Japanese schools face the challenge of inequality

With Christian GALAN (U. Toulouse-Ifrae), Isabelle KONUMA (Ifrae-Inalco) and Anne-Lise MITHOUT (CRCAO).

For a long time, Japan was presented, both abroad and within its own borders, as the model of an efficient, meritocratic education system. This image, nurtured by official discourse and echoed by many observers, has long fed the myth of a perfectly egalitarian school, capable of offering everyone the same opportunities for success and social advancement. However, this facade of efficiency and equality has gradually cracked within Japanese society itself, where awareness of inequalities in schooling has grown, although this development is not always fully appreciated outside the country. Based on his latest book, L'école japonaise au défi des inégalités : la fin du mythe égalitariste (Le Bord de l'eau, 2025), Christian Galan will revisit the tensions and inequalities running through contemporary Japanese schools. He will show how a model initially founded on educational egalitarianism has gradually been transformed into an instrument of social reproduction. Through an examination of the ideological, political and economic logics structuring the Japanese education system - from post-war eugenics to the cult of "moyennisme", from the standardization of bodies and minds to the rise of private schools and juku - this presentation will highlight the contradictions of a model long perceived as exemplary.

Organizer:

Juliette GENEVAZ View e-mail