I’m Kanemitsu, representative of Grandline.
Our school specializes in working professionals, and most of our students are professionals. However, we also work on education for children, so I would like to explain our approach.
I have a child in the middle grades of elementary school, and my wife is Filipina. Because we live in Manila, surrounded by English, my child uses English as a main language. In that environment, my child was in the top-level English class at the Manila Japanese School and was rated by the Filipino English teacher as one of the top two English speakers in the grade.
However, several things made me feel that just being able to speak English is not enough.
A child who speaks English but doesn’t know science vocabulary
One day my child told me about an experiment lighting a small bulb in science class. I casually asked, “Do you know what 豆電球 is in English?” After thinking a little, my child answered, “Beans Light?” The correct answer is “miniature light bulb” or “small bulb”.
Hearing that, I asked, “Then can you say ‘isosceles triangle’ in English?” and the answer was “I don’t know.” Through this exchange, I felt that even if a child can speak English in daily conversation, entering an international or overseas school requires a completely separate place to study the English needed especially for math and science. Otherwise, I felt a sense of crisis that if my child wanted to go to a high school or university in the West or an international school, there would be no foundation for the abilities required.
A junior high student who speaks English but doesn’t know math formulas
I also have a niece who grew up in the U.S. One summer when she was in junior high, she came to Japan and asked me for help with homework from her cram school in America. She attended a fairly good school on the West Coast (Los Angeles) and I had heard she was at the top of her grade in math, so I was surprised to hear she didn’t know that distance is calculated as “speed × time”.
* In U.S. schools, children good at math may skip grades, so this refers only to what is learned at school in the same grade as in Japan.
The U.S. CPA exam is easy if you understand English
I also have my own experience. After passing the Japanese CPA exam, I studied for the U.S. CPA exam. The financial accounting content was at the level of fairly easy questions from Japan’s Bookkeeping Certification Level 2, and I felt that anyone who passed the Japanese CPA exam could almost certainly pass if they could read English.
This assumes a fundamental difference in the nature of the exams: Japan tries to screen candidates to some extent through the exam, while the U.S. lets people compete in the real world after passing.
The value of learning Japanese curriculum content in English
From these experiences, I felt first-hand that while English is of course important in the coming era, comprehensive education beyond English is essential. And from my perspective living abroad, I feel that the standard of Japan’s educational curriculum is high.
So the idea started from thinking that if children could understand math, science and other subjects taught in Japan in English, they could not only enter fairly high-level schools in the West or international schools, but also build the foundation to graduate at the top of their international school.
However, when I looked for such schools or cram schools in the Philippines, I could hardly find any that taught content at the level of Japan’s MEXT curriculum guidelines in English. I decided that if none existed, I would have to create one, which led us to open a summer school for learning math and science in English.
Of course, what is taught in the West and at international schools may include thinking skills tested from different angles than in Japan. For this, we add our own arrangements, such as more active learning on top of Japanese content, to make it practical for studying abroad and at international schools.
Drawing on valuable feedback from students and parents, we are committed to developing the curriculum further so that it builds the ability to enter diverse universities such as Harvard, Oxford and the National University of Singapore.
If you are interested, please check the details of our summer school.