Political Intervention in Education

The local government of Osaka Prefecture issued an order to all public high school, which required senior teachers to check whether all teachers would actually be singing the national anthem in annual ceremonies of entrance or graduation. Principals and vice-principals will be too busy in watching mouths of his/her subordinates to congratulate students. This strange rule was introduced as a consequence of opposition between conservative leaders and leftist teachers. Who is going to obey it, anyway?

The Government of Osaka Prefecture activated a local law that demanded all teachers and staffs of public school to stand up and sing the national anthem in school ceremonies in 2011. Some teachers were posed penalties for not standing up while the melody of national anthem was played. They believed that the national anthem had been used for imperial education to teach children to be willing to die for the Emperor at the wartime. The penalties included punishment or dismiss of reemployment after retirement.

However, teachers were not so stupid to be kept on punished in every ceremony. They began to stand up from chair, but they pretended to be singing moving mouth as if they were singing, the same way Beyoncé did in Obama’s inauguration ceremony earlier this year. As a counter measure against teachers’ disobedience, the Educational Board of Osaka Prefecture required to check their mouths. It also is checked that their attitude would be appropriate as that of “public servant.”

It is unclear whether the bosses in schools are strictly obeying the order. Even how close they go to the teachers, it is impossible to check all singing voices of protestant teachers. It is close to checking buckles of car drivers, in which police cannot fine all the violators. An Aesop Fable teaches us that North Wind cannot remove a traveler’s cloak.

The biggest victims of this dispute are students. On the ceremonies for them, they will see their principal and vice-principal focusing on mouths of teachers, not on celebrating the achievement of students. Teachers will teach a lesson to the students that people may not follow the rule when they personally think it would not be appropriate.

This is overwhelmingly an intervention of politics into education. The system of Board of Education established in every local government was to avoid such an excessive exercise of political power. If a leader wanted to change the situation of education, he firstly needs to make a consensus for it, not naïve top-down type of order.