how do you do it?

I am doing researdh for a school project on why the United States education system isn't working well. I was curious about why Japan's school system seems to be working pretty good with a great national rated educational system. I would appreciate any information you could give me to help my make my comparison of how much better Japan's school system seems to be working when compared to that of the United States.

1998/2/15

I have been studying at schools in Europe, North America and Japan. I can tell you about my practical experience which may differ from the general picture. But what I realized when comparing the school systems was that the main differences between the systems are very much dependent on cultural mentalities and values.

Three fundamental things make much more difference than all reforms on modern teaching methods and modern classroom design etc. These three things are morals, care and history.

All those things are lacking at American schools and in American society, while they are much more important in Japan and Europe. Morals and discipline make school much more efficient especially in the lower grades. By the time the students enter high school they should have reached a certain maturity and behave themselves properly.

One of the worst things that I have experienced in America is the negligence of many teachers. I believe that many of them care much more about their personal interests than about their social duties. This starts with minor things like dropping the chalk and just leave it on the floor and continuing with a new one. Self-discipline and care are not thaught at American schools at all.

The third thing is the ignorance towards the past. The trend is that everything has to be modernized and reformized. Nobody believes in traditional teaching values that have been developed over centuries. Also, history as a subject is not important at all. I believe that knowing about the past is the most important way to get a deep understanding and a broad perspective of matters. And this again is the basis for a good education.

The problems with American schools is much more a general problem of society.

1998/2/15

standardized tests, comparing children's scores from countries such as korea, japan, taiwan, usa, england, netherlands, et cetera, consistently shows that asian countries' children score better in math and certain science areas. although complex, the fundamental reason for this comes from simply more effort is put into actually doing computation over a longer period. math competency is built up to levels where kids in korea and taiwan are likely to be more than 2 grade levels ahead of western kids by the time they reach college. test scores are interesting, but they dont tell us more of the reasons what is going on. for japan, the life in a typical child's day is as follows: in regular school from 8:15 to 3:30 or so; then more than 60% will attend a privately run cram school. the cram school focuses the kid's skills towards passing math and japanese language exams that each will have to face in order to gain entrance to a private junior or senior high school. all this helps the child to do better academically, but there is a tremendous price to pay: creativity is not important in these types of educational systems. kids are force fed preconformed ideas, never being challenged to discover underlying ideas or reasons. your system in the usa, instead, stresses discovery of the underlying reasons and concepts. which school system is better? both are useful to us in this ever more complicated world. it takes both japanese and americans, and mexican, and singaporeans to make sure we all make it, together. the only other comment is on how important families still are to the people who live in asia. the family being strong is still the most important reason why asian children seem to perform better.

1998/2/15