“I'll bring tuna, salmon, and some beef, because the little boy doesn't like raw fish.'' In the aisle of a small supermarket, “Fresh Bazaar,'' 13-year-old Mio looks at his friends Duo Moe and Ikki. Even my 11-year-old is thinking out loud about the ingredients needed to make the sushi we're planning for lunch. “My budget is 2,500 yen, so I have to calculate it carefully,'' Mio explained, muttering the total amount.
“It was perfect. They kept us on budget,” Hajime Nishimura, 42, said as he dropped off his three children at Beanstalk Free School, holding a receipt for 2,700 yen (US$17). he said with a smile. In 2016, he and his wife Anna Rodico, 39, founded a school with about 50 students in the small village of Tarumi. On a sunny April morning on a small country road in Hyogo Prefecture, an hour away by train from Kyoto, Mio, Doumoe, and Ikki are proud to have accomplished their mission. This is an integral part of Beanstalk's educational philosophy, which is a less conventional school.
Gen, who grew up with an American father and a Japanese mother, explained, “This sushi lunch was decided by the children themselves at yesterday's weekly project meeting.'' He spent his childhood in another village just a few minutes' drive away. At his free school, students express their wishes and create a schedule of activities for the week, such as learning to cook, English, planting, or playing the ukulele.
“At Mamenoki, we do not follow the classical Japanese school system at all, but we are also not bound by educational philosophies such as Waldorf or Montessori.” We would like to provide a “free and happy'' alternative education to Japanese children who cannot adapt to Japanese schools. And there are many such children.
Nearly 300,000 children “absent” from school
According to statistics from Japan's Ministry of Education, about 300,000 children between the ages of 7 and 15 are “absent” from school. These “truants'' (“truants'') are officially enrolled in school but do not attend or attend only intermittently. During the compulsory education period up to the age of 15, there is no legal obligation to attend classes, and schools and parents are powerless. This is the hidden reality of a country known for its rigor and pursuit of perfection in all fields.
The “abandoned child” remains hidden because it shows that the education system is unable or unwilling to deal with this grave misfortune of many children. However, this growing minority has led to the establishment of 800 “free schools” in Japan, a number that has doubled since 2016. They are completely legal and have little official regulation. These schools, which vary in quality and are sometimes very expensive, provide an increasingly popular alternative education sought by parents who are more concerned about their children's well-being than their academic performance.
“My son was scared to enter middle school.”
“The night before he entered junior high school, my son had a stomach ache and was very unwell. He was scared, but I was not satisfied with the oppressive system of Japanese schools,” she said. said the mother of 12-year-old Kazuki. Days of “discovery” at Mamenoki. Kazuki runs around and chats with new friends in the large school building, surrounded by swings, a chicken coop, a theater stage, and a soccer field.
“Our facilities have too many rules, regulations, pressure, homework, night classes, and bullying.”
“I visited many alternative schools in Saitama, near Tokyo, and they were in buildings with no green space,” said the mother, who observed her son “singing here all the time.” His eyes lit up. In her eyes, the ultra-competitive system of Japanese schools would have stifled her son. “In our facility, there are too many rules, regulations, pressure, homework, night classes, and bullying,” she sighs. “Not all children are suited for that kind of environment.”
School of life in nature
Late in the afternoon, in the large garden where two large sheep graze, another mother from Kyoto, who has already spent three days at the beanstalk with her 6-year-old son Tetsu, speaks with Gen at length. . There were problems and his previous school openly said they didn't know what to do with his personality,'' her divorced mother lamented. She said she was willing to move to the area for a “healthy, free environment” where her son would not be harassed or made the laughing stock of the entire student body. “The school was prepared to put him in a separate classroom with a different group of students,” she added. Blamed, isolated, and mostly left alone. That is, it was rejected.
“There's nothing ordinary about bean trees,” she says, pulling weeds with the mother of six-year-old Mika in the large vegetable garden that will grow salads, onions and green onions in a few weeks. Anna Rodico says with a smile. “There are no fixed schedules, and there are no classes that change hourly. There are no traditional math, Japanese, science, or art classes. There are no grades or negative evaluations. There are no uniforms or prescribed hairstyles,” Mamenoki says. explains the co-founder. She and Gen searched for an alternative school for their first daughter, who was born in 2014.
“We've been looking for a long time.”
“These free schools have existed in Japan for decades, but there weren't that many back then,” she recalled. “None of them suited us. I particularly remember being about 100 kilometers from Tokyo, which was inspired by the Sudbury School, an educational approach founded in Boston in the 1960s. There were 200 kids there, and they were playing video games all day.” ” Many of these free schools charge high tuition fees, but at Mamenoki, Gen is proud to charge only $200 a month, or just $100 for single mothers. Unable to find a suitable school, Gen and Anna decided to create their own. They bought a house in Tarumi and spent two years renovating it before opening Beanstalk in 2016.
There are no classrooms or teachers here, but there are hundreds of books, musical instruments, educational games, and space for drawing. All children learn to write, read and count. “This is an adventure in life for our four children and many others at Beanstalk. We prioritize their well-being, discovery, personal reflection, and spontaneity. That way they can grow up and be happy,” Anna said. This form of school education is incompatible with Japan's traditional education system, which some experts say “produces subjects, not citizens.''
“May my son be respected.”
“This is exactly what I was looking for for my 4-year-old daughter Mika,” said a young mother who visited the beanstalk. With her daughter starting elementary school in two years, she is already looking for the best environment possible for her. For this yoga teacher, who is unusual for a Japanese person and has traveled the world many times, confining her daughter to the Japanese system was out of the question. One senses the determination of these mothers (“often single mothers,'' says Anna), who are willing to do anything for their children to escape the strict constraints of the Japanese model.
Their choice also shows their courage to ignore the judgment of their friends and relatives. “I didn't care what other people thought of me,” Kazuki's mother said, throwing her hands in the air. “They can think whatever they want!'' She recalled her childhood, “Teachers yelled at us, slapped us, were brutal to us! I don't want that for my son. I want him to respect me.”
This kind of anti-establishment sentiment is gradually spreading in Japan as well. Parents are no longer afraid to claim they are a misfit or make radical choices that clash with the dominant school model. The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology began to recognize this “school refusal'' phenomenon six years ago and has evolved. “It's about time,” Gen says. “In our city of Sasayama, which has a population of 42,000, about 90 of the 900 junior high school students aged 13 to 15 are not attending school at all.”
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Official recognition has been long delayed, but Japan's Ministry of Education has ordered local governments to work with free schools. “I had to make the local authorities aware of these new guidelines and fight to get them to consider the children and cooperate with us,” Geng recalls. Currently, in Sasayama City, enrolling in Beanstalk is considered official enrollment.
Children in Beansuki Town are now able to attend certain classes at local junior high schools if they wish or feel the need. You also have the option of participating in a traditional learning cycle. And to the surprise of Gen and Anna, who still can't afford to pay their salaries, the city gave Beanstalk an annual lump sum of $5,000 for the first time this year. “This is a big step for us,” Geng said. “This legitimizes our existence and reassures parents that they can defend their choices against conservative grandparents. Things are starting to change in Japanese schools.”