[ExI] Japanese education

[John Grigg]

Public schools in Japan sound pretty horrific. But how much of this still
holds true? I have heard that on the positive side, students learn to take
pride in their school by daily cleaning it up. I think that would have been
a good experience for the kids I went to school with...

I wonder if the Japanese school system is one of the major factors
regarding the deep decline in marriage and childbearing over there. It
seems like it could be.

I've read that South Korean highschools have a great deal of student versus
student violence, more so than Japan.

John

On Sat, Dec 19, 2020 at 12:43 AM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> From a much longer post on Quora.  Aren't you glad you are an American?
>  bill w
>
>
> Japan has the highest teenage suicide rate in the entire world and the one
> and only thing which can be blamed for this is the Japanese Education
> System.  South Korea is next.
>
> First thing that happens when one enters junior high school is the process
> of self criticism. Students are guided to lose their self-esteem and ego by
> forcing upon them strict rules and simple tasks. This way, teens would be
> prevented from becoming rebellious against their mentor. Strict rules apply
> to places not only within the school limits but to daily life as well.
>
> In case of what I’ve experienced,
>
> -No dating allowed
>
> -No volunteer activity allowed without the approval of the school
> principal
>
> -No part-time jobs allowed unless the financial situation forces the
> subject to. In this case, a written permission from both parents, homeroom
> teacher and school principal are required along with a strict review of the
> labor contract
>
> -One must not meet with the opposite sex other than for academic proposes
> such as Jukus (Japanese cram school), extracurricular activities, and
> examinations (I was enrolled in a boys school)
>
> -No traveling allowed without the permission of the school authority.
> When approved, one must act according to the schedule approved by the
> school.
>
> -No eating in public spaces even when the subject is outside the school
> boundaries
>
> -Route to school must be submitted and students may only act accordingly
> every day to and from school
>
> -Strict dress code which must be followed in and out of school
>
> -No electronic devices allowed -No possession of smartphones allowed. When
> cell phones are necessary as a communication with the student and its
> parents, only the traditional types are allowed.
>
> These are just handful of rules I can think of. Honestly, there are some
> rules that are legitimate and most of the rules exist to avoid unnecessary
> difficulties the teen might encounter. However, most of the rules are just
> against the liberty of the people in my opinion.
>
> Also, there are considerable amount of physical punishment applied in
> Japanese school and also from parents. Some students get beaten by
> teachers just because their ties were not properly tied. I remember
> getting beaten up by my parents for not been able to solve a math problem
> right. On my first mistake, I get spanked once. On my second mistake, I get
> spanked twice. On my third mistake, I get spanked thrice, and so on until
> both get physically tired or get bruised. I was lucky because only a decade
> ago, people used to cane students for incorrect answers, although this was
> banned. Yet, every so often, in the news, somewhere in Japan, a student
> would get beaten to death as “punishment” from teachers often for reasons
> like “forgetting to bring something” or “sneezing during an important
> speech” etc. This is just one phantom of the Japanese empire during World
> War Two still influencing Japanese society.What about me? I was lucky
> enough not to be born in “that” generation… One of my language arts teacher
> was a professional junior Kendo player. However, his language arts teacher
> had a policy which, if they answered incorrectly to an answer, students,
> regardless of gender, would be slammed by a bamboo sword. As being slammed
> by a bamboo sword by an amateur was the worst thing possible as a
> professional, he studied super hard and became a lone survivor of that
> punishment. As a result, he got a job as a Language arts teacher. Oh, the
> irony!
>
> Thus, people start losing their ego and commit suicide as a result.
>
> In short, Japanese education is a system which makes individuals into an
> economic machine. Children before enrollment have lots of dreams like
> participating in a volunteer activity, being a game developer, doctor,
> scientist to solve a particular problem, etc. The function of the system is
> to crush all of those hopes and extract the “individual” out to the
> collective. By the end of the process, the students would have lost most of
> their self so that they can be exploited by major corporations and
> government official. That's how the Japanese economy worked in the post war
> economic Growth. However, those days are over.
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