Voice of the Customer

TMCnet - The World's Largest Communications and Technology Community
New Coverage :  Asterisk  |  Call Center Outsourcing  |  Call Recording  |  SIP Trunking  |  Hosted Exchange  |  PBX
Webinars
Channels by Topic
Share
 
| More
RSS-XML alerts
Print this page
E-mail this page to a friend
Voice of the Customer Featured Article Archive

[April 28, 2006]

LEAD: Gov't sends education bill to Diet, patriotism new feature+

(Japan Economic Newswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)TOKYO, April 28_(Kyodo) _ (EDS: ADDING KOIZUMI'S COMMENTS, INFO AT LEAD-4TH GRAFS)

The government on Friday sent proposed legislation to the Diet to amend the basic education law that is nearly 60 years old to emphasize "public spirit and Japanese traditions" and instill a sense of patriotism in the young.

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said he hopes the bill, approved at Friday's Cabinet meeting for submission to parliament, will be enacted by the June 18 end of the ongoing Diet session, but again ruled out extending the session to secure time for its passage.

The premier called for efforts to get broad support for the bill from lawmakers including members of the main opposition Democratic Party of Japan.

"Times have changed over the past 60 years," Koizumi told reporters at his official residence. "So, we hope to review the significance of education from that viewpoint."

The bill was approved Tuesday by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its coalition partner, the New Komeito party. It is identical to the draft the two parties hammered out earlier this month.

The bill contains 18 articles, adding and updating some notions of the Fundamental Law of Education of 1947, which consists of 11 articles.

While the bill retains the wording of "on the basis of the spirit of the Constitution" in its preamble, it adds calls for "public spirit and respect for tradition," and a newly defined notion of "patriotism" in one article.

The bill defines patriotism as "an attitude which respects tradition and culture, loves the nation and homeland that have fostered them, respects other countries and contributes to international peace and development."

The current education law says in its preamble that Japan's education must respect individual dignity, aim at raising people who will aspire for truth and peace, and seek universal and characteristic culture.

Conservative groups say the law, enacted shortly after World War II, fails to urge educators in their work to encourage a spirit of patriotism and respect for tradition, and have long called for it to be revised.

Opponents argue that a revision might lead to a revival of the sort of nationalism that led to militarism before and during the war.

The ruling bloc intends to set up a special committee in the House of Representatives after the Golden Week holidays through May 7 to begin discussion with the opposition parties.

It is uncertain, however, whether the amendment can pass both houses of the Diet during the 150-day regular Diet session due to adjourn June 18 as supporters worry that time may run out.

The bill deletes the existing law's provision that compulsory education should be for nine years, with the aim of flexibly addressing a change in social conditions stemming in part from the rapidly falling birthrate, according to its proponents.

It adds articles on "lifelong learning, home education and a basic plan for promotion of education."

The basic plan calls on the government to work out a long-term program so as to achieve specific goals of a variety of "philosophies" for education in a revised law.

A review of the Fundamental Law of Education was recommended in 2000 by a private advisory body to then Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori.

In March 2003, the Central Council for Education endorsed plans to amend the postwar education law and recommended that a revised law call for "an attitude which loves the nation and homeland, and for proactively participating in activities of public interest."

Two months later, the LDP and New Komeito began work to amend the law. The two parties, however, remained apart on some notions, such as the definition of patriotism.

After 70 rounds of study meetings, the two ruling parties managed to draw up the amendment plan April 13.

[ Back To Voice of the Customer Community's Homepage ]
› Return to Voice of the Customer Home

FOLLOW US

FREE Voice of the Customer eNewsletter

Subscribe Now

Featured White Papers

  • Seven Best Practices for Speech Analytics: Speech analytics is valuable for identifying issues in the contact center. However, limiting its use to the contact center only considers a portion of all customer interactions and subsequently only reveals a small part of the voice of the customer. This paper discusses how organizations can optimize their Speech Analytics implementation strategy to realize the promise of this exciting technology.
  • Understanding the Voice of the Customer: Today's contact centers involve a sea of information that must be captured, processed, and distributed on a daily basis. Effective use of this information enables companies to remain competitive in an increasingly aggressive and customer centric marketplace. An overwhelming percentage of the information that circulates in a contact center's audio recordings, documents, web pages, and emails is unstructured in that it resides outside of a normal structured database and cannot be managed efficiently. These unstructured items contain valuable information, yet this information historically has been difficult to organize, categorize, and access.
View All ›

Case Studies

  • Aflac: Aflac, the leading provider of guaranteed-renewable insurance turned to Autonomy to help them automate the process of monitoring their contact center agent for quality and compliance. The company now has a system that can offer continued improvement in agent quality and productivity while enhancing the customer experience. ...
  • Avaya: Avaya, a global leader in business communications, inherited 880 websites as well as numerous intranets and extranets when it was spun off from Lucent Technologies. The sheer volume and diversity of the sites and the over 500 content creators resulted in inefficient content distribution rife with divergent branding, messaging, and product information. ...
View All ›

Video Showcase

    Interview with Autonomy: Rich Tehrani interviews Simon Hayhurst, SVP of Autonomy

Featured Events

  • Multichannel Analytics with Autonomy Explore: In today's world of constant connectivity there are a variety of direct and indirect channels of communication between an enterprise (or a brand) and its customers. 80% of these valuable interactions are generated in a human-friendly, unstructured format across multiple touchpoints and channels. With this ever growing mountain of information how do you extract the emerging trends and topics of interest to the enterprise? ...
  • SES Chicago 2011: Marketers and SEO professionals attend SES Chicago each year to network and learn about topics such as PPC management, keyword research, SEO, social media, local, mobile, link building, duplicate content, multiple site issues, video optimization, site optimization, usability and more. The conference offers 70+ sessions, intensive training workshops, and an expo floor packed with companies that can help you grow your business. While you're at it, network with peers and leading industry vendors. Programmed by the SES advisory board, you can be assured - SES content really is king! ...
View All ›
 
Share
 
| More
RSS-XML alerts
Print this page
E-mail this page to a friend