A recent survey found that more than half of Japan's graduate schools in education are short of students for the 2012 academic year. More than 40 percent of schools had failed to meet their quotas for the past five years.
Since 2003 when the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) started to expand graduate programs in education throughout the country, nearly 3,800 people have enrolled in graduate teaching schools — far from enough.
The push to better educate teachers is a worthy goal with many potential benefits for teachers and their students, but improving teacher education in Japan will require effort, encouragement and a shift in thinking. After all, those are the basics of education.