A Comparative Study of Middle Schools and Girls' Middle Schools in Modern Japan : The Construction of Gender in Secondary Education

在20世纪20年代，进入中学和女中的学生比例约为10%，这表明进入这些学校的学生属于社会经济和文化上的特权阶层。这意味着他们毕业后的道路，甚至是婚后的角色在男女之间是不同的；男人作为一家之主获得社会地位和养家糊口，而女人则承担家务和照顾孩子的工作。考虑到这些角色期望的性别差异，我们可以合理地预期，学生在中学教育中接触到的教育内容和文化会因性别而异。然而，这项研究进一步揭示了教育方面的各种性别差异，超出了最初的预期。即通过对中学和女中教科书内容和教育杂志文章的分析，揭示出两校在课程差异之外，在具体教育内容和各学科意义上的差异。同样，对每所学校的学生阅读的男生和女生杂志的分析揭示了“男生化”和“女生化”的含义，以及对友谊的看法的差异。这些发现在以前的研究中没有得到充分的检验；因此，本研究的意义在于它具体地揭示了中学教育中的这些性别现实。

As the ratio of students who went on to middle schools and girls' middle schools was around 10% in the 1920s, it suggested that students who attended these schools belonged to economically and culturally privileged strata of society. It meant that their paths after graduation, and further more, roles after marriage differed between man and woman; man would attain social position and support his family as a head of the family while woman undertake housework and childcare. Considering these gender differences in role expectations, it was reasonably expected that educational contents and the culture students come to contact with in secondary education differed by gender. This study, however, further reveals more various gender differences in education than it had originally been expected. That is, through the analyses of the contents of middle schools and girls' middle schools textbooks and the articles on educational magazines, this study reveals differences in specific educational contents and the meaning of each subject beyond curricular differences between the two schools. Likewise, the analyses of boys' and girls' magazines the students of each school read reveal the implications of "boyishness" and "girlishness," and differences in the perceptions of friendship. These findings have not been fully examined in previous studies; therefore, the significance of this study is that it specifically reveals these realities of gender in secondary education.