Sociology

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The schooling years in the Japanese education system are segmented along the lines of 6 years of elementary school; 3 years of junior high school; 3 years of high school; and 4 years of university. However, the government has just announced that it is intending to make changes in the Education Law to allow schools to merge the 6-3 division between elementary and middle schools **. ** The key purpose for this change is to allow elementary and middle schools to pool or share their resources, with special regard to making available specialist teachers of middle schools to elementary schools. A school year has three terms: summer, winter and spring, which are each followed by a vacation period. The school year begins in April and ends in March of the following year. Compulsory education covers elementary school and junior high school. A break from the past, modern public schools in Japan today are mostly co-ed(more than 99% of elementary schools). The Japanese school year begins in April and students attend school for three terms except for brief spring and winter breaks and a one month long summer holiday**. **====== [|http://www.education-in-japan.info/sub1.html#sub101] The **family in Japan** is called “Kazoku” in Japanese. It is basically composed of a couple as is the family in other societies. The Japanese family is based on the line of descent. In any given period of history, all family members have been expected to contribute to the perpetuation of the family. Roughly half of all households in Japan are made up of a two-parent family and children. This typical family unit is smaller and more urban than that of a generation or two ago. More than half the population now lives in large urban areas, and only one family in six includes three generations. In many white collar families, the father is a proverbial "guest" in his own house, returning home most evenings after the children have gone to bed. Although fathers provide children with certain role models and many take an active interest in education matters, the task of attending to the child's upbringing and education is usually left to the mother. Mothers take that responsibility seriously. [] [] [] []
 * Social classes** are economic or cultural arrangements of groups in society. Class is an essential object of analysis for sociologist, political scienctists, economists, anthropology and social historians. In the social sciences, social class is often discussed in terms of 'social stratification'. Various social and political theories propose that social classes with greater power attempt to cement their own ranking above the lower classes in the hierarchy to the detriment of the society overall. Social class pertaining broadly to material wealth may be distinguished from status class based on honour, prestige, religious affiliation, and so on. The conditions of capitalism and its class system came together due to a variety of "elective affinities". In an innovative multi-disciplinary approach that include top scholars working on quantitative class structure, policy development, and ethnographic analysis, this volume highlights the centrality of class formation to our understanding of the many levels of Japanese society.