Although hardly an isolated case amidst the plethora of popular anime, “Assassination Classroom” initially presents a bizarre, almost farcical premise: a yellow, octopus-resembling creature destroys part of the moon and threatens to do the same to the Earth—that is, unless a particular class of 14-year-old students can manage to assassinate him before their graduation in March. What at first seems like nonsensical outlandishness belies a robust critique of standardized education and the ways in which personal freedom, potential, and creativity are stifled by it.
Initially extorting the Japanese government in order to act as homeroom teacher for a class at Kunugigaoka Junior High, Koro-sensei (a pun on korosenai—“unable to kill”) spends an entire academic year attempting to teach twenty-eight students math, literature, science, social studies, and English (as a foreign language). In addition to also coaching in the art of how to successfully assassinate himself and save the Earth, Koro-sensei attempts to educate the students of Class 3-E on how to succeed in an education system that has up until now abandoned them.
In most Japanese schools, students are assigned a homeroom that they stay in for the duration of their entire school life. At Kunugigaoka Junior High School, Class 3-E is the lowest ranked—a remedial homeroom if you will. Like many other schools, the students at KJH are placed in classrooms according to their aptitude. This is taken even a step further, as Class 3-E is placed in a building isolated from the main campus on top of a difficult-to-get-to mountain, and the students are given disadvantages at the cultural festival, field trips, facilities, etc. The reason for the different treatment is the principal’s utilitarian ideology regarding education. According to studies done on Japanese ants, about 20% of them are diligent workers, 60% are ordinary workers, and 20% are lazy workers. Taking this information, Principal Gakuho Asano utilizes to push one classroom of students to the very bottom of the school social hierarchy; this creates a frantic fear and desperation in the rest of the students to avoid getting places in the bottom class, and it creates, as he describes,a 95:5 rule, where 95% of the student body comprises of diligent workers, and only 5% will be “worthless”.
This setting and context seems a little silly to us perhaps; obviously extreme educational methods like what the principal enacts are harmful and unethical—that’s what I imagine a lot of us would first think when examining this approach. However, the danger in this school model lies in its apparent effectiveness.
While much of what happens in KJH is exaggerated fiction, it is based on some truth of how cutthroat and brutal the real-life Japanese system is. The entrance exams that students need to take to get into high schools and universities are extremely rigorous, and directly dictate the trajectory of people’s lives. Back in 2015, The Japan Times reported that the amount of suicides for kids aged 18 and under increases sharply during August-September, and early April; why? Because those two periods coincide with the beginning of new school terms. These are disturbing facts, yet why has such a system been in place for so long? The answer is that it does produce an increase in efficient and productive additions into the country’s workforce. How many times have you seen a blogger, a YouTuber, a streamer, or an online article that describes “Japanese efficiency,” or comments on how Japan is living in the future? When these harmful models still produce the desired effect in some way, it’s hardly a wonder that they aren’t dispatched or made to change. Yet it is also hardly strange to see fiction and art go about critiquing what is so damaging about the current system either.
“Assassination Classroom” displays its critique through very exaggerated levels of drama and events. And it touches on many different facets of educational discourse. For example, one plot point focuses on a new PE teacher arriving at Class 3-E and how he utilizes violence as a teaching method. Another plot point centers on how parents place the burden of their regrets about the past onto their children. Even the principal, who is the antagonist for most of the story, is revealed to have once been an idealistic teacher who turned to utilitarianism once one of his own students committed suicide. All the students in 3-E as well, each have a unique and personal reason why and how they ended up in 3-E; a major theme of the story being that when education is tailored to the individual, all students can succeed.
It is that final theme that makes “Assassination Classroom” a relevant piece, even for us in America, which has a very different educational system than Japan. Of course, our academic year is different, our homeroom model is different, and we don’t place as much emphasis on entrance exams. However, I think there is common ground with the idea of sacrificing individualism in order to produce standardized results. Moreover, there is also a similar thread of how strong social pressure, ostracization, and bullying that stems from school performance has an extremely negative effect on self-confidence and mental health, to the point of even endangering students.
“Assassination Classroom” is very goofy, slapstick, and full of layered puns; yet it offers a very pointed assessment and rebellion against the status quo of creating cookie-cutter graduates—a thought that more people should internalize.
