Literacy and Script Reform in Occupation Japan

Download or read book Literacy and Script Reform in Occupation Japan written by J. Marshall Unger and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1996 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although the United States Education Mission recommended that the Japanese give serious consideration to the introduction of alphabetic writing, key American officials in the Civil Information and Education Section of GHQ/SCAP delayed and effectively killed action on this recommendation. Japanese advocates of romanization nevertheless managed to obtain CI&E approval for an experiment in elementary schools to test the hypothesis that schoolchildren could make faster progress if spared the necessity of studying Chinese characters as part of non-language courses such as arithmetic. Though not conclusive, the experiment's results supported the hypothesis and suggested the need for more and better testing.