''But in Japanese there is a term, okami, or authority. We have to follow the rules. We have order.
We have the limitations of always following the rules. People are worried that our stable society will
be destroyed by the Internet.''
That doesn't mean some brave Japanese don't sometimes take risks to permit some random
dandelions to burst through the concrete. In one school, students are already surfing the Net even
though the ward school committee hasn't yet come to inspect the classroom to ensure that students
can't access ''dangerous'' or ''obscene'' Web pages.
''We told them those pages are blocked so that students won't get access,'' one teacher admitted --
even though no fire wall protections have yet been erected. ''Since they don't understand the
Internet, they won't know the difference.''
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