sexual relationships, women of the Progressive Era also accommodated their

husbands' careers and families by working usually up to the birth of their first
child and after raising their children. A
large number became teachers because
this career was most compatible with
marriage. This was the case, according
to Gordon because women could enter
and leave this profession "according to
the demands of their private lives,
without penalty or the need to keep up
with changes in the field" (p. 197). As
Educated for Romance and other studies
have confirmed, women continue to
view their career aspirations as subordinate to their boyfriends' or spouses'.
The second backlash to the independence and career aspirations of women of
the 1970s has further pushed them back
to the home and off the career track
(Faludi, 1991). Most women will have to
support themselves at some point in
their lives. Since women continue to
earn less than men and have jobs that
are not as financially remunerative, they
have a greater chance of poverty. Educated for Romance provides some disturbing conclusions. Although the
women in their study may be "happy"
at the time in which they acquiesce to
romance, as the authors note, these
women's lives are far from over. "What
will happen in the future?" they write.
What will happen as the years go by
and they become less attractive? What
will happen if they discover problems
with depending on men for economic
support? What will happen... if her
husband, whose career she is putting
ahead of her own, dies or leaves her?
And what of gender relations at the
workplace? What will happen as the
women discover that the sexual auction block extends into the workplace?
(pp. 230-231)

References

Boston: Little, Brown.

Noble, J. (1956). The Negro woman's college educaAmerican Association of University Women.
tion. New York: Teachers College Press.
(1992). "How schools shortchange girls."
Rossiter, M. (1982). Women scientists in America:
Washington, DC: Women's Educational
Struggles and strategies to 1940. Baltimore, MD:
Foundation.
The John Hopkins University Press.
Banner, L. (1983). American beauty. Chicago:
Solomon, B. (1985). In the company of educated
University of Chicago Press.
women: A history of women and higher education
Faludi, S. (1991). Backlash: The undeclared war
in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University
against American women. New York: Crown.
Press.
Fleming, J. (1984). Blacks in college: A comparative Walsh, M. (1977). Doctors wanted, no women need
study of students' success in Black and White inapply. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
stitutions. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
What is success? Karen Arnold's study of
Graham, P. (1978). Expansion and exclusion: A
valedictorians finds that many bright women
history of women in American higher educatrade career ambitions for family life. (1991,
tion. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and SociOctober 3). Boston College BiWeekly.
ety, 3, 759-773.
Wolf, N. (1991). The beauty myth: How images of
Komarovsky, M. (1953). Women in the modern
beauty are used against women. New York:
world: Their education and their dilemmas.
Morrow.

Starting Preschool in Japan

The Beginning of Future
Academic Achievement
Without the Academics
Learning to Go to School in Japan: The
Transition From Home to Preschool Life
by Lois Peak. Berkeley, CA: University
of California Press, 1991, 210 pp.,
$29.95. ISBN 0-520-07151-4.
Review by SHIN-YlNG LEE and
THERESA A. GRAHAM
University of Michigan

These are indeed the hard questions

that many women avoid asking themselves, and because of their socialization, women frequently don't realize
that these questions need to be asked.
As noted earlier, the conclusions of both
books end with concern for the future
of today's college-educated women.
The historical and the contemporary
contexts of these two works greatly
enhance our understanding of the
dilemmas and challenges faced by
women students from the turn of the
century until the present in combining
career aspirations with romantic and
family desires.

he crisis in American education continues to receive national attention.

When President Bush announced the
National Educational Goals for the year
2000, he indicated that American
children are not learning what they
need to know in order to live and work
successfully in the world they will inhabit. It is feared that the United States
will not remain internationally competitive if our educational system is not
improved. In such discussion, Japan is
often used as an example of a country
that has demonstrated how excellence
in education can lead to success in the
world trade competition. In light of
Japanese achievements, there has been
NOVEMBER 1992

a growing interest among Western professionals, as well as the general public,

to examine the reasons and practices
that lie behind the educational success
of the Japanese.
Given that the first goal of AMERICA
2000 states that "all children in America
will start school ready to learn/' Learning to Go to School in Japan is especially
timely. The book describes how Japanese preschool children make the transition from home to school and become
ready to learn. It not only provides an
in-depth description of Japanese children's preschool experiences but also
offers many insights into the Japanese
philosophy of education; both of these,
in turn, shed light on the practices and
goals of American preschool education.
While the Japanese experience is not
fully exportable, the ideas, and pedagogy
behind it may help us think about the
reform of our own education practices.
This book also enables us to reevaluate
Western assumptions about human nature, socialization processes, and the
course of learning. Anyone interested in
Japan will find it fascinating, but it is

