Is Competition Good for Students?
One interesting aspect of education in Japan is how students face competition in many forms which helps make them better students. Starting with junior high school, many students are ranked according to their test scores, with a board hung outside the class that lists each student's rank is in relation to everyone else. If you're the #1 student in your class, you can bet your classmates will be gunning for your slot, so you'd better study hard. The system of having to take an entrance exam to get into high school also provides a reason for students to be more serious about their own education, since you have to hit the books if you want to get into one of the best high schools. (My 13-year-old son is already preparing for a high school that's known for its engineering and robotics courses.) Although I often wonder if it's really a good idea to put pressure on kids to study at such a young age, I can see benefits from creating a more vigorous study environment for teenagers. Growing up in the public school system in Maryland and California, I can honestly say I don't have a single memory of studying hard or being challenged until I got to college, and getting kids to apply themselves at a younger age can't be a bad thing.
So what do you think? There is the obvious question of sad outcomes that can happen when young people have more pressure than they can handle, but on the other hand, there is no gang violence or drug problems or other terrors that prey on kids in the U.S. I wonder which approach is better.
posted by Peter in Japan at 8:12 PM
16 Comments:
From my point of view the Japanese system sounds great, at least better than the US system.
As a European I can offer a third view. Same as you mentioned about US student, I wasn't challenged at all until I started doing University (our system is slightly different, we can jump straight from "highschool" into master studies). Not being challenged gave me problems (more "slight hiccups) during my later studies as I had a hard time adapting to harder study materials. Maybe back then I would have hated it (basically, till I was 18 I was able to slack my bum off and have parties 3 nights a week without any problems). In retrospect I would love to have had a Japanese type of competition system as it would have helped me in a later fase.
9:18 PM
Interesting comments. Europeans are very good at working the "right" amount, e.g. not going all out like Japan or America but striking an okay balance for the most part. One of the most interesting things about Japan is that in order to get into the best schools, which are also the cheapeast since they're government run, you have to study your butt off. Hence, anyone who really feels 親孝行 (filial piety, e.g. respect for your parents) pays them back by going to a cheap school like Tokyo University or Kyoto University, which are are around $4000/yr last time I checked. Regular kids go to Waseda or Keio which costs $25,000/yr.
10:58 PM
In the UK, we still have the grammar school system, so someone who is intellectually gifted can apply to go there.
Personally, I could never have coped with the Japanese system. I achieved an A average at GCSE, mainly thanks to the fact I have a fairly photographic memory, but I much prefer to learn without the pressure of exams or timetables, and from a much wider variety of topics than I ever encountered at school.
There's also the question of whether being more academically rigorous means better results. What about that percentage who would do better with vocational, non-academic courses?
11:09 PM
I must say Peter, I am quite surprised about the prices of tution in Japan. In my country we pay about ~2000 euros/year for a public (but top level) Mater study and about 1500 euros/year for a public, but proper Bachelor study. Private Universities aren't comonplace here, we have 1 big business university here which runs about 15K euros a year (but is worth every penny as you are almost guaranteed a very good position when you graduate).
I will be in Japan for a holiday this summer, would it be possible to visit a University faculty, or is that a definate NO GO. (I really have no idea).
11:25 PM
Yes, Vicky, the system is bad for anyone who is not average, and the Japanese are fully aware that they are terrible at, say, allowing a gifted child to really blossom. There are vocational, non-academic schools -- that's why I like the high school system here since you can choose to go to a "commercial" high school (like my wife, where she learned account and all the other stuff she needs to keep our company running), or if you want to go on to college, a normal "shingaku" (er, progress-in-study) high school. There's even an agricultural high school near us that teaches farming techniques. So it's not all study...
Sebastian, it's like that in California, which has two good state university schools that are, well, not good but certainly good for the money. I paid $444 per semester for my own education at SDSU, back in the early 90s, and everyone was complaining about it then. It was $2000/semester a couple years ago, and is probably a bit more now. Pity anyone who lives on the East Coast of America...
11:40 PM
Ah, sorry, didn't mean to not answer your question. I'd say if you can find a student who you can befriend than you can certainly go check out any university. It'd be smoother with someone who was attending the school.
11:41 PM
Personally, I think that most of the lack of challenge comes from a combination of things in the US. First is that our teaching of subject matter is far more test oriented than understanding oriented (better to know a specific fact than why that fact is, as it were. Take the bill of rights. When it's taught anywhere but college, the words are memorized, but what happened to make the need to spell those rights out isn't taught, so kids these days really have no clue what they mean and are meant to protect against loosing ever again [yes, I know we as a nation have failed to protect said rights, don't remind me]. Then again, neither do most adults.)
Next is that we have to teach whole batches at once, so the material ends up being simple enough to let the most challenged kid in the room have a good shot at passing. That sounds good, until you realize that the payoff for kids who excel is the boredom of sitting around, instead of being able to move on to more advanced work. Personally, I'd like to see a system where students had individually paced learning and the teachers just came around to check on them and offer assistance as needed to help polish the rough information distributed to the students via multimedia presentations. Then again, I was one of those bored kids.
12:12 AM
Yes. I'm sure I was intelligent enough that I could get B+/A- without even consciously trying, which was "good enough" for me. The only time I did try hard on something was when my hard-ass teacher gave us a creative writing assignment, and I busted my butt to do the best short story ever. Got bumped up to honors English, which was like the first positive feedback I'd ever gotten, that I can remember.
