School -Kyoko Mori

Mori starts off her essay with something I am very familiar with. If you don't get the highest grades, get into the good classes, pass all the exams, or go to college you are a failure. I'm sure most Asian teens get that at home. But she moved on to something that surprised me, Japanese students don't get a second chance. I knew the Japanese school system was strict but not that strict! Mori, made me realize that we take our education system for granted. Mori explains to the us that yes, in Japan they have a type of junior college but if the student is unable to get accepted into a college they give up all hope. Here in the US you can stay as long as you like in junior college and we have councilors to help us step by step to transfer to a better University. Many of my high school teachers told my class that they screwed up their life in college but were able to rebound later in life. That type of story for the most part gave our class the message that anything is possible. That we can take a bad experience and turn it around. Some of the most influential teachers I've had in my life went through something like that. She also writes that middle aged adults in the US have the ability to go back to school if they are unhappy with their previous occupation. Japanese middle aged adults do not have this opportunity; they are expected to suck it up and deal with it. The one thing Mori stresses on is that Japanese teachers never taught how to write. All they did was criticize the student that their punctuation was off or overall they're essay was horrible. Here in the US, teachers take the time out to point out why that sentence was awkward or at least put at the bottom of our essays "Talk to me about this after class." This is one thing I know that I've taken for granted. I had no idea that there was a way to write. It has all been fed to me subconsiously, after I've read this essay it's had for me to think that in Japan creativity is something they value less. She also describes that her Japaneses teachers in high school made her write about black and white topics. Prose, plot, themes, characters, and rhetoric on a book. For those who have survived the AP English classes this might sound familiar. This was the kind of topics I had to write in high school and why? To prepare for the AP test. I was lucky to have an AP teacher last year who acknowledged us to write what we are thinking about. He wanted us to keep the concept that writing was an art form. My AP teacher was very liberal and he would complain that our educational system was transitioning to numbers and grades. That art will soon be lost. Most of the art that the Japanese do learn are the real traditional things like ikebana. I'm Japanese and I know that the traditional arts are really hard and they follow a strict code. If you do something wrong it's thrown away and you're screamed at. Who wants to learn in those conditions? The Japanese educational system that Mori describes seems to be already in the direction that our educational system may head in the future. The thought that the American education system may move in that direction is one of my biggest fears. The impression that Mori gave me about the Japanese educational system was that students were like robots. They are taught a specific task and it's their job to repeat it until it's perfect. Robots don't ask questions, humans ask questions. Mori writes that the students are suppose to respect the "sensei" and that the sensei is God. Nobody defies God. I was always taught that asking questions was a good thing, that there was no bad question. Teachers here don't scream and shout at a student who questions their lesson unlike their Japanese counterparts. I was quite shocked that Mori's friends did not like it when their teacher wrote that their paper was awkward but they had a good voice. Personally, I have always enjoyed a response for that it made me feel less like a failure. That I had the potential in me to write an amazing paper. Americans truly take our educational system for granted. We are lucky to have teachers who are willing to take time out of their busy days to explain what we did wrong and teach us how we can improve ourselves. Why do you think our professors have office hours? I'm glad we don't have such strict guide lines in writing and in our lifestyles. But I am still fearful that the American educational system will shift to what the Japanese already have. Who wants to live in a world where you are just a number and not seen as a person. After all, technologically the Japanese are a few years ahead of us.