【英文記事で英語学習】Recognizing LGBT in Education 日本の教育現場の状況は？

Although there is still much work to do, educational institutions in Japan are slowly starting to acknowledge and, in some cases, celebrate the LGBT community.

The first to make these changes have been some international schools and universities, which are more removed from the very slow-moving cogs of change at schools under direct government oversight.

Waseda University, a private university in Tokyo, in May 2016 held the Waseda LGBT Ally Week to demonstrate how anyone can be an ally and support the LGBT community on campus in various ways. There are no requirements to attend the event, but holding it expresses a positive attitude toward the LGBT community that helps reduce the potential for homophobia.

In contrast, public schools are still at the stage of acknowledging the existence of the LGBT community. There have been some gradual changes over the last five years as the mention of LGBT has started to appear in school textbooks for various subjects.

This is an important and overdue shift, but while it has taken place, the Japanese education ministry has maintained school instruction that says that in puberty, “Young people develop an interest in the opposite sex.”

Ahead of a once-in-a-decade government review of school curriculum guidelines that took place in 2017, a movement arose to change that statement, which basically denies the very existence of homosexuality within the human experience. Regrettably, the change was not adopted. The government reportedly rejected the proposal because, it said, the public and guardians are not accepting of LGBT issues.

Meanwhile, change is occurring in a different area. The first time the concept of gender diversity was included in school textbooks here was in 2017, when it was mentioned in high school ethics and home economics texts. In 2019, four publishing companies out of eight included LGBT topics in junior-high school texts for the first time in compulsory education. In 2020, an elementary school textbook mentioned the presence of people “who do not feel romantic interest in the opposite sex.”

In March 2020, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT) announced the results of its annual certification of textbooks, which revealed that mentions of sexual diversity significantly increased in junior-high school textbooks adopted from spring 2021. In junior-high school textbooks, only five companies and six textbooks mentioned LGBT before, but in the school year 2021, the number has increased to 9 companies and 17 textbooks.

On top of that, the number of subjects that they cover expanded from ethics to also include Japanese language, history, civics, home economics, art, and physical education.

1. International schools and universities in Japan are one of the first educational institutions to show their support for the LGBT community. True or False?
2. In 2017, Japanese government adopted a proposal to change the statement in school instructions, which denies the existence of homosexuality. True or False?
3. The number of textbooks which include the concept of gender diversity is increasing in Japan. True or False?

※正解は記事最下部へ

1. True
   本文では、政府による直接的な管理下から離れたところにいるインターナショナルスクールや大学などから変化を起こり始めたことが述べられていました。
2. False
   学習指導要領に含まれる「異性」に関する文言の変更は、2017年の改訂では実現しませんでした。
3. True
   中学校で使われる教科書のうち、性の多様性に関する記述を含むものは、5社6点から9社17点（2021年度）に増えています。