The Meritocratic Spell Cast on Students at Correspondence Senior High Schools in Japan

The Recognition and Structure in Forming their Future Careers

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to reveal the process that students at correspondence senior high schools go through when forming their careers during their school days. Correspondence senior high schools in Japan are sometimes treated as a kind of alternative school. Therefore, a majority of the students that attend these kinds of schools are those who have dropped out of so-called traditional schools. One of the problems for these students is forming their future careers after their graduation from correspondence school. This paper investigates semi-structured interviews with two students living in urban Japan. These interviews illustrate the impact meritocracy has on career development for these non-traditional students. When they enter their respective schools, they manage to change the trajectory of their future careers. However, as they come to grips with what they want those careers to be, they find employers place significant emphasis on academic achievement. Meritocratic structures can be so pervasive that they find that they can't form their careers without those academic achievements. The aim of this paper is to emphasize the necessity of providing such students with a chance to rejoin our meritocratic society.