Juku, the hard life of Japanese school children that are forced to attend cramming schools (2024)

FAQs

What is a juku in Japanese education? ›

Gakushū juku (Japanese: 学習塾; see cram school) are private, fee-paying schools that offer supplementary classes often in preparation for key school and university entrance exams. The term is primarily used to characterize such schools in Japan.

It is a cram school where you study to enter a difficult junior high school, high school, or university. The second type is called “hoshuu juku” or supplementary school, for kids who have trouble keeping up with the regular classes.

Cram schools, called juku, are special private schools common in Japan that offer lessons conducted after regular school hours, on weekends, and during school vacations.

Juku, or private cramming schools, exist to help young Japanese get through the tests. Classes can last for up to four or five hours after school, and some students may not get home until as late as 9pm or 10pm at night.

They help students review and prepare for regular school lessons as well as advance to the next level through preparation for entrance examinations. Many juku provide both kinds of services as well as remedial assistance for those having difficulty with their school studies.

In the past, cram schooling helped students gain entry to a better school by improving their abilities for taking tests on academic subjects, but now it plays a much more diversified role in students' daily lives.

At the end of the 2019 school year, it began allowing girls to wear pants. At the end of 2021, girls were given the option of wearing neckties, no longer limited to bow ties.

In Japan, there is a tradition that the students themselves clean their schools. For just 15 minutes at the end of the day, students use brooms, vaccuums, and cloths to clean the classrooms, bathrooms, and other school spaces.

Students are often forced to cram after improper time utilization or in efforts to understand information shortly before being tested. Improper time management is usually the cause for last-minute cramming sessions, and many study techniques have been developed to help students succeed instead of cramming.

Cramming is about finding a good rhythm. If you study for 6 hours straight, you're more likely to drool on your test than pass it. We recommend a 50/10 split: 50 minutes studying, 10 minutes of anything else. On your break, exercise, or sing, or dance, or sit still, or play soccer with the neighbor's house cat.

Do Americans go to cram school? ›

It is a place where elementary school students, junior high school students and high school students go to study after school. There are no cram schools for university students, but there are cram schools for students who have graduated from high school and failed in college.

How much does juku cost? A. It's generally said that that juku during grade four costs 600,000 to 800,000 yen, during grade five, 700,000-1 million yen and during grade 6, 1 to 1.5 million yen. That said, there is much variety among fees for juku.

Cramming is essentially trying to stuff a load of information into your short-term memory in time for an upcoming exam. This has been proven to increase stress levels, and can lead to panic and anxiety, making it a lot harder to take in information.

Tuition is about 40,000 yen, or nearly $400, a month. That is higher than the fee for an average group class, but Mrs. Takano feels it is well worth the cost.

In Japan, a society where study often takes precedence over sleep, inemuri, or falling asleep in public spaces, is common during class time in schools and universities and is tolerated by teachers because they know that students study hard and are exhausted (Steger, 2006) . ... ...

Juku Tutoring is a reliable and long-established organisation that is perfect for both students and tutors.

Japan believes that a clean environment is a sign of a focused mind. Therefore, cleaning the school translates to staying focused, being a good student, and becoming a productive member of Japanese society.

Every student in the room was paying 7,000 yen an hour six days a week (about $56 at the time), not an inconsiderable sum for a relatively young teacher's attentions. Thirty percent of all Japanese students attend jobiko or cram schools.

To Cram or to Sleep? Good sleep can pay off even the night before an exam. Some studies have found that getting a full night's sleep before taking an exam is correlated with better grades and higher overall GPA.

It goes without saying that cramming places too much stress onto the brain, pushing it beyond its limits. When the brain is overworked too much, too often, it increases feelings of anxiety, frustration, fatigue and even confusion. Like the human body, the brain needs time to breathe, relax and refocus.

Is cramming a worst habit? ›

Continuous cramming will induce stress. The constant time pressure can be too much for students to handle. Their tasks also accumulate over time. This means that they will have to do plenty of things in a short period.

Shorts, jeans, and camisoles are perfectly fine to wear as long as you don't plan on attending religious sites. While denim isn't a popular fashion choice for those beyond their teen years, black jeans are more acceptable due to their versatile nature.

There's no definitive answer to this question since fashion trends vary greatly in Japan. However, leggings are generally considered to be acceptable attire in most social settings. So if you're planning on visiting Japan and want to pack light, feel free to bring along a pair or two of your favorite leggings!

In almost all schools, Japanese students are required to take off the shoes they wear outdoors and wear different indoor shoes. At some schools, students wear uwabaki, a kind of soft slipper meant to be used only indoors.

Yes, in Japan parents and children bath together fully naked. And that's culturally perfectly normal. From a Japanese perspective, together tub-time is good for family bonding. As children grow older, they'll start enjoying bath time separately.

The signature feature of a Japanese-style toilet — also called a washlet — is the cleaning wand. Located directly below the toilet seat, the cleaning wand sprays your tush and offers a remarkable level of cleanliness that just can't be achieved with toilet paper alone. But this isn't your average bidet.

Japanese schools focus on quality over quantity. A study showed that 85% of the students in Japan are happy in school.

