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The irony is that after all the stress and cramming, college, especially for the non-science major, can be a four-year vacation. Even administrators seem to agree with a recent graduate of Waseda University, who explains, "Since we broke our backs for all those years, we deserve four years of fun." (There are some hardworking exceptions, notably students who want to go to graduate school in law, medicine and technology.) Employers hire by looking at the university a student attended and pay little attention to grades. After college, the Japanese take up serious studying again when they start to work. Says Junchi Noguchi, head of the Japan Union of Scientists and Engineers: "The real training for an engineer in Japan comes after he enters the company."
The system is not intended to create a brilliant elite. Stanford Researcher Thomas P. Rohlen, who has written a forthcoming book on the subject, says that the marvel of Japanese education lies in "shaping a whole population to a standard inconceivable in the U.S." Also inconceivable in the U.S., however, is the degree of centralization. All standards and textbook approvals, as well as major funding, come from the national government. "Japan is interested in forming a national culture," says Columbia Comparative Education Professor Harold Noah. This is not solely the result of Japan's homogeneity and island isolation. Britain, for example, did not pursue a single national vision. Instead it sought to develop individual liberty and built a decentralized education system to foster that value. So did the U.S., on a larger scale. Japan's pursuit of a common national goal is also possible on a large scale. Professor Noah compares education in Japan and the U.S.S.R., which also "is interested in forming a national character," albeit a far more politically ideological one.
The rote work and rigidity in Japanese schools, says Dr. Takemitsu Hemmi, a Tokyo University professor of mental health, "produces a system in which students don't have to be able to discuss. They just say, 'Yes, I understand.' The system does not encourage great creativity or individuality." Admits former Education Minister Michio Nagai: "It is not an exaggeration to say that education designed to develop men who love learning and think for themselves has already been abandoned." Worried by a rise in youth crime and an increase in assaults on teachers (though the totals are still low by U.S. standards), the national teachers' union argues that students cannot develop their personalities fully in such a tightly controlled environment.
Although Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone set up an advisory panel last May to look into the possibility of reforms, the Ministry of Education strongly believes in maintaining present standards. And most Japanese are seemingly well satisfied with the system more or less as it is. As for those envious Americans, there may be particular Japanese techniques worth duplicating. But the biggest difference between the two systems is what Stanford's Rohlen calls "the spirit that breathes life into the education system." That spirit glows in Japan and has weakened in the U.S. But, says Rohlen, "we have to find that spirit again in ourselves." —By Ellie McGrath.