A draft revision of the education ministry's curriculum guidelines for high schools released Dec. 22 does not specifically mention the Takeshima islets disputed with South Korea.

The draft covering high school geography classes remains unchanged from the current document in terms of guiding teachers to "touch on Japan's territorial issues" but without giving specific examples of such problems.

The document will supplement the new education guidelines for social studies at junior high schools from the 2012 school year, according to the Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry.

Meanwhile, the revised high school curriculum guidelines also call for English classes to be taught primarily in English, and stipulate that the number of English words to be taught during junior high school and high school will be increased to about 3,000 from the current 2,200.