C. FACTS AND FIGURES AT SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES

In "Rika "(science) for junior high schools, the subjects of physics, chemistry, biology and earth sciences (including astronomy) are nearly equally treated. Here again, the difference is very small, and the average figures are as follows;

A survey has been attempted for Kawasaki city, which currently has a population of 1,200,000 and 30,000 lower secondary school pupils. The lowest figure for the number of experiments performed is about 40%.

The working hours of government employees (both national and local) are 40 hours per week. In addition to classes, and other activities directly related to classes (e.g., home room; the long one is for 50 min and the short one is for 10-15 min. This is in part an opportunity for communication between the teacher in charge and students as a whole and in part one for student activities), general meetings of teachers, a variety of committees, preparation for various school events and PTA, etc, will be done during normal working hours. For school teachers, however, chiefly because of Saturday (working day except for the second Saturday of each month), the working hours are usually 44 hours per week. The extra 4 hours are compensated by taking holidays during spring, summer, and winter.

The actual working hours of school teachers are in fact much more than 44 hours per week because there are many duties associated with work time which are not counted. The largest amount of this uncounted working time is the supervision of students' extracurricular activities. In each school, extracurricular activities are carried out throughout the year except just before and during the regular examinations under the supervision of teachers. It is strictly forbidden for students to practice any extra-curricular activities without the supervision of a teacher. Furthermore, extra-curricular activities have become quite important to both students and their parents. Sports facilities (sports club, gym, etc) are not extremely popular in Japan. There are only a few public facilities and private ones are extremely expensive.

Since there are many sports and arts clubs, almost all teachers are involved in at least one club. If a teacher becomes a supervisor of a sports club, he or she sometimes cannot have a holiday for one month or longer. The practice time varies depending on the season; from spring to autumn until 6.00 pm and from autumn to spring until 4.30-5.30 pm (or till sunset. Japan is not yet on the daylight savings time system.). Almost all clubs have activities on Saturday afternoons. Some sports clubs have morning practice (from 7.30 am to 8.30 am). In sports season, interschool games and practice are often held on Sunday.

There is another kind of time-intensive work in so-called "difficult" schools where many students tend to rebel and escape from school to smoke, or even to commit acts of violence. Teachers must spend a lot of time in guiding and observing them or discussing with their parents appropriate methods for modifying behaviour. Time spent for such purposes is not counted as working hours in those cases.

Most active teachers have experiments once a week (i.e., about 25 times a year). These teachers often let students try some additional experiments. On average, however, teachers carry out experiments for students once every three weeks. There are some teachers who seldom have experiments (only once or twice a year).

This does not necessarily mean that such teachers are reluctant to have experiments or are lazy. In some schools, it is believed that lectures or problem-solving exercises are better preparations for the all-important university entrance examination. This is in part true. Questions which are relevant to experiments are likely to be rather simple(e.g., from which hole of a Liebig condenser cooling water should be flowed in?), and again, one can memorize the precautions and procedures involved in the experiments without direct experience.

For some years many suggestions have been made to improve the problems given in the university entrance examinations. One prevailing opinion is to prepare problems which can be solved by and only by students who have personally conducted experiments. The idea is good, but there are many difficulties when the suggestions are put into practice. First, it is difficult to draft such problems. Second, it seems possible to prepare for such problems by "paper" training. Such paper training is systematically organized by "Yobiko", or "cram-schools". Nevertheless, the concept of stressing experiences or experiments in the entrance examination problems is very important.

A typical chemistry laboratory is equipped with hood, laboratory bench, water, electricity ((AC 100V, variable AC 0-15V + DC 0-15 V), water, city gas, screen for projection, large monitor TV and videodeck.

In most laboratories, sufficient amounts of glassware are stored to allow students(usually in pairs) to perform experiments simultaneously (i.e, 12-24 sets). A variety of standard solutions (acid, base and other reagents) is prepared by the laboratory assistants and kept in the bottles placed on each bench.

The annual budget for experiments in the case of Metropolitan Tokyo is as follows. The standard for Tokyo metropolitan upper secondary schools is given below.

Generally speaking it is impossible to complete various duties described in (a) and (c) in the assigned time. Hence most teachers do some of these duties at home without being paid.

Table C.3.5 quoted above does not cover all of duties to be done by teachers. There are many other things to be done by them. It is not easy to estimate how many hours teachers spend unpaid to complete these hidden duties. Such is attempted in Table C.3.6 as a rough estimation.

Table C.3.6  Estimation of Time Required for Various Duties Other than Lectures.
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         Duties                                        Time Required
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  marking of mini-tests and reports,             (3 min x 180 students =) 9 h/trial
  preparation of hands-on materials,             (2 h x 4 times =) 8h/class
  preparation of experiments,                    (3 h x 2 times =) 6h/class
  preparation, marking and processing of mid-term and term examinations, 
                                                 (12h + 12 h + 6 h =) 30 h/term
  preparation of class newsletter,               3h/week
  interviews with individual students,           [15 min x 44 students =) 11h/term
   term- and year- evaluation,                   (14 h x 3 terms =) 42 h/year
  staff meetings,                                (1-1.5 h x 2-3 times =) 2-4.5 h/week
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In addition to these duties, at the end of each academic year, teachers are required to assist in the tasks related to preparing for the next year which requires many hours as shown below.

Table C.4.2  Time Tables for the 3rd Year Level of the Chemistry Course of the Division
             of Materials Science and Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, 
             Yokohama National University(effective till March 1995)
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  Summer Semester (3rd year)
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                       Morning                              Afternoon
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  Mon.    Physical Organic   Chemistry of        X-ray             Inorg. Solid State 
          Chemistry          Biomolecules        Crystallography   Chem./Bioorg. Chem.

  Tue.    Biochemistry I     Synthetic Org.      Electrochem.      Comprehensive
                             Chem./industrial    Physical Chem.
                             Physical Chem.  

  Wed.    Inorg. Materials   Organometallic      Quantum           Reaction
          Chemistry          Chemistry           Chemistry         Organic Chem.

  Thu.    Solutions          Organic Chemistry Laboratory  --------------------------->

  Fri.    Inorg. Structure   Industrial          Polymer           German II
          Chemistry          Analysis I          Chemistry
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  Winter Semester (3rd year)
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                        Morning                             Afternoon
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  Mon.    Inorganic          Functional          X-ray            Industrial Chemistry II
          Molecular Chem.    Microbiology  

  Tue.    Design of          Molecular           Functional        Comprehensive
          Organic Synthesis  Structure           Polymer Chem.     Organic Chem.
                                                 /Biophysical Chem.  
 
  Wed.    Industrial         Physical            Statistical       Comprehensive
          Analysis II        Polymer Chem.       Thermodynam.      Inorganic Chem.

  Thu.    Industrial Org. Industrial Chemistry Laboratory  ---------------------------->
          Chem./Industrial 
          Inorg. Chem.

  Fri.    Solid State        Electronic          Catalysis         German II
          Physics            Materials Chem.     Chemistry
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