ULIMWENGU: Be a good kid; go to school, get a good job...Nope! I am Japanese and young
Japanese college students are pictured during a job-hunting rally in Tokyo in February 2013. Futoko has meant that more and more of them are saying they do not want to go to school, and they have forced their parents to sit up and listen. PHOTO | YUYA SHINO | REUTERS
When I came across a news item on the increasing numbers of Japanese children shunning school, I became intrigued. Japanese? Isn’t Japan the place where children are traditionally yoked to the learning treadmill, and where learning by rote is so common and good grades are such a must that we were told that youngsters who flunk exams easily commit suicide?
Yes, Japan. It has been reported that more and more children are resisting school in a phenomenon termed “futoko” or resistance against the rigours of a regimented school system in which young minds are harnessed to an educational system that bends them to the diktats of ministry bureaucrats and a parental system that allows for near-zero individual creativity.
