Abstract:

Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) has redefined quality education as one that offers creative and critical thinking skills to prepare students for an unknown future. Of the three main pillars of ESD, environment, economy, and social (equity) issues, it is the social pillar that embodies the notion that each child has a right to quality education. This research looks at the situation of newcomer students to Japan, Sweden, and the US, and their prospects for being included in the educational model that will give them the appropriate tools for their futures.

The first step of a longer project focusses on Japan. Post-war Japanese education has been praised for its meritocracy and boasts a nearly 98 percent high school graduation rate, one of the highest in the world with more than 50 percent of these students continuing on to higher education. But students who are not citizens, even though they may be permanent residents, are not included in these statistics. And their numbers are expected to rise. On December 9, 2018, the Japanese Diet enacted a partial amendment to the Immigration Control Act (ICA) which establishes two types of resident statuses, increasing the possibilities for foreigners of various skill levels to work in Japan.

It is expected that approximately 350,000 foreigners will be entering Japan from April 2019. The expansion of the bracket of types permitted to work will increase the numbers of foreign children attending school in Japan. At this time, Japan looks abroad to countries that have had ample experience addressing multicultural and inclusive issues and how this affects the preservice early education teacher.

As Japan prepares for this new influx, much can be learned from lessons of past ICA implementations, in particular, from the first program started thirty years ago. Because Japan is a gakureki-shakai or school-credential society, school success correlates closely with future economic and social success (White, 2002). The failed efforts of the yutori kyoiku (relaxed curriculum) years did little but to reinforce a value on the test-driven curriculum (and hence another question regarding the implementation of ESD-directed “quality education” in general). The lesson of the past ICA is that those who are not endorsed by the gakureki model, either by choice or by failure to get through it, face an uncertain road in a risk-averse culture. Without a solid policy, growing numbers of non-national students entering the educational system without proper school guidance or parental support risk being left on the fringes of society with limited possibilities for future careers and greatly circumscribed life-choices. Although at this writing, the non-national population is barely two percent of the national total, its presence adds to the challenges faced by Japan’s post-bubble society, a society in which many of its own citizens are at increasing risk of becoming marginalized individuals living on the fringes

Keywords:

Newcomer, ESD, meritocratic, equity, inclusion, foreigners, immigration, gakureki-shakai.