33

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also a stimulating book for anyone interested in early childhood education,

child rearing, and issues dealing with
culture, education, psychology, and
human development.
Peak's basic purpose in writing the
book is to answer the question of how
Japanese young children, who are indulged, loosely disciplined, and highly
dependent on their mothers, become
obedient, mature, self-reliant, and
cooperative by the time they are ready
to go to school. What are the processes
that help Japanese children make the
transition from home to school?
The core of the book is a discussion of
intensive observations and interviews of
mothers and teachers in two typical
private Japanese preschools. Although
the sample size was small, Peak describes in great detail the activities,
events, and issues related to children's
preschool experiences. Materials published by the Ministry of Education as
well as popular child-rearing books and
professional magazines were used to
clarify and interpret the phenomena
observed in schools. Peak's lessons for
us are concrete and vivid because of the
clarity of the writing and the illustrative
vignettes of the actual experiences and
processes by which individual Japanese
children acquire the group-oriented
cultural trait. This is perhaps the most
detailed examination of the transition
process from home to school that has
been published.
Through Peak's insightful observations and descriptions, we encounter
many surprises about Japan and
Japanese education. What actually happens in Japanese preschools dispels
many popular beliefs held in the West.
The first surprise is that the primary goal
of preschool experience is to establish
fundamental habits of daily life and to
assimilate the group-oriented behavior
and attitudes appropriate to social situations. Acquiring academic facts and
learning-readiness skills are not major
goals of Japanese preschool education.
Rather, building character is a goal commonly shared by early childhood education experts, teachers, parents, and
goverment policymakers.
Upon reflection, it becomes clear that
it is American, not Japanese, preschools
that tend to have a stronger emphasis
on cognitive development, problemsolving ability, communication, and
readiness skills. Although a major goal
of American preschool education is to
provide social experiences for young

children, the shaping of social behavior

through peer relationships and group
activities receives far less emphasis in
American than in Japanese preschools.
Consequently, Japanese preschool practices are different from those in the
United States. For example, Japanese
teachers perceive small classes to be
detrimental to children's social interactions, since larger classes are thought to
provide a broader range of personalities
with which children can interact and to
offer more opportunities for generating
enthusiasm and excitement about group
activities.
The second surprise is that the wellbehaved, self-disciplined, diligent
Japanese students do not start preschool
that wayand it is not home training
that makes the children ready to learn.
These behaviors are almost exclusively
the result of preschool experiences. In
fact, parents, teachers, and experts of
child rearing in Japan share the belief
that children can and should behave differently at home and at school. Home is
a place where one can freely demonstrate feelings and be indulged in such
behavior as selfishness, regressive dependence, or temper tantrums. However, at preschool, children must perform activities on a regular schedule,
without assistance, and in unison with
the other children in the class. It is
mainly through the experiences children have in school that behavior
appropriate for learning and for interpersonal skills, such as obedience, cooperation, courtesy, responsibility, and
self-reliance, is molded. This acceptance
and expectation of the discontinuity of
individual behavior between home and
school is very different from the Western view that there is a fundamental
continuity of the individual's behavior
patterns across social settings. Japanese
preschools seem to be able to play a significantly more efficient role in shaping
the development and learning of children than the preschools in the United
States. They are not only successful in
socializing and educating children but
also serve to instruct parents. Mothers
are asked to provide daily concrete practice of supportive behavior and attitudes
to their children at home. Mothers
thereby are socialized to provide sustained, intensive support for the children's educational activities that will
persist throughout their school years.
The third surprise is that the control
of children's behavior is not achieved
through teachers' use of strict discipline.
34

EDUCATIONAL

Japanese preschools strive to avoid

teacher-centered methods of control.
Teachers are warm and friendly, but
are reluctant to assert authority or
give direct instructions. There is the
strong belief that children's enjoyment
of social activities and their degree of
self-control in group settings must be initiated and sustained by the children
themselves.
The typical schedule of Japanese
schools is arranged so that there are
alternate periods of exuberant spontaneity and strict formality. Most of the
time, teachers encourage and value
lively, boisterous, child-initiated play
and unrestrained activity. Therefore,
the energy and noise levels in the
Japanese preschools tend to be much
higher than those allowed and observed
in the American preschools.
Formal behavior during parts of the
day is also expected. Through practice,
all children learn formal behavior by
consistently following the daily routine.
The teachers' techniques are primarily
nonauthoritarian. Some are more direct;
most are indirect. Proper behaviors are
elicited directly by reminding children
what is appropriate. Indirect techniques
include using children as models of correct behavior, pointing out other children's requests for appropriate behavior, or even keeping the whole class
waiting until the desired behavior is
accomplished by one particular child.
With remarkable patience and tolerance, the teachers eventually shape
children's desires to adopt the proper
classroom behavior and to monitor their
own behavior.
As beliefs and behavior patterns are
deeply rooted within a culture, sometimes it takes a sensitive outsider who
has a good understanding of the culture
as well as a different cultural background to make the description of a particular phenomenon complete. Peak is
such an outsider, and thus she is able to
give us vivid insights into Japanese
preschool practices and cultural shaping
of Japanese children.
Peak did not seek to make explicit
comparisons between the United States
and Japan. Yet her book gives us many
fresh perspectives on American culture
and preschool practices. This book will
doubtless have influence on our future
research to better understand the
process of human development and rethink how we may increase our chances
of reaching the goals for AMERICA
2000.

RESEARCHER

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