Surprising differences between western and Japanese schools that are not normally talked about?

19 comments

1. Besides the things you mentioned, the main thing for me as a Dutch person is that kids don’t get held back a year if their scores are bad.

   The main reason I got good scores in school was that I didn’t want to stay any longer in school than needed lol

2. The most striking thing for me was how little students are supervised outside of class. They pretty much get left alone and that’s just not a safe situation

3. A lot of these sound like fairly well known tropes, many of which are widely true but none of which are necessarily universal.

   >School work accountability is weird. Like its there, but instead of a pass or fail it seems more like a assign a task. Some do it, others you nag a lot, if they don’t they are put into a summer school that’s 3 days. There is the potential of failing but only after an insane amount of interventions. I use to work with a teacher who had was a foreign language teacher before coming to Japan and ran her class as such. So much missed work and kids coming for summer school.

   What level of school are you discussing here?

   With respect to middle school, as it is compulsory education, and as Japan’s education system is based on an equity of received instruction/experience (vs. opportunity or result), it is basically unheard of (and generally just not possible) to fail a child in K-9, and still avoided as much as possible in 10-12.

   >Last thing of watching my school deal with a LBGT issue and one trans kid is how well the school handled it.

   Japanese schools (and society) have always been slightly forward with trans issues in general (as compared to prevailing sentiment in the West). In general a lot of the “LGBT” news in Japan tends to be on issues related to trans indivduals (think of all the coverage of genderless clothes, etc.). Not to say that it is perfect at all, but while I have seen numerous incidents of schools dealing with trans individuals, I think many schools/teachers are not particularly good at dealing with pupils who don’t conform to gender stereotypes and/or gay/bi students.

   (*with the giant caviat that medical intervention and legal changes for trans people are a completely different story, but I am not sure this is the place to unpack that mess.)

   Edit: not really sure why the downvotes really.. I guess people disagree? Certainly isn’t my intention to say that trans students are universally treated wonderfullly, just that the level of awareness / treatment tends to be on the better end of the spectrum if compared to other sexual minorities in Japan.

4. The thing that I always noted was the sense of community each class has, the amount of things the students did as a class and the willingness of students to do things as a class. Example: choir contest – they amount of practice and effort the students put into it. They practice everyday and you can see their sincere efforts.

   When I was in school in the UK, the only thing we really did together as students was sports day, and that was ‘houses’ not classes. I think having different houses in each homeroom ruined the sense of community. In my HS homeroom we hated each other and we often would refuse to do any activity the school tried to get us to do.

5. The absence of ability grouping. The academic students aren’t challenged enough, and the less academic students are left behind.

6. I went through the US education system, and my nieces and nephews are also going through the US system. My kids have gone through the UK and Japan education systems, and of course family friends are going through the various systems.

   The best summary I’ve heard: The US has two education system, one for whites and one for everyone else.

   The UK system is for raising the ceiling for the gifted, who cares about the floor for everybody else.

   The Japan system is for raising the floor for everybody, and if you’re gifted you’re kind of on your own.

7. Definitely agree on there being no real leveling for language classes. One of the schools I go to has two hafu kids (both brothers of each other) and I’m always thinking “Why are they even in these English classes?”, because the classes are clearly below them, from my observation. But as most Japanese people would say, that’s just how it is. As someone once said before, students are pretty much just placed in a class based on their age and not their skill or knowledge level.

8. Supplies, supplies everywhere. Organization is great but from what I’ve seen it’s overkill and mostly lands in the parent

9. I think the main takeaway from this thread is that there is significantly more variation between schools than people give the system credit for. Because a lot of what I’m seeing here I have never seen or heard of happening in schools, or was absolutely not the case where I have worked.

10. Can only speak for Ireland but:

    Heavily catholic but still got a pretty decent sex ed course. Done by outside nurses through and not the teachers.

    We could smoke but just not on the school grounds.

    Can drive to school.

    We could leave during lunch time. If we skipped school it was on us. No one is gonna wait for you.

    If we failed any state exams (at 15 and again at 17) then unless you’re dropping out you have to repeat the year to sit them again. Everyone takes the same exam no matter what Uni you want. None have special tests or requirements.

    No private schools. All are public and free until you go to University.

    If you fail the state exams you can take a year course or do other pathways to get into Uni.

    Had a big locker and a space in a cloak room for all our stuff.

    Didn’t have a home room or a home room teacher. All teachers were specialised to subjects and you went to their room for class.

    Most clubs were run by the town not any schools. They’d have qualified coaches.

    Schools are locked up and teachers are mostly zooming out of there by 5. You can’t hang around there at night unless there’s something specific going on. Not open on weekends.

    Edit:

    Because someone else mentioned the community stuff and amount of events the kids work on in Japan. I never had that in my school and I think it’s really nice. We just hate school, teachers and anything to do with it and would definitely never show any pride or it would be weird. I can’t imagine getting a bunch of us together to sing in a choir haha.

