2007 Volume 16 Pages 66-76
Prior to World War Ⅱ，there were a variety of institutions training secondary school teachers in Japan. While national universities and national normal schools produced many "elite" teachers, private universities and colleges/schools also made a valuable contribution to the supply of teachers. Previous studies have recognized the critical role of private institutions in training secondary school teachers. However, the career paths of these teachers have not been investigated in detail. Therefore, on the basis of alumni lists obtained from four private institutions, this article investigates the career paths of such teachers graduating at the beginning of the Showa era. The author conducted a quantitative analysis to compare graduates from four private institutions with those from three national institutions.
The results showed that all the four private institutions produced many teachers at the secondary education level. However, graduates of private universities' and colleges' faculties of literature had a greater tendency to pursue teaching at the university level, and many private institution evening course graduates became elementary school teachers. Private institutions' graduates often taught in vocational schools（jitsugyo-gakko）, which were considered to be subsidiary in secondary education. However, the general high schools（chugakko and koto-jogakko）in which many taught had comparable prestige in terms of their tradition and size to those that employed their national-institution-trained counterparts.
However, very few of the private-institution graduates could hope to become principals of secondary schools. Moreover, the proportion of private-school graduates returning to their hometown to teach was higher than that of the national-school graduates. National-institution graduates frequently moved from one school to another for a better salary and status. Private-institution graduates, on the other hand, had limited opportunities to do this for various reasons. The author investigates the reasons why they returned to their hometown and concludes that most of them tried to find a role as teachers of the students of their hometown because they could not expect to increase their prestige in the hierarchy of teachers.
