Japan's school system is famous for its capacity to endow every student with a reliably predictable compendium of facts, figures, and memorized information. It is also notorious for its rigidity, suppression of creativity, and failure to meet even the most modest individual student needs. None of these facts are unknown in Japan, as this film demonstrates. In this appealing feature, seven pre-high-school boys and three girls decide to drop out of the "cram like your life depends on it" system and conscientiously set out to study in a way which suits them. They take over a room in an abandoned warehouse and begin experimenting with individualized study which emphasizes creativity, completely without the need for instructors. The students have been missing from their regular school for some time, but when confronted about this, they lie to save face and say they were there all the time. This makes it particularly embarrassing for them when the school's teachers and the military police surround the factory and demand that the children come out.
by Clarke Fountain
synopsis