Maybe if there were more goals for young people to clear like the (sometimes ridiculous) Japanese tests for everything.
12:25 AM
Hey Peter,here in the U.S,we are still suffering through the "No Child Left Behind"act that has plagued us for years.My nephew will be going into the second grade next year and he cannot read at all.The school that he goes to pretty much tries to cover this,and other problems like it,to prevent the state from decreasing their funding(seems like a funny way to fix the problem)I think that if they spent more of their resources(not just money)on the kids and less on trying to be sensitive to everyone's situation,they would greatly improve in the world's standing.
1:01 AM
I have many friends with high school age kids and I think the US has become much more competitive than when I was in school. There seems to be massive pressure to get into top (Ivy League) schools for some students. But it is probably very split, with some students working very hard to get to good colleges, and others slacking off and going into the job market or lower-tier colleges.
6:36 AM
You've mostly focused on the positives of competition in this post, but I can definitely see some down sides as well. Firstly, won't the students who consistently score low on exams give up trying as hard? Having your name consistently appearing in the lower parts of the results board must damage your self-esteem to some degree. Furthermore, school bullying and suicide have become big problems, and I can bet that one of the causal factors is increased pressure from this competition system. Lastly, there have been criticism regarding the Japanese education system of memorization-and-regurgitation, as opposed to critical thinking like in the West. Sure, these kids learn to become studious at a younger age, but most of their "studying" consists of merely cramming information into their heads. Do I think this kind of system is better than the ones in the West? Not necessarily. And competition about who has more superior memorization skills is rather irrelevant to life success, methinks.
8:18 AM
Joe, being outside of the U.S. it's been hard to follow things like NCLB. Hope it turns out better in the end. It is sad how there's so much difference between the top 20% of school districts, quality wise, and the lowest 20% in America. I make fun of the Japanese sometimes for being too top-down, for having the same standard that they apply throughout the whole country, but if it works then it might be for the best...
J, yes, those are some big concerns. I've written before about how my wife can tell you the year of the founding of the Kamakura Bakufu (1192) but doesn't really understand why it was important, or what other events flowed from it, etc.
11:13 AM
I was reading this interesting article in the paper today that mentioned how Japan started mass educating the population in the Meiji era to catch up with the rest of the world. Being a colective society, I guess people always had the sense of responsability for their country and wanted to do well to show to the world they could be just as good as the rest of the western world and even now that time has passed, this responsability with the future is still very strong in the culture. Being well educated means better jobs and a better life, and there's everyone else working for the kids to be good, so kids want to be worth all this hard working. I think this aspect of japanese society is very positive in the way people care for each other and keeps them going strong.
In Brazil, the largest japanese and japanese descendent population outside Japan, you can see how they rank much above average in education, not only because in the beginning education was a way to make children succeful in the new society and look good for them, but because even today the community recognizes that those who study hard have a better life, and they do want to have better lives every passing generation.
Just so you know, the japanese community is less than 1% of the population in Brazil, yet they rank higher than blacks (who are about 50% of the population) in the best universities in the counrty.
1:14 PM
I appreciate your pity, Peter. I'm an East coast Yankee, and thus money is a concern for everyone when it comes to school(especially if you plan on going to an out-of-state, private school, like me).
Luckily, it just so happens that I got my official financial aid statement today, wherein I've been handed my full (massive) tuition for next year in scholarships and grants.
Which brings me back on topic: It was only thorough a lot of self-made competitiveness in my mind that I got the grades that got me that money. Though there isn't as much competition, there is some among the naturally competitive people in American schools, though it's mostly internal motivation(and at least partly financial motivation, considering the cost of college right now). So, I guess my point is that if you want it bad enough, you can always make it competitive and challenging for yourself, though personality plays a big part.
Some American schools offer some lighter forms of competition though: for instance, some schools(like mine) have honors classes that really help build your "resume" for colleges, and there's a limited number of students they can let in per year. Also, there is a class rank, and colleges do look at it, it's just that it isn't made public, or even told to you until you get your transcript to mail out to whatever schools you're applying to(at least in my case).
1:42 PM
Vy, that's an incredibly interesting comment -- wow. In America we've seen Koreans and Chinese (not so many Japanese since they're not that common in the U.S.) rise well above all other immigrant groups, and some of the rioting back in 1993 in Los Angeles was partially about the friction between the smart Koreans who come in and own businesses and the blacks who didn't do as well. It's hard to know how to feel about this, but certainly the asians embrace of education is the smartest thing for them.
Congrats on the student aid, Spruce Moose. What school will you be going to? Although they're more expensive, I'd like my son to have the medium-to-small college experience on the East Coast, and we plan to look there first when the time comes. My own school was good enough, but there are something like 40,000 students. I got really good at learning how to get the classes I needed to graduate, including taking the unpopular 8 am classes, finding ways to pressure teachers to let me into their classes (I need these units to graduate), and so on.
2:03 PM
Peter: Boston University. It's expensive even by East Coast standards. But I like it. We get a ton of internationally students, including from Japan(I've been told we have one of the highest international student populations in the country). None of my foreign friends seem especially rich, so I'm guessing BU gives out good financial aid to international students looking for it.
The nice thing about these rich private schools in(of which there are many in lovely Boston) is that they have plenty of grants and scholarships to doll out to students who ask. You don't have to be the valedictorian to get it, just solid.
There's plenty of good choices out here. I always tell people don't be scared by the price of admission: where there's a will, there's usually a way.
3:47 AM
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