60 Lessons from Other Places Education in Germany Thailand and Japan While I was living in Thailand and teaching at a Thai university my Thai next door neighbors had just returned from the United States where both the mother and father had finished their PhDs At dinner I once asked their two daughters ages 10 and 4 what they missed most about returning to Thailand after four years in the United States Both replied immediately Pizza I then asked them what they disliked most about being back in Thailand Again both replied immediately The homework It is clear that one of the major reasons that American students don t score as well on standardized tests is that they don t study as much But that isn t the whole story I remember being surprised a few years ago while living in Tokyo when opened a newspaper containing a front page article titled Japanese Education System Should Copy the United States Considering that Japan has a much higher rate of literacy and high school completion that Japanese high school seniors score higher than any other country in tests of math and science and that at that time anyway there was almost no violence in Japanese schools the title of the article seemed rather odd But the report by a government commission studying Japanese education had a point Japanese students heads are filled with facts figures and dates but their critical reasoning skills are usually poor The Japanese educational system is geared far more toward passing exams than building skills in critical thinking and analysis Most of the Nobel Prizes in science went to Americans in the twentieth century partly because independent thinking and critical reasoning are important in American schools The Japanese Ministry of Education has instituted many changes in attempts to overcome this lack of critical thinking but so far with little success There are however other aspects of the educational systems in Europe and Japan that we may well want to emulate Although only half as many people in European countries graduate from four year universities as in the United States they have excellent systems of vocational education geared toward specific occupational skills In Germany for example at the beginning of what would be the high school years for Americans young people must go on either a college bound track or a vocational or apprenticeship school track Those students seeking to 61 enter a good university go on to the famous gymnasiums which are more like junior colleges during their last two high school years For those German students who choose the vocationally oriented high schools they receive the basics in math science writing and language but as they move to their final years of school they spend more and more of their school week in practical job training than in the classroom In Japan there are high schools specifically oriented toward helping students pass the extremely difficult college entrance exams and many students also spend additional hours in private schools generally called juku to help improve their chances of getting into a good university All of this means that typical college bound students in Japan have little time left to themselves because of all the long hours of study Japan also has excellent industrial high schools that like those in Germany are specifically geared to train students for technical and industrial jobs as well as the basics in math science and language Several reports have shown that American corporations have higher labor costs and lower productivity in lower level positions because so many workers lack basic skills Although an educational system that includes high quality vocational training could help solve this problem there has been strong resistance to such proposals Most American parents do not like the idea of their children being placed in a noncollege track at such an early age and there is no question that it does restrict their life chances It is rare for a German or Japanese worker to change course in midlife and go back and get a university education Again we must understand how American values of individual freedom and equality of opportunity restrict the options we might consider for reforming our educational system Of course the plus side is that the values of independence and individualism help Americans acquire critical thinking skills and make innovations that have given the United States an edge in the world economy during the last few years A combination of the German and Japanese educational systems with the most positive aspects of the American system would be the deal But value preferences as is often the case restrict our options in such matters Harold Kerbo