Each school tries to enrich the content of its curriculum and retain a sufficient number of hours for lessons by careful selection of the contents of the lessons and school events, accommodation of activities on Saturday, and changing the route of the school bus.
We provide guidance to each student individually, in cooperation with the student's parents, as to how the student spends the Saturdays oft. In some cases, various activities are held using the school grounds and buildings.
At the beginning, activities held as a consequence of the shift to a shorter school week were sponsored by the schools or the PTA. But gradually those activities have been shifting to community activities. For example, in Tokyo and Musashino City, handicraft classes and swimming clubs have been held on Saturdays as activities supported by volunteers in the community. Also, there are various special activities, such as a holiday activity in Suwa City in Nagano Prefecture, an amateur painting group in lchinomiya City in Aichi Prefecture, and activities held by the community parents association in Komatsu City in Ishikawa Prefecture. Various activities like these are welcome to be started, because participation in community activities may lead to an enriched community life.
Included in the 1995-1996 fiscal year study by the Ministry of Education promoting five-days-a-week school were twenty4ive special education schools from throughout the country.
(b) Current Situation of Extracurricular Activities
In a school for children with mental or physical disabilities, fourteen "district PTAs" have been organized, that is, one PTA for each town where a child attending the school lives; the PTAs have active programs. The activities operated by each town include recreation, tea parties, visits to welfare workshops, community clean-up activity, aerobics classes, hikes, and potato-cooking parties. They arrange their activities according to the specific circumstances of the community.
Here is an excerpt from some of the activity plans implemented school-wide:
April Organization of the district PTA, and explanation of the purpose of five-days-a-week schooling.
May Requests for utilization of the facilities and equipment are sent to the Boards of Education of the relevant towns.
Participation and cooperation of the principals of elementary and junior high schools of the district that the students come from, and leaders of the district children's organizations.
August Introducing examples of the activities of the district PTAs at a PTA seminar.
Additionally, in some districts, seminars for volunteers are held in order to have smooth management of extracurricular activities.
3. Start of the Society for Special Needs Education and Integration
The Society for Study of Special Needs Education and Integration (Society for SNE) started in 1995,with the goals that the schools should become the place for learning and development, that all children,regardless of their differences, shall have solidarity and equality, as expressed in "A School for All", and also that education should be created that guarantees the best development possible for children with special educational needs. The first conference, at which the society was established, was held at Tokyo
Gakugei University from November 25-26. About 260 persons participated in this initial conference,including special education researchers, teachers of special education, parents, educational researchers,teachers in regular schools, members of boards of education, persons concerned with social services,psychologists, and graduate and undergraduate students.
Professor Sadao Shimizu of Miyagi University of Special Education was elected as the representative director, and the offices of Kenji Watanabe and Satoru Takahashi in the Department of Education for Children with Disabilities of Tokyo Gakugel University (4-1-1 Tsurai, Kita-machi, Koganel-shi, Tokyo 184)became the secretariat.
The major characteristics of this society are the following:
First, the society aims not to separate practice and academic studies in terms of a dichotomy of
