69 sats \ 4 replies \ @cryotosensei 25 May \ on: The Problem with Public Schools Education
I wish to provide the other perspective.
In Japanese schools, children are taught to socialise and be cooperative members of society. They have many structures in place: serving classmates lunch, cleaning the school every day, singing choral songs, running an inter-class relay. Ofc it’s not always good that individual expression is suppressed as a way to pander towards collective consensus. But they also make headlines by making sure the host nation’s dressing rooms and stadiums are left spick and span at the end of a soccer game.
The battle for academic excellence is outsourced (quite irresponsibly, I admit) to cram schools, but I still have a lot of respect for public school education in Japan
I'm still against it as an institution, but we've talked before about some of the things I like about Japanese education. Giving kids lots of actual responsibilities is the top of the list. Various alternative schools do similar things in America.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I've heard that the youth suicide rate is quite high in Japan because of the academic pressure they're put under. That is certainly not a worthwhile tradeoff in my book.
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You are right about the high youth suicide rate in Japan. The reasons are manifold, including bullying, family pressures, sense of isolation, etc. I would say many suicides happen because of peer bullying and harassment.
One aspect in which the academic pressures could be lethal is seen in the trend of hikikomori. It happens to females too, but many young men, upon realising that they cannot keep up with the academic rigour of the system, mentally check out and lock themselves up in their rooms, refusing to step out at all. Many of them stay inside and cut off contact with the physical world for years. Unfortunately, Singapore is starting to exhibit signs of this phenomenon. Our system isn’t exactly the easiest to navigate.
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I know my Chinese friends felt that their education system was unhealthily intense.
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It’s madness in China. Kids there really study from dawn to dusk. And when they fail to make the grade during the Gaokao (college entrance exams), they are doomed to a life of contract work because competition there is so stiff. China has 20% youth unemployment rate currently.
Singapore has taken some steps to reduce the heat of our system. We abolished mid-year exams and blurred the distinction between different calibres of students, among other things. Unfortunately, old habits die hard. Parents themselves exert pressure on their offspring by expecting stellar grades and sending them for too many tuition classes.
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