Cramming is an effective way to get through a test without having to invest much time or energy into it but it does not help commit information to long-term memory. The goal of memorizing information is not so that you can recall it for a test and then forget about it forever; you want to remember it forever.

Decades of research have demonstrated that spacing out study sessions over a longer period of time improves long-term memory. In other words, if you have 12 hours to spend on a subject, it's better to study it for three hours each week for four weeks than to cram all 12 hours into week four.

Cramming leads to information overload. Like a sponge that can only retain so much water, your mind can only retain so much information. Muskingum College says you can only concentrate for about 20 minutes before this information overload sets in and you are unable to make efficient use of your time.

Should you sleep after cramming? ›

A nap was found to improve memory scores on a test in one study, suggesting that a quick sleep could help to refresh your mind and consolidate all that learning. Keep it short though; any more than 20-30 minutes and you could find it difficult to fall asleep later on.

Yes, it can work sometimes, but it depends on the content, test format, and how you learn best. If you find yourself cramming for every single test, get yourself a planner and schedule in blocks for studying to spread it out. Don't cram if you want to be able to recall the information later on in life.

Niche, a ranking and review site, recently published its list of the “2023 Hardest Colleges to Get Into.” Using data from the U.S. Department of Education on various colleges' acceptance rates and SAT/ACT scores, they found, unsurprisingly, Harvard University to be the most difficult college to get into.

The rule of law has made school attendance from the ages 6 to 17 mandatory in every state for the past 100 years. If you aspire to have your child be a slacker, don't enroll them in a Californian school, where the truancy laws are among the harshest.

Forty-four percent of respondents said US students spend "much less" time on schoolwork than at their home countries, while 21% thought they spend "a little less." Asked how difficult their classes are in the US, 66% said they are "much easier" and 24% said "a little easier." The results were similar compared to a ...

Parents can expect to pay around 250 yen (US$2.50) per day for kinder and elementary school students, and anywhere from around 300-450 yen ($3-$4.50) for junior high and high school. So, just what are Japanese school lunches all about and how does it all work?

Japan funds its public schools through a combination of support from the national, prefectural and municipal governments. In public compulsory education, prefectures pay two-thirds of teachers' salaries, and the national government pays one-third.

Lunches are highly subsidized by the Japanese government and cost approximately $2.50 per day, but their most unique aspect is how the food is served. The students themselves are in charge of collecting meals from the prep room, serving them to their classmates, and then ferrying the dirty dishes away.

In addition to referring to school teachers by profession, SENSEI in Japanese is also used as a title of honor for people who teach something and for specialists in their own fields. Medical doctors are included among those specialists. So, you call them SENSEI.

What is a Japanese school girl called? ›

Etymology. The word kogal is a contraction of kōkōsei gyaru (高校生ギャル, "high school gal").

A randoseru (ランドセル) is a firm-sided backpack made of stitched firm leather or leather-like synthetic material, most commonly used in Japan by elementary schoolchildren.

After graduating from Chuo University in Tokyo in 1968, he moved back to Okinawa and ran a " juku ", a private school. Some of them are cram schools, also known as juku . However, Japanese parents are sending their children to private cram schools, known as " juku ", to 'make up' for lost time.

Careers in education are very popular in Japan and college graduates vie for the few available teaching positions. Teaching jobs guarantee lifelong income and relatively high occupational prestige. Teachers are arguably treated with more respect than their American counterparts.

In informal use, senpai (also styled as sempai) can refer to anyone whose attention you want to get—that could be someone you admire and want to be friends with or someone you're interested in romantically.

Nihon and Nippon. The Japanese name for Japan, 日本, can be pronounced either Nihon or Nippon.

At the end of the 2019 school year, it began allowing girls to wear pants. At the end of 2021, girls were given the option of wearing neckties, no longer limited to bow ties.

The idea was taken from scaled-down sailor suits worn by children coming from royal European families. It was relatively easy to sew and thus was easily adopted in the country.

Its cultural significance

The randoseru, like many things in Japanese culture, is a nearly immutable object. It represents a carefree, innocent, and traditional childhood in Japan. It's not just any backpack one would throw on in the western world. Nearly every single child has one here.

Do Japanese high schoolers wear backpacks? ›

While some schools mandate their own style of bag that matches the required uniform, others allow for more individual choice. While most school bags are sold in a similar style, recently many high schoolers have even started using full-sized backpacks.

f*ckubukuro (Japanese: 福袋, pronounced [ɸɯ̥kɯbɯꜜkɯɾo]; "lucky bag") is a Japanese New Year custom in which merchants make grab bags filled with unknown random contents and sell them for a substantial discount, usually 50% or more off the list price of the items contained within.

The Japanese period is used much the same as the English period. It marks a full-stop, or end to a sentence. In vertical writing, it sits at the bottom right, below the character before it.

In its native language, juku means “private tutoring school” or “cram school” and is a term borrowed from Middle Chinese, in which it once meant “gate room.” Because juku is of Chinese origin, we can see the clear resemblance today between juku and Mandarin shú or Cantonese suk.

The Basics. まだ is a versatile adverb that can be used to express something you're still in the process of doing, or something you haven't done yet. Used in a positive context, まだ means "still," whereas in a negative context, as in まだ〜ない, it implies that something has "not yet" happened.