Introduction

The Committee on Promotion of Chemical Education In 1991, the Chemical Society of Japan(CSJ) decided to establish a standing committee, "The Committee on the Promotion of Chemical Education", the purpose of which is obvious. As one of the subcommittee of the new Committee, the Subcommittee on the International Relations" was set up and Yoshito Takeuchi was appointed as the chairperson of this subcommittee. The Subcommittee was later renamed as the Working Group.

Chemical Education in Japan(2nd version)

After one year's severe discussion, the Working Group initiated a project to publish a book in English in which all aspects of chemical education in Japan is critically discussed. The purpose of this booklet is twofold. Firstly, by explaining all about chemical education in Japan in English, we can expect authorities would, and could give us advises from abroad. Secondly, chemical educators in other countries could learn something from our own experiences.

In fact this kind of booklet was once published by the Division of Chemical Education which was mentioned, firstly in January 1979. The first version of "Chemical Education in Japan " has been highly estimated as the first systematic information on chemical education in Japan available in English. More than fifteen years have passed since then, and the situation surrounding us has changed to a considerable extent. The educational system also changed accordingly. One example is an abolishment of general education in the tertiary education. Another example is a considerable reduction of class hours from primary and secondary science(Rika) education.

Contents of the Book

"Chemical Education in Japan (2nd version)" was published in August, 1994 by the effort of the Working Party. It is a booklet of ca. 200 pages, and has been distributed among domestic and overseas chemical educators. The comments received are generally very positive. The following will give some idea of the contents of the book.

"Chemical Education in Japan (2nd version)"

Contents

Chapter 1 	Historical Background
Chapter 2 	Japanese Chemical Education--
		Its Characteristics
Chapter 3 	The Present State of Individual Stage of 
		Chemical Education
Chapter 4 	Past and Present States of Teacher Training
Chapter 5 	Present State of Social Education
Chapter 6 	Chemical Education Related to
		Chemical Industry
Chapter 7 	Chemical Education in the Moving Age
	7.1	Introductory Remarks
	7.2	 A Rapid Decrease of School Age Children
	7.3	The New "Course of Study"
	7.4	 From "Common Exam" to "Center Exam"
	7.5	New Trends in University
		Entrance Examination
	7.6	Abolishment of General Education
		in the Universities
	7.7	"3K" Science-Shunning
		in the Younger Generation
	7.8 	A Rapid Increase in the Demand 
		for Social Education
	7.9 	Internationalization at Various Stages
	7.10 	Research Activities in Chemical Education
	7.11	Activities of The Chemical Society of Japan
Appendix
	A	Statistics
	B	The Course of Study
	C	Curriculums in Typical Japanese Schools 
		and Universities
	D	Examples of Problems
		at the Entrance Examination
	E	Equivalent Terms in English and Japanese

The purpose of this booklet is as a matter of fact not to prepare a comprehensive account of chemical education of each county. Rather, this would give a good starting point for the preparation of "Chemical Education in Our Country" for each country.

Chemical Education in Asia-Pacific

The book was welcome and to my great honor and pleasure I received many good comments. This experience has lead us to an idea that it should be wonderful if a booklet similar to ours can be published by each country. This kind of attempts have previously done by some European countries like Great Britain. To the best of my knowledge, however, there is not any for Asian countries. In view of the energy and labor involved in the preparation of our booklet, however, it is not a easy task. We should not simply say "Please make such ones". Instead, we should propose in this way; "If you are interested in preparing such books, we are happy to cooperate with you since we have some experience.

This is what we in fact did. Furthermore, we propose to prepare one book "Chemical Education in Asia-Pacific" together rather than one book for each country. A whole book for each country is the goal, but to cooperate with a dozen countries at the same time, in other word, to cooperate in preparation of more than a dozen books is much too large a task. On the other hand, if we confine our work within a book rather than a dozen of books, our load is much reduced to the realistic stage, and this would be good for each contributing country since a preparation of a chapter should be much more feasible than a preparation of a whole book.

FACS, the Federation of Asian Chemical Societies

This is the background of our proposal to the Executive Committee of FACS which was held in Manila in May, 1995. FACS, the Federation of Asian Chemical Societies which is in a sense an Asian version of IUPAC approved this proposal so that the proposal is authorized by FACS as its activity.

At the moment FACS comprises 25 societies from 24 countries or area. Then it is easier to list up these 24 countries or area if you want to learn who organizes FACS. Out of 23 countries (except Japan), nearly 20 countries agreed to contribute a chapter.

Australia

Bangladesh

Brunei Darulssalam

China

Fiji, South Pacific

Hong Kong

India

Indonesia

Iraq

Japan

Jordan

Korea

Kuwait

Malaysia

Nepal

New Zealand

Pakistan

Papua New Guinea the Philippines

Singapore

Sri Lanka

Taiwan

Thailand

Vietnam

The purpose of this booklet is as a matter of fact not to prepare a comprehensive account of chemical education of each county. Rather, this would give a good starting point for the preparation of "Chemical Education in Our Country" for each country.

7th Asian Chemical Congress

We are planning to complete the project (publish the book) by May 1997. The date has some meaning because the 7th Asian Chemical Congress will be held in Hiroshima, Japan from May 16-20. The book will be distributed among participants of 7th ACC chemical education symposium.

For details, please see the relevant home page you can find along this announcement.

Future Development and Asian Chemical Education Network

We are not satisfied with publishing this book. Books are important documents, but the whole concerning education, such as systems, statistic, social tendency, etc changes very rapidly. It is, however, very difficult to update the data in the book and make a new version. Living in the age of information, we can do in a more efficient way. We are planning to set up a database which includes all manuscripts of the books. Chemical educators of the world can access this database and can obtain the necessary information.

The authors can have opportunity to update the manuscript. We have already opened the home page for the project "Chemical Education in Asia-Pacific". At the moment this has only the description of the project. The incoming contributions will be stored there and everyone can see the whole data.

FACS is now proposing establishment of the "Asian Chemical Education Network". The structure, function and scope of this network is not yet decided. As a chairperson of this network, I like to ask myself as the organizer of the project "Chemical Education in Asia-Pacific" and "Chemical Education in Japan" to contribute all files to the network so that this is the initial core of database associated with the network.

Probably this kind of network and database have already established and functioned in Europe and in North America. Asia has remained rather inactive but we have now just started. We like to ask you worldwide cooperation and in near future all of these database and network are to be combined into ONE "World Database/Network on Chemical Education".