My Thoughts on the Japanese and American Educational Systems

Given that, though, we still need to examine the "bottom line" that American businesses so often refer to. The "bottom line" is that the Japanese illiteracy rate is incredibly low; Japanese students who graduate from high school have a knowledge level equal to U.S. students who graduate with a bachelor's degree from college. Japanese students continue to beat American students on international tests. Families, particularly mothers, take a very strong interest in the progress of their children in the schools.

The "bottom line" here is that the U.S. illiteracy rate continues to grow; violence in schools rises; the scoring of national tests is "adjusted" so that the results appear better than they actually are. The disparity between schools that are in good physical condition with new technology and those schools that are falling apart physically with little or no new technology grows ever wider.

The so-called educational "experts" come up with reform after reform after reform. These have included "behavioral objectives"; "content reading lessons"; "mini-courses"; "students first"; "credit-granting standards"; tracking of students, then no tracking of students; students with emotional/behavior problems being in special programs, and the same students being "mainstreamed" into regular classes. The reforms seem to last three to five years (at the most) and then the next "reform" comes in.

Discipline worsens as time goes on due to administrator's fear of offending the Board of Education or the "general public" with too many suspensions and expulsions. Various special-interest groups bring pressure on Boards by saying that the schools are suspending/expelling too many students on one race, one sex, one whatever and that therefore the schools are doing things wrong. Sometimes the paychecks of principals are tied to their schools suspension rate so they subtly apply pressure to lower the suspension/expulsion rate so that they will be rated better and get more money.

To the people who say we suspend/expel too many students of one race/sex/age/etc. I issue this challenge. Put up or shut up. Name one single student in the last ten years who has been sent to the office for discipline because he or she showed up on time, did their work, had their supplies, paid attention, did not fight, did not cuss out the teacher, did not attack the teacher or did not cut class.

Of course there aren't any. GOOD STUDENTS DO NOT GET SENT TO THE OFFICE FOR MISBEHAVING! THE ONES SENT TO THE OFFICE FOR DISCIPLINE ARE THE ONES WHO CAUSE TROUBLE! These students, by misbehaving in class, are stealing the education for the students who are there to try and learn. These are some of the worst kinds of thieves of all because they hurt the prospects of a student before he or she even gets a chance to graduate from school and enter the job market. It takes only one or two "bad" students in a class to make sure that the teacher cannot adequately teach the class.

This is one of the times when we need to turn to the old saying "the needs of the many must outweigh the needs of the few." In effect, the needs of the many to get a good-quality education must outweigh the needs of the others to cause trouble in class. Until we deal with the discipline problem, and until we deal with the problem of students cutting class and having incredibly poor attendance in school than nothing else we do, no great "special reform" program is going to mean a thing.

And I understand full well also that Japanese schools have violence of their own, but the amount of violence and the severity of violence is way below that in U.S. schools.

And yes, I understand full well that there are exceptions to this picture of American schools descending into chaos. There are some very wonderful U.S. schools, and probably some very horrid Japanese schools, but my point is that overall American schools are degenerating into extensions of the juvenile detention system, more and more out of control and ensuring that the U.S. will not have the necessary numbers of qualified workers to handle the high-tech world of the 21st century.

One advantage that the Japanese have, of course, is that there are a homogeneous group of people with a culture unifying the behavior patterns of the individuals in it. The U.S., on the other hand, is a polyglot of competing and conflicting cultures, not all of which care about the importance of education in the lives of their children.

But there is one thing to keep in mind here. The Japanese students are not necessarily born far more intelligent than the American students. It is in their application to their studies that they succeed. If American students put forth the same effort as their Japanese counterparts (and if they behaved better) then they would enjoy the same kinds of success, the test scores would go up and the future of our country would look a whole lot brighter than it does.

The Japanese schools may not be perfect, but they work. Our schools could work just as well as the Japanese but they don't, and the overall situation is getting worse from one year to the next. Unless our country wakes up real quick and does what is necessary to bring the schools under control, in effect to "take back our schools" from the hoodlum element than the days of U.S. economic superiority are numbered.

This is a photo of an average Japanese classroom. I want to point out a few things here. The Japanese classrooms are not wonderfully equipped compared to American classrooms. They don't have the most modern furniture in the world; notice the rather old-fashioned desks and the traditional but small bulletin board. From what I have read in various sources the typical Japanese classrooms are no better physically than American average classrooms. So, then, Japanese success in education is not due to their having wonderful rooms.

The Japanese schools also run quite counter to the American educational "experts" pronouncements on what is necessary for quality education. The "experts" cry over and over about the absolute need for small classes; Japanese classes, at least at the high school level, can have fifty or more students in a single class. The "experts" talk over and over about the need for "interactive" activities, "hands-on" explorations, and the need for much less lecture.

Yet the typical Japanese high school and middle school classes (at least from what I have read) are largely lecture with the students asking few if any questions at all. The students seem to get more help from their fellow classmates than their own teachers. The experts glorious "hands-on" activities exist, but at a lower amount than is trumpeted for American classrooms.

In effect, by the standards of American educational "experts", the Japanese schools ought to be a hotbed of failure and disruption. .

Yet which country has a 40% national drop-out rate? One guess.

One book I read by an American who taught in Japan described, in one part of the book, the lowest-level, worst Japanese schools. Oddly enough, the description of those classes and the behavior and attitudes of the students matches the average American classroom.

What is the distinction between the two countries? Why can the Japanese schools succeed even though, according to the rules of American "experts" their schools should fail?

That distinction is a desire to learn on the part of the pupils and a willingness on the part of the parents (usually the mother) to take an active interest in the education of their children. Until the American "experts" address this issue (as reflected in poor attendance and poor behavior in the classrooms) then all the glorious reforms that are undertaken will failure and the Japanese schools will continue to outpace American schools.

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