Lack of achievement in Japan is attributed to the failure to work hard rather than to lack of ability or to personal or environmental obstacles. The remarkable success of Japanese children in elementary school, in such areas as mathematics, is, in part, due to the renunciation of the view that children of low ability will not achieve regardless of how hard they work and that children of high ability need not work hard.
While mothers in the West are often more responsible than fathers for their children's success in school, mothers in Japan are solely responsible. They work hard at seeing to it that their children succeed in school. They spend a good deal of time making things for their children to use in school, preparing elaborate lunches, and attending school functions faithfully. In addition, they are consistent and clear about the values and behaviors they reinforce in their children. For example, they stress gambaru (persistence and exact, correct forms of behavior in public). Furthermore, over the last 20 years, there has been very little change in the definition of a good child: one who persists, hangs on, or always does his best. In a word, good children are tenacious (Shields, Jr., 1989, p. 4).
Nevertheless, mothers in Japan are very indulgent with their children. Many observers of Japanese culture find themselves mystified by the relative ease of the transition most pupils from the one-on-one, highly indulgent home to the one-in-forty, demanding classroom environment--there are no tantrums in their nursery schools or kindergartens. In the United States, however, tantrums among kindergartner children are common. Educators in the United States state that one reason for them are that more is expected of these children than ever before. U.S. kindergartners are suddenly being subject to rules of conduct--having to concentrate and be self-controlled, to listen and raise their hands, to stand on line and wait th...