Japanese teachers rebel against 'work without limits'

Dec 18 (globelivemedia.com) - In one of the last notes in his diary, the Japanese professor Yoshio Kudo lamented working hours that started early and could last until almost midnight. Two months later, he suffered a “karoshi”, a death from overwork.

Kudo’s grueling schedule is no exception in Japan, where teachers have some of the longest working hours in the world, packed with tasks ranging from cleaning to supervising transfers from school to extracurricular activities.

An OECD study in 2018 revealed that a middle school teacher in Japan works 56 hours a week, against an average of 38 hours in most developed countries.

But the figure does not even include the surprising amount of overtime.

Research by a union-linked think tank showed that teachers work an average of 123 hours of overtime a month, pushing their workload beyond the so-called “karoshi line” of 80 hours.

Teachers say they are reaching the limit and some have rebelled against this culture through lawsuits. Earlier this year, the Japanese ruling party commissioned a working group to study the issue. ...continue reading

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