EduCareer StaffBlog"Rinjin Blog" | "EduCareer"Supporting your career in English teaching in the Japanese school system

University Students and Manners

2010/03/16

Thank you for reading Rinjin Blog again, sorry for the long break but things have been a bit hectic here in the EduCareer office.

I noticed an interesting article on the Yomiuri website the other day about universities in Japan educating their students about everyday manners, the article mentions rubbish separation (burnable and non burnable) as well as their behavior to and from the university itself. One private university in Tokyo is planning to have students line the road to the university to check that everyone is behaving well.

I was especially interested by the examples of this "bad behavior" that has led to these drastic measures being taken. The article states 2 examples; cycling whilst using a cell phone and eating cup ramen whilst walking down the street. I understand that in Japan eating and walking at the same time is not good manners and I also understand that talking on your phone when you are riding your bike is not very safety conscious, but are these really things that university students need to be told?

The article also goes on to say that the reason for teaching manners is that when it comes to job hunting students without these basic social skills will unlikely find a job. I suppose this is a fair point but if a student has to be taught these things would you really want them working in your company in the first place?

To read the Yomiuri article in full please click here

Manners tend to be something instilled in children throughout their school and home life and I am interested to know if this need to teach manners tells us anything about Japanese society in general? Should it be the responsibility of universities to teach these social skills or should these be issues dealt with much earlier in life?

There is also an interesting video on "Teacher TV" that looks at the education system in Japan through a British point of view, I really recommend this video and the site in general as it has a lot of interesting and informative videos.

For the link please click here

If you have any feedback please let me know, or if you have any topics you would like to see explored in Rinjin Blog I would be happy to hear from you.

Until next time, happy Spring vacation!

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