11. Elementary School curriculum feels surprisingly easier than the American equivalent and is one year longer. Fraction multiplication I remember doing in fourth grade about halfway through the year in the 1990s, I see students working on at the start of the year in sixth, or the end of the year in fifth.

    I also notice it feels alot less like each subject gives the child agency and deduction, and more so is guided instruction all the way to the important point most of the time.

    It’s a little disheartening, because the temperament of these kids is any teacher’s dream come true.
    They want to solve a problem you give them and it’s so fun to get away with pushing them to where they get stuck. I’ve had teachers who specialize in math and Japanese confide in me they feel similar, but others who want to infantilize them which I feel creates that bottleneck stress for the middle school transition and difficulty curve.

12. >We all know just insane amounts of testing here but what also surprises me is how many of these tests are just disconnected.

    Yes, well spotted! That is indeed a very odd thing. Something that continually shocks me related to that is how terrible so many teachers in Japan are at analyzing test results institutionally. It often feels like teachers turn soothsayers when responding to test results, never looking beyond cohort averages and reading those averages like tea leaves so that they tell whatever story the teacher wants them to mean.

    ​

    >Last thing of watching my school deal with a LBGT issue and one trans kid is how well the school handled it. Uniform changes were discussed, student was not forced to cut their hair, outside groups came into help.

    Yes, I think this is another well-spotted insight.

    Japanese culture could be generalized to be conservative, and there is generally a societal blind spot to LGBTQ+ issues. But while in the past I have seen teachers indulge in some casual homophobia, recently there does seem to be a growing awareness and a concern with doing good for LGBTQ+ students. Certain members of the Dinosaur-Japanology peanut gallery like to chitter about how Japan *must* share their western right-wing homophobic/transphobic views, but… I think things aren’t that simple. There are anti-LGBTQ+ people in Japan, but they aren’t the societal universal a lot of Japan-fans on the internet would like to think they are.

13. The amount of money it costs to put kids through school. Buy the randoseru, buy the harmonica and everything else they require. Kyuushoku fees. Buy uniforms. Pay for juku fees (so your kid can pass the test to go to a public high school). Pay for club fees. Pay entrance fees and for textbooks in high school (even public). School trips cost 50,000 yen, 80,000 yen or whatnot.

    I know not everything is a negative and schools offer a lot of opportunities that aren’t available in other countries. Also, there are programs and whatnot to help poorer families with some of the expenses. But damn, it seems like it costs a lot to raise a child here and if you can’t fork over money for things like juku, you’re limiting your child’s options in the future. I can’t imagine what some families go through to pay for all this stuff.

14. My son is in first grade and I’m shocked at the amount of rote memorization and drilling. Plus the only academic studies they seem to be doing are math and kokugo. (No history/science/social studies)

    American education is more about having the kids understand the multiple methods and ways of thinking and having them grow and adapt that knowledge to gradually more difficult concepts. There also seems to be a lot more emphasis on freer writing at that age (journal, short answer questions) to practice getting ideas on paper, but in Japan it seems to be just endless worksheets drilling kana and kanji, no actual language production.

15. High school isn’t required, so grades don’t matter and everyone graduates unless they drop out or go to a lower level school.

16. >No real leveling for any language classes. Everyone is just plopped into one class and ganbare.

    No real leveling for anyone in public elementary and junior high school. You can be fluent in English because you lived in the US as a kid and you’ll still be learning “this is a pen” in junior high school. Others have mentioned that it’s this was because “that’s just the way it is”. But, that’s the way it is because compulsory education is built on the premise that everyone receives the exact same education, for better or worse. I think a lot of the differences you mentioned stem from that principle.

17. Yeah the discipline policy is garbage. Students have a right to learn, so they cannot be removed from the classroom if they want to stay. I had arguments with the principal, vice principal, and dispatch company boss. As I watched one boy, who was disruptive the whole class, get up and hit a boy on the other side of the room, yelled at the teacher, then slammed the door and kicked. Nobody did anything, he never got in trouble. Normally Japan is focused on a group mentality except in the classroom. If a student wants to stay in the classroom and prevent all the other students from learning that student’s right to stay in the classroom outweighs all the other students’ right to learn.
    I told them to start making the kids behavior the parent’s problem by calling them up or schedule meetings during the weekday. I told them if the parents are inconvenienced or embarrassed by you calling them at work, they will actually care about correcting bad behavior. The principal said, “ well… we don’t want to inconvenience the parents.”
    I then asked my boss to contact the board of education, which she refused, so I didn’t with a city council friend. They sent someone to observe and the principal was reprimanded, but still nothing was done. Principal was pissed, boss was pissed, I walked it with a big grin knowing neither could fire me.

18. Oh boy. I’ve taught part-time at a few unis here and have a permanent position at one now. Let’s say I’m in the “Blorgology Faculty” for anonymity’s sake.

    * Uni here isn’t one uni, it’s multiple unis on the same campus, with oversight from the centralized 教務課. Each faculty is split into its own insular unit, where students rarely take classes from teachers outside the department, or with students from outside the department. The only intermingling is during down time or clubs, but with Japan’s bizarre obsession over 所属 every group just sticks to themselves anyway. This depends on the uni, but all the ones I’ve worked for have been like this.

