Education system : Japan vs other countries

[Golgo_13]

I wonder how many others here have gone to school in both Japan and the U.S. (or another foreign country). I have.

All I can say is, the quality of education I received in an American elementary school was far inferior to that I received in a Japanese school.

[Maciamo]

I wonder how many others here have gone to school in both Japan and the U.S. (or another foreign country). I have.

All I can say is, the quality of education I received in an American elementary school was far inferior to that I received in a Japanese school.

Oh, yes. I never argue with that. It's just that there absolutely no comparison btw the US and Europe in terms of education.

And I don't think 100% of European univ. students choose a subject they like, even without clear prospect of employment. Do you know Florent Dabadie? In his book he wrote:"I wanted to major in Korean, but my father strongly opposed it because of the future employment, so I majored in Japanese at パリ東洋学院日本語学科".

It cannot be 100%, but that is true of any trend in any culture/country. I don't know how old is that Florent Dabadie, but choosing one's favourite subject is a quite recent trend, maybe 10 or 20 years old. There are of course conservative families in every country in the world, in the same way that some Japanese families wouldn't allow their children to get married to foreigners (but that %age is probably higher than European parents who oppose their children's choice either at university or as spouse).

In these days many middle aged male commit suicide for money, but students? Teenagers easily can find a job for survive. What they hardly find are honorable, meaningful jobs for themselves. In such cases, should we say he died for money?

Well yes, because they won't get as good a job as they were hoping for, so eventually a a money problem. There might be people commiting suicide for honor in Japan, but only if are ashamed of not being as good as others.

I half agree with you. "socialing and learning to interact with people" but only with promising kids in famous private or national schools (not with ordinary kids in public schools) is the main reason for "ojuken" parents. Not the university degree itself. You know universities like Meiji, Hosei, Rikkyo, Gakusyuin, Aoyama-gakuin, Musashi, Seikei... etc are ranked not so high and their university degrees mean almost nothing comparing to Todai, Kyoto, Keio, Waseda, Hitotsubashi...etc. To be an elementary or (junior) high school student of them is by far important for parents than to get a university degree from their univ. category.

Interesting.

At first you do everything, English, Maths, a 2nd Language and Society and the Environment are compulsary. Technology (Woodwork, Metalwork, Plastics, Computing, Electronics, Photography, Structural Design) and the Arts (Design, Sewing, Cooking, Outdoor Education - think camping, Music, Modelling (Clay etc)) are done over 2 years. In the third year you pick the tech and arts subjects. The other interesting subject is Work Experience, where they go over important things like workers rights and laws, occupational health and safety and one week of actual work experience. We go out and for one week work somewhere with the permission of the business owner (unpaid).

Apart from normal school stuff we have extra courses on offer all the time, I did a tourism and hospitality course, agriculture, mechanics, 6months at Mitsubishi Motors doing computing, web design and alot of Air Force stuff.

It seems that the Australian education is very open and emphasize a lot practical, manual, physical and artistic activites. In Europe, the education system is divided in 3 categories of schools :
- general schools (maths, languages, theoritical natural sciences, social sciences) which about 80% of the people do (?)
- technical schools (mechanics, applied sciences, metal/wood works...), attended by about 10% of the people
- professional schools (artistic, sewing, cooking...) attended by about 10% of the people.

This is a kind of hierarchy and it is not noramally possible to change from professional to technical, or technical to general, although the other way is possible (usually for dropouts of the general). It is not possible for people graduating from technical or professional schools to go to university. These schools prepare directly to specific jobs, such as mechanics, plumber. electrincian, carpenter or other non-intellectual jobs.

[Areku]

In England, most of the technical schools (although, usually people just do an apprenticeship with a firm) for manual labour are full of 16 yo dropouts from school.

Still, there's good money in joining and plumbing. Just that most people would rather go to university, and aim for even more money (takes longer to reach that goal though)

[kara]

It cannot be 100%, but that is true of any trend in any culture/country. I don't know how old is that Florent Dabadie, but choosing one's favourite subject is a quite recent trend, maybe 10 or 20 years old. There are of course conservative families in every country in the world,

A quite recent trend? What you wrote was "one of the biggest cultural rift"....

And about Florent Dabadie, he was born in 1974. Too old for that trend?

Conservative families? As a logical-minded(あるいはそう自称・自負する人間として), You'd better not to say about what you don't know or just research it before stating.


FLORENT DABADIE BLOG
http://dabadie.cocolog-nifty.com/blog/main.html

「タンポポの国」の中の私 新・国際社会人をめざして
http://nifty.bk1.co.jp/cgi-bin/srch/...bibid=02070180