Educational Policies and Policy changes in Japan: An analysis

Abstract

Japan is the country that has performed an economic miracle in the world after the Second World War. At present it is the second most successful largest country in the world, economically and technologically, and is second only to the United States of America. When Japan was a developing country in the early nineties, they had a problem of developing the country economically due to inadequate natural resources. Human resources were the only resources they had. As a result, they were wise enough to decide that providing better education to the people of the nation was the one and only solution to building the nation up. Immediately after the Meiji restoration, Japan quickly took the necessary action through Education Ordinance and other educational policies to introduce a systematic educational process to the country. Therefore, this study explores the educational policies of Japan, especially after the Meiji Restoration and explores major factors that militated, in determining educational policies and policy changes in Japan. Further, it extracted any lessons that could be learnt from Japan. Data for this study was from primary and secondary data sources and analysis was done descriptively. The findings reveal the significant characteristics of Japanese educational policies and the policy change and the factors that affected in determining policies in Japan. Further, it lists out the lessons that can be learnt from Japan. Since Japan was opened to the outside world in 1868, intemationalization, industrialization and technological advancement took place to a great extent much, earlier and faster. Japan welcomed these changes because Japan was not a colonial country and as a result, it was independent enough to take useful decisions and implement them as a nation. There is no doubt that the success of Japan was their well planned education system and it can be concluded that, the efficiency and the effectiveness ofthe educational policies and policy changes depended greatly on the loyalty in the hearts of the people of the nation, for one?s motherland. Further, cooperative commitment and devotion are tools that gear the country's advancement towards success