| Intense Years: How Japanese Adolescents Balance School, Family and Friends Contributor(s): Letendre, Gerald K. (Author), Fukuzawa, Rebecca Erwin (Author) |
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ISBN: 0815331452 ISBN-13: 9780815331452 Publisher: Routledge OUR PRICE: $161.50 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: April 2001 Annotation: INTENSE YEARS examines the lives of young adolescents in Japanese middle schools, focusing on the dynamics of school, family, and social life, and explores the change from child to adolescent that takes place in the middle school years. The authors discuss several themes that play a major role in how Japanese adolescents deal with school, academic pressure, social maturation, social hierarchy, personality development, and the development of gender identity. Students of varying economic, family, and social backgrounds tell their stories. In describing and analyzing the lives of middle school students, Gerald K. LeTendre and Rebecca Erwin Fukuzawa offer the reader a new perspective on Japanese education and society that demonstrates the successes and problems faced by Japanese students, parents, and teachers. This book shows how young adolescents cope with a rapid stage of development in a culture that is extremely different from that found in western nations. The intensity of their academic studies and social obligations makes early adolescence an "intense" period which highlights cultural contradictions in modern Japanese society such as the conflict between the ideal of group harmony and fierce individual competition. For American psychologists and educators -- who face an increasingly racially and ethnically mixed population in U.S. schools -- this book offers a major analysis of the impact of culture and institutions on the process of identity development during early adolescence. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Family & Relationships | Life Stages - Adolescence - Education | Elementary |
| Dewey: 305.235 |
| LCCN: 00044255 |
| Series: Reference Books in International Education (Garland Publishing) |
| Physical Information: 0.65" H x 6.36" W x 9.24" (0.96 lbs) 152 pages |
| Themes: - Cultural Region - Japanese - Ethnic Orientation - Japanese - Topical - Adolescence/Coming of Age - Topical - Family |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: This volume examines the lives of young adolescents in Japanese middle schools, focusing on the dynamics of school, family, and social life, and explores the change from child to adolescent that takes place in the middle school years. |