Japan: High School Texts Bulk Up With 12% More Pages

The average number of pages in high school textbooks to be used from next spring will increase by 11.9 percent compared to those being used now, according to the results of textbook screenings released by the education ministry.

The increase results from the government's new curriculum guidelines, which expand the amount of academic content students must learn while also eliminating a clause that restricted the teaching of higher-level material.

The Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry on Tuesday released the results of its screenings of textbooks to be used mainly in the first and second years of high school.

Compared with current textbooks, new ones in mathematics will have 27.2 percent more pages, and science books will have 16.5 percent more. The number of pages in English textbooks, in which the number of words to be learned has increased, rose by 25.2 percent.

Descriptions of the March 11, 2011, Great East Japan Earthquake are included in textbooks for geography and some other subjects. The latest screenings covered textbooks for required subjects at high school.

But science and math textbooks for first-year students were already screened last year because the new curriculum guidelines will be implemented for those subjects from this April, ahead of other subjects. Thus, this time's screenings mainly covered textbooks for second- and third-year students.

A total of 275 textbooks--219 for standard high school courses and 56 for special courses--were submitted for the screenings.

All but one of the books passed the screenings. One textbook on a new science subject, "Science and Our Daily Life," was rejected due to numerous inaccuracies.

Based on the new curriculum guidelines, which aim to depart from so-called cram-free education, all of the textbooks have more pages.

Compared with textbooks screened under the cram-free policy for fiscal 2005, the new mathematics textbooks have 48, or 30.4 percent, more pages, and those of science have 124, or 23.6 percent, more pages.

Biology textbooks newly contain descriptions of methods for analyzing base sequences of DNA. The new guidelines increase the number of English words to be learned in three years of high school from 1,300 to 1,800, and stipulate that English classes will have to be held in English in principle.

Some of the English textbooks, such as one produced by Taishukan Publishing Co. for college preparatory schools, are written mostly in English except for a small number of Japanese words about proper nouns and grammar.

Because gaps in academic abilities among students widened during the period of the cram-free policy, many of the textbooks have different versions according to the academic levels of the target students. All five publishing companies for Mathematics B textbooks submitted textbooks for different achievement levels.

A total of 69 textbooks contain descriptions of the Great East Japan Earthquake. These include textbooks for Geography A, which is required by the new curriculum guidelines to cover disaster management. One Geography A textbook carries an aerial photo of Minami-Sanriku, Miyagi Prefecture, which was devastated by the disaster.

Sixteen textbooks describe the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, which began with the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. Those for Contemporary Society discuss the incident in relation to "the danger and seriousness of damage if an accident occurs."

Seven textbooks mentioned radiation from the crisis. One physics textbook contains a passage that reads, "Meltdowns occurred and radioactive substances from nuclear reactors were discharged to the outside." One Home Economics textbook introduces temporary limits on radioactive substances in food in a sidebar.

Original source here.