<p>There are many ways to raise great kids, no continent has "the" secret. There are so many different types of Asians that it is unfortunate that this book seems to stereotype them into one.</p>
<p>I am reminded of that 1970-s Pro USA recording that suggested when you talk about Japanese success you talk about cars, computers and when you talk about American success you talk about men on the moon. There are lots of ways to succeed, to teach success and to parent successfully. There are certainly a lot of different parenting styles in Asia beyond this one.</p>
<p>This seems to be the exact opposite of the Epicurean philosophy "eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we die".</p>
<p>With as a broad a spectrum like this, its almost never good to be all the way on one side or the other. I think the typical American upbrining represents the correct balance.</p>
<p>PHampson: Europeans don't exactly foster creativity. Trust me on this eh. In the UK--the European country I'm most familiar with--they spend half of their time drinking in pubs. Is that really fostering creativity? Additionally, after GCSEs their go to college, which precedes university and there they pick more centered A-levels to study. Thus they don't explore as many subjects for as long. Prior to applying to university, they have already chosen their major. Does that foster creativity or expand their minds? Not exactly. </p>
<p>Europe used to be the center of the "arts movement" but has not been for quite a while. Additionally, Europe is now more lethargic than America and Asia--they work on average 35 hours or so-- and I highly doubt that their students are motivated more than American students to spend their free time doing "arts activities."</p>
<p>Unfortunately, in America the factors that allow for educational achievement or lack therof, have alot to do with race and ethnicity. See an earlier post regarding Jonathal Kozol's new book.</p>
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Right, but again, immersion. It doesn't change the fact that the Japanese themselves have admitted that they have huge failures in language education. That's all I'm saying.
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<p>Have not educators from other countries admitted the failures of their own education systems? I doubt you'd hear many American high school teachers praise the system they work in, especially with legislation like NCLB.</p>
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I said "per capita." That means, equally to the same number of population (i.e. out of 100) I think that more Americans are proficient in Japanese than native Japanese are proficient in English. Nobody believes me in this, but you really need to come and live here to believe it. Japan is known for being one of the most unilingual countries in the world. Why is this so shocking, or even require argumentation?
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<p>Unless there are stats to back any of our thoughts up, it's just your word and mine.</p>
<p>I don't even know how this discussion digressed from Asian-American parents to educational systems in Asia. I'm no fan of the Asian education system, BTW, and as I said before, for the properly motivated student, I think the American system is preferable. However, at the beginning, you seemed extremely critical of the Japanese system while very forgiving of the American one, which is why I argued with you.</p>
<p>I have met a large number of Japanese people with very proficient English on neutral ground (that is, in Chinese-speaking countries) and I have little doubt that while Japanese schools are laggards in their region in teaching foreign languages (Taiwan's schools appear to do far better), in actual day-by-day expatriate reality many more Japanese learn English successfully by immersion than Americans learn Japanese successfully by any means. </p>
<p>I note that few of us in this thread are discussing other subjects than languages over the last several messages. What really caught my attention, as a Chinese-speaking American living for three years in east Asia in the early 1980s (and again for three years at the turn of the most recent century) is that there are plenty of other subjects in which Asian people (Taiwanese, Hong Kongers, Japanese, and various SE Asian nationalities) are much more knowledgeable, matched for levels of schooling completion, than Americans. And the kind of "popular" books that one finds in bookstores in east Asian languages (I can read Chinese proficiently and struggle through Japanese) suggest that there is plenty of self-study that goes on after school completion. The trick, always, is finding a representative sample of the national population rather than relying on anecdotes. Some attempts to do that are recorded in Harold Stevenson's writings, e.g. The</a> Learning Gap and in Liping Ma's excellent book Knowing</a> and Teaching Elementary Mathematics, among many others.</p>
<p>But, when we're talking about numbers of students being taught the language, the fact that EVERY Japanese student is being taught English, and only a self-selected sample of Americans are learning Japanese, you start to see why I'm arguing the failure of the sytem.</p>
<p>Maybe fewer expatriate Americans are learning Japanese at the level the Japanese are learning English, but when you consider that every Japanese person has had 7+ years of instruction in English, and yet few show any real English ability, I think there's a problem. Again, we're talking about numbers of people actually learning the language and achieving any sort of ability. Since every single Japanese student will take English, and a very small percentage actually learn anything, I find that far more frightening than the maybe 1% of Americans learning Japanese not becoming as proficient as your neutral ground Japanese examples.</p>
<p>But again, maybe the goal isn't actually to teach the language. Sure doesn't seem like it where I teach.</p>
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However, at the beginning, you seemed extremely critical of the Japanese system while very forgiving of the American one, which is why I argued with you.
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<p>Oh look, I have multitudes of issues with the American system. I just didn't take too kindly to alumother gushing about how great East Asian education was while obviously lacking any sort of basis for her praise.</p>
<p>Look, Japanese education does a lot of things better than the US (math, science, language.) It just doesn't teach critical thinking and conceptualization as well as the US. And this isn't just me, this is something the Ministry of Education is harping on. I mean, for a country that's obviously one of the world leaders in everything to have so few Nobelists and other "hallmark" awards is frightening.</p>
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there are plenty of other subjects in which Asian people (Taiwanese, Hong Kongers, Japanese, and various SE Asian nationalities) are much more knowledgeable, matched for levels of schooling completion,
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<p>No argument here. However, the problem (again) that I find in Japan is that they have great factual stores in their heads, but actually extrapolating concepts and seeing trends is something that is sorely lacking. I have met many many Japanese college students at top Japanese universities, and the one thing that strikes me is how little they do in college, when I would argue that the faculties of critical thinking should be best developed. </p>
<p>And really, you don't need to know much to be financially successful in Japan. Once you get into Todai, Kyodai, Waseda, or Keio, you're bound for a good job where you'll never really have to do much but toe the company line. Hell, we all know the Japanese platitude: The nail that sticks up gets hammered down. They don't want people to think outside the box, they want people to fit in. Critical thinkers don't always fit in, and so teaching people to criticize their environment is dangerous, especially in a society that cares more about the "wa" (serenity) than the individual mind.</p>
<p>Keep in mind, this only applies to Japan. My observations of Chinese thought and education are far different.</p>