Raise kids the Asian way

nbachris2788
Mon, 24 Oct 2005 10:39:43 +0000

Right, but again, immersion. It doesn’t change the fact that the Japanese themselves have admitted that they have huge failures in language education. That’s all I’m saying.



Have not educators from other countries admitted the failures of their own education systems? I doubt you’d hear many American high school teachers praise the system they work in, especially with legislation like NCLB.



I said “per capita.” That means, equally to the same number of population (i.e. out of 100) I think that more Americans are proficient in Japanese than native Japanese are proficient in English. Nobody believes me in this, but you really need to come and live here to believe it. Japan is known for being one of the most unilingual countries in the world. Why is this so shocking, or even require argumentation?



Unless there are stats to back any of our thoughts up, it’s just your word and mine.

I don’t even know how this discussion digressed from Asian-American parents to educational systems in Asia. I’m no fan of the Asian education system, BTW, and as I said before, for the properly motivated student, I think the American system is preferable. However, at the beginning, you seemed extremely critical of the Japanese system while very forgiving of the American one, which is why I argued with you.