There's an article in the NY Times that suggest that Japan has answers for the education problems America is facing:
Americans tend to roll their eyes when researchers raise the Japanese comparison. The most common response is that Japanese culture is "nothing like ours." Nevertheless, the Japanese system has features that could be fruitfully imitated here, as the education reformers James Stigler and James Hiebert pointed out in their book "The Teaching Gap," published in 1999.
The book has spawned growing interest in the Japanese teacher-development strategy in which teachers work cooperatively and intensively to improve their methods. This process, known as "lesson study," allows teachers to revise and refine lessons that are then shared with others, sometimes through video and sometimes at conventions. In addition to helping novices, this system builds a publicly accessible body of knowledge about what works in the classroom.
The lesson-study groups focus on refining methods that improve student understanding. In doing so, the groups go step by step, laying out successful strategies for teaching specific lessons. This reflects the Japanese view that successful teaching is the product of intensive teacher development and self-scrutiny. In America, by contrast, novice teachers are often presumed competent on Day One. They have few opportunities in their careers to watch successful colleagues in action. We also tend to believe that educational change would happen overnight - if only we could find the right formula. This often leaves us prey to fads that put schools on the wrong track.
There are two other things that set this country apart from its high-performing peers abroad. One is the American sense that teaching is a skill that people come by naturally. We also have a curriculum that varies widely by region. The countries that are leaving us behind in math and science decide at the national level what students should learn and when. The schools are typically overseen by ministries of education.
If this is true, then it is something that should be followed, but I never saw this kind of support and development in the two years I worked as an Assistant English Teacher in junior high schools and elementary schools in Saitama in the late 90s. It has caused some controversy with letters to the editor. As someone who has been inside both countires' educational institutions, I still see America's as superior, but not perfect. There is a lack of emphasis on critical thinking and problem solving in Japan. But there is a greater societal emphasis on pre-collegiate learning given the parent's interest and participation in their children's schooling. You can also see it in the number of cram schools that children attend in order to improve their chances of passing entrance examinations to get into the best high schools and then the best colleges. So I agree they are better at taking standardized tests, which is what the Bush administration's educational policy is really about, but if we truly care about improving education it would invlove more teachers, smaller schools, and paying teachers what they deserve.
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