Education system : Japan vs other countries

[jEsteR_bOy]

Wow...I was biased in thinking that the Japanese Education System was immaculate and complex...Eh..

[cyberryo]

I am not so sure about the Japanese high school and senior high school matters, but I did study engineering at a Japanese university which is highly regarded in Japan.

I agree that entry and graduating from a good university generally provide some job security for most, and that many Japanese students take it easy after entering the university. But in the field of engineering and sciences, I seriously doubt that many Japanese students can skive so much.

My fellow students didn't attend the lectures regularly, and were busily taking part-time jobs to fund their travels during the U holidays. But I can seriously say that they earn their place in that U as they were definitely above-average Japanese, and their mental dexterity amazed me at times during our maths and physics tutorials.

I remembered my first year subject on Linear Algebra. During the course of the lectures, there was no assignment, report, question, etc. We just attended the lectures and there's this lecturer talking to himself and scribbling on the board. At the semister end exams, there were only 2 theoretical questions. About 1/4 of the students who sat for the exams failed, and had to redo the subject during their second year if they accumulated enough credits to move to second year. I checked with some friends over at top level U in US, UK, etc. and realised that their exams had a good mix of computation and theoretical questions to test their grasp of the subject.

The above is a very typical Japanese way of doing things. They ask short simple questions, but they will scrutinise your answers to see how deep you can go and analyse the question. Sort of like "zen".

Ken