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255 any national university. Very few vocational school students go on to higher education at all. Dropout rates
for the night school are about 25 percent. The results of my study indicate a number of very strong
associations between school rank (and, therefore, academic achievement as measured by entrance exams)
and a host of such family background factors as parents' education and occupation, the number of siblings,
260 and family income. Family qualities may be influential from an early point in the child's schooling, but
only with high school entrance does the overt sorting take place. Japan, like the United States, has a school
265 system that partially replicates the status and class system of its adults, but it does this without residential
segregation.
18. Not only does the school system at the high-school level reflect difference of family backgrounds,
270 but, by its very organization, it undoubtedly extends and elaborates these differences through the creation
of distinct, stratified school sub-cultures. Delinquency rates, for example, correlate closely with the aca-
demic rank of high schools. Entrance exams thus serve something of an analogous function to residential
275 segregation in the United States. Japanese cities remain residentially heterogeneous, but the competitive
entrance-exam system (and its parasite — the cram system) supersedes residential location (and thus
housing expenditures) as the key to climbing the social ladder.
19.The issue of inequality between the sexes is also very interesting. Slightly more women than men
280 now enter institutions of higher learning, but this is explained largely by the rapid growth of junior colleges
whose enrollments are 90 percent female. The percentage of women enrolled in four-year universities did
increase from 16.2 percent in 1965 to 21.2 percent in 1975, yet the fact remains that in higher education
285 three of every five females are atten ding a junior college, whereas nine of every ten males in higher
education are in four-year universities. Furthermore, in Japan's top universities the percentage of women
has remained very small. Only about 6 percent of those accepted to Tokyo University are women. None of
290 this, it must be emphasized, stems from overt discrimination in the admission process. The simple fact is
that many fewer women apply. In 1975, only 17 percent of the women graduating from high school applied
295 to universities, whereas 52 percent of the men applied. Only an understanding of the cultural attitudes
prevalent in Japanese families can explain this pattern.
Let me summarize what I see to be the advantages and disadvantages in the above portrait. What
300 distinguishes Japanese education is a very high average level of accomplishment. This seems to stem above
all from diligence and organization, from an orderly single-mindedness, and an exceptional education
«fever» centering on exams — the very same qualities that characterize Japanese industrial process. Initial
305 equality and well-organized and well-supported schools are followed by a competitively determined sorting
process that, by our standards, comes early. Preparing for exams creates a narrowness of focus in learning
and emphasizes rote processes. The meritocratic process has few exceptions and offers too few second
310 chances. It is tough to be a loser. As we might expect, education and society share some of the same
deficiencies. To us Japan seems like an anthill, busy, well-organized, and competitive, but unable to foster
individual expression or to support idiosyncratic or uncommon talents. Both society and education suffer
315 from very rapid growth and from an obsessive preoccupation with success as measured by rather
mechanical «output» standards. Their very efficiencies mask problems of unattended spiritual values and
national identity.
From: The American Scholar. 1986.
GREEN BRIEFS AND TOXIC TORTS
EDUCATING LAWYERS
WITH ENVIRONMENTAL SAVVY
by Robert V.Percival
Robert V. Percival is an associate professor of law and director of the Environmental Law Program at
the University of Maryland School of Law in Baltimore, Maryland.
l.On a bitterly cold afternoon in late January, hundreds of law students from across the United States
gathered in Bloomington, Indiana, for what has become an annual celebration. What students at the Sixth
5
Annual Conference of the National Association of Environmental Law Societies (NAELS) were