I can only speak of my country, South Korea, but I can find some parallels.
A basic rundown of the issues our education system has:
* Originally, there should be only two types of university degrees. A 2-year associate’s degree, and a 4-year bachalor’s (in case of medicine, 6) degree and beyond. Technically it shouldn’t matter where you graduated from, only the type of degree. In the 1990s, the process of establishing universities became very streamlined, meaning too many universities were set up. The quality of education in some of these lower rank universities are horrible.
* Grade inflation is severe even in the more higher levels of university education. I really don’t know why this even happens, considering most professors seemed to know of the problem very well. Some fields (especially medicine and engineering, teaching) are generally an exception to this, but a lot of liberal arts courses, etc are pretty damn bad in this regard.
* According to law (삼불정책), it is illegal to assign a certain ‘value’ to a high school diploma. If you got an A at X high school, it’s technically the same as getting an A in Y high school. This is called ‘equalization of secondary education’ which was one of the 1990s education reforms. Unfortunately, the educators behind the whole reform didn’t do a good job with it, thus nowadays secondary education is totally convoluted.
* No rules in regards to grade retention. There is no guarantee that a high school graduate is educated to any level. It is totally possible that one could just breeze through high school without learning anything, only to realize later that he is utterly stupid and has no chance of going to any half decent university.
From what I’ve observed, some of these issues are applied to a somewhat lesser extent in Japanese education. For instance, Kyoto university’s humanities courses have a fail rate of over 30% in some years, so they aren’t passing everyone. Also, Japan had no ‘equalization’ policy like we did, thus it is perfectly legal to consider some high schools or middle schools as ‘lesser’ or ‘better’ than others (perhaps this would, combined with the recommendation system, push more students to study harder, but IDK). Grade retention also seems to be legally possible at every level of education, although rare, while in Korea it is impossible below university level without violating some education laws.
Still, the issues that the two countries face in regards to education seems to be similar, despite having vastly different cultures. I want to know why, any answers would be much appreciated.
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Education is messed up everywhere. Even more in America. Why is the sky blue? Why is water wet? Of course we can analyze it but I’m not sure it’s worth or if there is some deep hidden answer to your question.
>Also, Japan had no ‘equalization’ policy like we did, thus it is perfectly legal to consider some high schools or middle schools as ‘lesser’ or ‘better’ than others
This is certainly true, but as most emphasis is placed on the results of entrance exams, I am not sure it is functionally a large issue.
>Grade retention also seems to be legally possible at every level of education, although rare, while in Korea it is impossible below university level without violating some education laws.
I’m not sure what you are basing this statement on, but K12 schools are currently required to keep grade data for 5 years from the date of graduation, with other enrollment information retained for 20 years.
University is just an adult playground
Why compare it to other Asian countries and not all countries? Let’s do away with grouping Asians and keeping them separate from everyone else.
Finland is often considered to have the best (or, in some years, nearly the best) educational system. One striking difference between Finland and Japan is how Finland has very little homework.
But I would like to talk about a different, but related, topic. I do not know any school system that does this now, but for driver’s licenses, medical licenses, and some other professional licenses *testing is carried out by an organization separate from the schools*. I think this would improve all school systems, including mandatory public education.
Think about the problem of a student “being hated” by the teacher. Or, think about teachers who are famous for being easy graders. If there were no grade, it would not matter. The teacher’s success would be determined by how many students do well in the external, independent testing.
People often object that this makes the teacher “teach to the test”. But the solution is to have a very good, thorough testing system. For example, in Japan, we have the JLPT and the various N1, N2, etc. levels. But the testing fails to include speaking and writing (in a meaningful way). This saves money, but seriously weakens the value of the test. (Maybe there is a test that evaluates speaking and writing, but it’s not well-known.)