Buraku Problem Q&A
Many journalists, researchers and students from abroad come to visit us at the BLHRRI. Although they come from different parts of the world, they come to us to learn more about Buraku problems and ask for much information. Among the many questions asked us, we picked out those most frequently asked in these occasions, and will try to answer them as a new series of"Q&A"in this news letter. We hope this will be a help in understanding Buraku problems.
Q Please explain about Dowa Education.
I am afraid that Dowa Education might affect the scholastic achievement of the children.
A The aim of Dowa Education is to teach the Buraku problems correctly. The various discriminatory cases show how dangerous it is to be ignorant of the Buraku problems. Discrimination originates in the ignorance of the truth. Learning about the Buraku problems correctly is very essential for the Buraku people as well. Though this learning gives them pain just like cutting out their own bodies, it is inevitable to do so to know the origin of the pain they have now. They have to continue studying to overcome and terminate discrimination.
Buraku people are the victims in the Buraku problems. Victims are the products of the assailants. Therefore, learning about Buraku problems correctly is important for everyone of us. It is necessary to teach it not only at school but also at home with help from schools.
Learning about the Buraku problems is not just getting various knowledge.It is to recognize correctly what is happening around us, at home and in our communities, and to learn about people who support our lives and their efforts.
Learning about the Buraku problems is, in a word, to know the meaning of valuing human rights. We will learn where our pains come from; we will know the pains of other people; and, we will gain the power to overcome difficulties by cooperating with others through the learning process.
The people who can get good scores, but do not have an interest in what happens in society, and do not appreciate their own homes and the hardships of their parents, will easily lose their confidence when they face some minor difficulties. Real scholastic achievement can be gained through having vitality and the desire to learn. Therefore, learning about the Buraku problems accelerates the learning of the basic subjects.
Dowa Education has been guaranteeing the right of education for the children in the Buraku whose educational opportunities had been taken away for a long time.
The following are the problems which the children in Buraku have been facing. Nobody is in charge of the class which just started a new semester. Teachers are transferring one after another during a school year. Some children in the same school district go to a school in other districts. The facilities of the schools deteriorate and never improve.
Some children do not have any desks for studying at home, and spend most of their time helping their parents work. Some can not go to higher grade because of economical reasons or their poor scholastic achievement at school. They can find employment through their relatives or somebody they know, but they often have to leave and change jobs. Those situations are still not completely improved now.
To solve those problems, teachers and parents have been cooperating and making various efforts. They brought back the children who could not go to school for a long time or who never had been there because of poverty. Then they started the movement to demand free compulsory education textbooks for children who could not afford to buy them. Because of the movement, the measure for free distribution was established in 1963.
In 1968, they took up the problem of enrollment in another school districts. Schools whose students were mainly from poor families had been in a poor educational environment because these students' parents could not donate money to build new facilities.
But after the movement, construction of new buildings and restructuring of facilities was completed. They also campaigned to set the maximum per class limit at 30 students in order to teach students more effectively. These improvements of the educational environment brought advantages to students who were not in the Buraku communities as well as Buraku students.
School education has to ensure that all children achieve solid scholastic ability. On the contrary, schools now have a serious problem with dropouts who cannot read, write, or calculate. Dowa education investigates the cause of dropping out; rearranges the content and the method; decreases the number of students per class; increases the number of teachers; and demands the improvement of facilities.
Results appear in some public junior high schools in Osaka pref. which are Dowa Education Promoting Schools and have Buraku communities inside of their districts. The average percentage of the graduates in Osaka pref. who went to national and other public high schools (excluding night high schools) in March, 1988 was 53.9%. The percentage of non-Buraku students of Dowa Education Promoting Schools going to high schools is 63%, and the percentage of Buraku students is 59.2%.
When we think about the past when the percentage of going on to higher education for both non-Buraku and Buraku students in promoting schools was lower than the average, we have to admit that the efforts of improving the basic scholastic achievement of Buraku children is improving the scholastic achievement of all students.