    * Professional merit? What’s that? Apparently professional merit is measured by…I don’t even know at this point. I’m the only teacher in the entire Blorgology Faculty who has TESOL/TEFL specific qualifications, as well as being the only foreigner. Despite this I’m expected to be and do the same as all the Blorgology subject teachers, where Blorgology has fuckall to do with English or foreign languages at all. Which brings me to the next point:

    * Misallocation of human resources. I’m qualified in a specific field, am a non-native speaker of Japanese, a foreigner, and have never been a student in the Japanese education system. One would think my responsibilities would logically be limited to English-related courses and committees like study abroad programs, right? Apparently not. Instead I’m tasked with freshman “Intro to University “””Seminar”””” which cannot be English and must be taught in Japanese, and I’m shuffled through all sorts of random committees every two years, most of which haven’t even the slightest relevance to my qualifications, skills, or background. There was one committee I was initially removed from because the bylaws stipulated only teachers specializing in Blorgology could be members. Then they changed the bylaws to allow non-Blorgology teachers to be members with limited roles because we’re all supposed to be in four committees, no more, no less, no ifs or buts. So now my time is wasted on Blorgology committee meetings, bringing me to the next point:

    * Motherfucking meetings. We have faculty meetings once or twice every month, where 80% of the content could have been an email, 2% of the content necessitates discussion, and 18% is back-and-forth questioning or sharing of opinions with zero action taken. Each new item typically goes through three meetings, getting elevated from 報告事項 to 協議事項 then to 審議事項 where it’s actually voted on and, supposedly, action is taken. Then there’s the committee meetings, like the job-hunting committee, where we meet for 20 minutes and the job-hunting department says, “Here are the info sessions and activities we’ve done so far for students, and here’s what we’re doing next. Any questions?” then teachers bullshit questions and comments to eat up the remaining time. Absolutely pointless. Why do we have such meetings? Because MEXT requires it. They literally stipulate a minimum number of meetings for unis to be accredited, because if we don’t hold an arbritrary number of meetings per year, then are we really doing our jobs?

    * Academic merit? What’s that? Students are held to zero accountability beyond attendance and sitting an exam and/or turning in a small number of assignments. I am never asked “How are my grades in this class.” I am often asked “How’s my attendance?” MEXT stipulates that students are automatically failed if they miss more than a third of the classes in the course. In the US, our attendance was never taken. It was easily assessed by quantity and quality of assessments completed, and there were plenty of assessments. I took this approach when we were teaching online by making my students do verifyable work each and every class, and had the dean breathing down my neck because all of the students bitched about me not doing a 90-minute monologue in front of a webcamera. We all know they were bitching about being expected to do work instead of dicking around each class period and then sitting an exam. I failed so many students that year and yet they still ended up in my later English classes without the fundamental knowledge they were supposed to get in the class that they failed. Even MEXT is biased against active learning, with regulations giving 90-minute monologue courses 2 credit hours and giving active learning courses only 1 credit hour. Class participation is horrendous, with two-thirds of the class wanting to do nothing but act like they’re listening because it’s institutionally ingrained that one-way lectures are the “proper” pedagogy for any and all subjects. I try proper CLT and TBLT and it gets nowhere. I can’t even get students to do schema activation activities–any time they’re asked a question they simply wait, expecting to be spoon-fed an answer. Gameification doesn’t even work. Why should they be motivated to do anything anyway? Japanese unis are degree mills. Every graduate gets mass-hired in April and trained from zero, so their degree is nothing more than a rite of passage anyway. Thus my classes become more PPP and lecture focused, which makes the top third of the students complain. Damned if I do, damned if I don’t. It would be great if I only taught the top students, then my skills would actually be applicable.

    * Testing. Good god the testing. I have to write questions for the uni’s entrance exam, and the methodology goes against everything my MA taught me. Now add risk avoidance because students are allowed to contest the questions, and you get endless proofreading meetings, often after classes and going on until 6:30pm. “You have multiple possible answers to that question.” “No, the first clause specifically sets the scenario so that there is only one possible answer for the second clause.” “That logic is too weak, we need to change it to be more specific.” Which then becomes unnatural. Not to mention, having never been in nor taught Japanese high school I don’t have the slightest idea what is or isn’t taught in order to make such a test anyways. Then there’s the national entrance exams in January which I also have to proctor, which have all sorts of long-ass meetings leading up to it despite nothing about our roles as proctors changing from year to year.

19. I find the lack of standard school etiquette and surprising.
    Many students during class could chat, read manga, walk around, sit weirdly, wear a hat, sit on each other’s laps or just do nothing and the teachers would do nothing about it.
    No etiquette of like tucking your chair in, taking off a hat when entering a building and not talking over the teacher is taught.

    I’ve always had the image that Japanese strict but it’s doesn’t seem so. I’m talking about where I’ve worked at primary and junior high school.