學童の生活時間に關する調査

Abstract

I. Purpose: The Kyoto Prefecture contains one great city, several small cities, many rural towns, and also many villages including farm, mountain, or seashore. They represent some typical styles of Japanese living. However, they do not vary much in educational system and customs, as they are all located in the same administrative section and communication is comparatively easy. We can then consider that, if there be any difference in the distribution of time spent by children, it is largely due to the difference of actual environmental-social pressure on the children's activities, and this will show to a certain extent the social demands in those living conditions. Under these considerations we have made an attempt to investigate how school children spend their time in the Kyoto Prefecture, and to compare their environmental differences. II. Procedure: A. Subjects: All the children of the 6th grade in the Kyoto Prefecture--about 36, 000 in number--were made to write an account of a single day, according to the "Log" method. The following samples were selected from the data for statistical arrangement: 1. Urban districts (Kyoto City) a. Shopping and Business Districts: B. 175, G. 175 b. Residential Quarters: B. 135, G. 150 c. Manufacturing Districts: B. 160, G. 170 d. Slum Quarters: B. 110, G. 105 [Table omitted] 2. Rural districts a. Towns: B. 490, G. 420 b. Farm Villages: B. 150, G. 130 c. Mountain Villages: B. 160, G. 160 d. Seashore Villages: B. 160, G. 145 3. Total: B. 1540, G. 1450 B. Date: One week day in the autumn of 1947 was set for each school, avoiding days of special events, such as school holidays for helping on the farm, and days on which school meetings and excursions were held, and so on. III. Main Results: The children's activities are classified in the following categories; (1) physiological necessities (including sleeping, eating, bathing, evacuation, medical treatments, etc.), (2) helping and work at home, (3) school life (including the time required on the way to and from school and recess hours at school, etc.), (4) study at home, (5) play at home and neighborhcod (including reading, outdoor play, indoor play, quarrels, etc.) (6) amusements (including chatting with family members, reading news-papers, listening to radio, attending cinema, etc.), (7) doing nothing. Table I and II show the averages and medians of the time spent in these activities. They also contain the percentages of non-participants, showing what percent of children do not work, play, or study at home. The distribution of frequencies in percentage is shown in Fig. I in the Japanese section (p. 28). These figures show only the urban samples. The figures in the upper two rows are for "Helping and Work", the middle two for "Study at Home", the lower two for "Play at Home". For each activity the upper row is for boys, the lower for girls. The first column shows the "Shopping" quarters, the second the "Residential", the third the "Manu-facturing", the last the "Slum Quarters". In each figure the abscissa shows the time spent in the unit of a quarter, the ordinate shows the percentage of the frequencies. (1) About 50% of a day is spent for physiological necessities, and about 30% for school life. These do not show much environmental and sex difference, though the urban children--especially of manufacturing and slum districts--sleep more, and the rural children spend more time in attending school. (2) Main environmental differences are found in the proportions between helping, study, and play at home. Table III shows these proportions: In the urban slum quarters, the rural mountain- and fishing-villages children study least at home, only about 20--30 minutes in the average and 10 minutes in the median. The time for play and helping does not differ in the various districts, so the proportion of these to study is double or treble in these districts compared to those of the other districts. [Table omitted] (3) As a result of comparison of the medians and distributions of each activity, we can conclude that the proportion in the urban residential districts and the rural farm districts can be said to be the standard. Compared with these, children in the shopping districts play and help less, those in the manufacturing and the slum districts play most and the slum districts study least. The mountain villages are more helped by children, especially by boys, and they permit children less time for study. The fishing villages let their children act more freely (less study and much play). (4) The environmental differences come out more conspicuously in boys than girls. (5) All the distribution of frequencies, excepting the physiological necessities and school life which are firmly regulated biologically and socially, are J typed or asymmetrically skewed to the shorter time. The standard deviations amount almost to the averages. The statistical estimation of the reliability of the differences can not be computed. (6) Analysis of the data concerning the intelligence and the school records show that the study hours at home and reading are more in proportion to the level of intelligence and school records, and this gradient is steeper with the latter in the rural children. With the other living activities, no significant regularity was found as to the difference of IQ and school achievements.