Each weekday morning in Tokyo, children as young as six are walking to school on their own. After arriving, they bow, take off their street shoes and change into footwear for the classroom. Later in the day, they will clean the school – classrooms, hallways, toilets – as part of efforts to teach students to take responsibility for shared spaces and help create responsible citizens. This part of the Japanese education system is one of the reasons why public spaces there are so clean.
The example above is a vivid portrait of social and emotional skills in action. Core skills that are vital to academic performance, employability and successful societies. In Japanese schools, kids must be punctual and reliable, routinely honour commitments and live in harmony with others; they must also be able to approach others, initiate and maintain social connections, and take on daily life with energy and empathy. How does this square with academic performance? We cannot say for sure, but Japan is among the top performing countries in the world at maths and science, according to OECD PISA results. An emphasis on skills such as perseverance and responsibility are, plausibly, part of the reason why Japanese students get such high marks.
In short, all Japanese students are expected to develop skills such as responsibility, sociability and co-operation. These are only three of the 15 skills that the OECD’s Survey on Social and Emotional Skills measures on a global scale, along with curiosity and creativity (among others). And these three skills might matter more in Japan than elsewhere – as Professor Patrick Newell from Shizenkan University, Japan, suggested in a recent OECD webinar. This is because Japan is a collective society, which emphasises the needs of others above those of the individual. However, this could be to the detriment of entrepreneurship and innovation, which require other social and emotional skills, such as curiosity and creativity.
