Why go to juku?
Talking with parents, students, and teachers in regular schools and juku, one learns that the primary reason students go to juku in Japan is not to attain individual excellence or high levels of achievement, but to keep up with or get ahead of their peers both socially and academically. The list of reasons why students go to an academic juku given by a long-time teacher at Sakura, who is now a faculty member in a department of educational psychology in a major national university, underscores such a peer-based tendency. For elementary school students he cited three main reasons for going to an academic juku: (a) to prepare for entrance exams to elite junior high schools, (b) to give the child whose siblings are attending juku fair treatment, and (c) to help a student keep up in regular school. The former juku teacher said that for a junior high school student, this picture changes dramatically. He noted that the majority of those who go to juku say they go simply because their friends
