Losing an Edge, Japanese Envy India’s Schools

[flashl]

Japan is suffering a crisis of confidence these days about its ability to compete with its emerging Asian rivals, China and India. But even in this fad-obsessed nation, one result was never expected: a growing craze for Indian education.

Despite an improved economy, many Japanese are feeling a sense of insecurity about the nation’s schools, which once turned out students who consistently ranked at the top of international tests. That is no longer true, which is why many people here are looking for lessons from India, the country the Japanese see as the world’s ascendant education superpower.

Bookstores are filled with titles like “Extreme Indian Arithmetic Drills” and “The Unknown Secrets of the Indians.” Newspapers carry reports of Indian children memorizing multiplication tables far beyond nine times nine, the standard for young elementary students in Japan.

And Japan’s few Indian international schools are reporting a surge in applications from Japanese families.

...

Most annoying for many Japanese is that the aspects of Indian education they now praise are similar to those that once made Japan famous for its work ethic and discipline: learning more at an earlier age, an emphasis on memorization and cramming, and a focus on the basics, particularly in math and science.

...

“Japan’s interest in learning from Indian education is a lot like America’s interest in learning from Japanese education,” said Kaoru Okamoto, a professor specializing in education policy at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo.

NY Times - Read Full Text

[otherlander]

1. Interesting

I don't really think too highly of the "memorization and cramming" kind of education, which I knew Japan did a lot of- didn't know that India did so even more than Japan, though. One thing I've heard about education in Japan is that students are assigned to better/worse schools based on their grades/test scores, instead of where they live, which I thought was a good idea- seems a lot more fair than the American system of "Your parents don't have enough money to get out of this city/neighborhood, so you're going to a crappy school." Does India do that, too?

[Lydia Leftcoast]

2. Only high schools are assigned on the basis of entrance exams

Otherwise, kids normally attend their neighborhood school through ninth grade, unless their parents opt for the private school route.

An advantage of the private school route is that if you get into an elementary school that is run as a university lab school, your entrance exam days are over. You can just sail through and gain admission to the sponsoring university if you like. (These schools are called "escalator schools.")

In ninth grade, teachers and counselors advise students on what high schools they can realistically hope to get into. In the old days, when Japan had a huge demand for factory workers, a lot of kids decided not to go to high school at all. For the past couple of decades, though, Japan has had the highest high school graduation rate in the world, over 90%. As a result, the lowest-ranking high schools are like troubled schools anywhere, with bored, often ill-behaved students plagued with family problems.

A couple of years ago, I met up with DUer Art_from_Ark, who lives near Tokyo, and helped out at the English school where he works part-time. One of his students was a tiny, shy young woman who had been assigned to teach at a low-ranking high school straight out of university. The students were eating her alive, and I tried to give her hints on classroom management, but she may have been too traumatized.

[Deja Q]

3. Many of the wealthy in the US are dropouts.

Bill Gates being the most obvious example...

Knowledge is nothing. Seeing opportunities and having a silver tongue is everything.