God bless you. We need to get these ridiculous 1950s ideas out of our heads. When I was a child (in the 70s), I was told, in all sincerity, that I'd probably be able to go to the moon when I grew up.
Ain't gonna happen. Not now, not ever in my lifetime.
The thing is that the moon missions were batshit crazy. We were locking people up into tin cans and shooting them at the moon for no reason other than to say we did it. Yeah, it worked, but it was insanely dangerous and resulted in virtually nothing.
I am not so shortsighted as to say "never," but most of these sci-fi staples are so far off (even granting that science in science fiction is just a frame in which to tell a good human story--same as Shakespeare, who used the magical world of the royals) as not not really be worth discussing in real terms. We're probably not even going to make it to Mars in my lifetime.
It's a lot harder than just throwing together some vague concepts from physics and the plot of a pulp novel.
Yes. This is how I see society working as well. Men are expendable.
Also, as much as there are horrific abuses of women in the Arab world, I suspect they are aberrations. I have known a lot of Arabic guys in university, and with the exception of one creep, those guys dote on their wives and do what their wives tell them. The women really seem to wear the pants and make the big decisions; the guys are like children who are given a little more slack because they go out and earn the money.
I honestly think that this view of society needs to be put out there more. I live in Japan, and this is very much how this works. Guys go out and work themselves to death; housewives have the bank card and give the guy an allowance.
You know that saying "behind every great man there is a great woman?" Well, people think that it's sexist, because it implies that women are in a support role, but what it doesn't mention is the strings connecting the woman's hands to the man, and the fact that the man is in front because that's always where you put a shield. He's there to do the bidding of the woman and soak up bullets.
Okay, so the model of society I'm posing here isn't exactly true, but I would argue that it is no less true than the model of male dominance. The truth is always a lot more complex than any little caricature we can dream up.
Also, it's not entirely the fault of men. I think women have almost just as much to do with the problem.
I don't know how I will be modded for this, but yes.
Statistics on child-rearing consistently show that women do the bulk of it (not a value judgement; that's what the numbers show). In my own case, my mom has more education than my dad, and I would say their relationship is pretty equal (if not tipped toward my mother in most things), but yes, she is the one who raised me and taught me values about the world, etc. My dad wasn't absent or anything, but he was the guy who taught me how to do stuff--build things, fix things, make bad puns. It seems that this is the norm, from the sociological data I've seen.
How is it, then, that women find themselves the victim of "social gender roles?" Men, I think, in a very real sense, do not make society. Women do. Women raise kids and instill values in them; men's behavior is almost entirely based on doing things that will score and keep women. If mothers raised children with egalitarian values and young, fertile women did not hook up with guys who had sexist ideas, guys would fall into line almost immediately. Think how quickly the American image of men changed from "strong and silent" to "soft and sensitive" in the 90s. We were told that's what gets girls, and next thing you know, guys are bawling over every damn little thing. Eventually this started annoying women and there was a backlash in recent years, asking where all the "real men" (look at that choice of adjectives, ladies) went, and guys of the current young generation aren't so weepy as we Gen-Xers were. Guys do what they are told.
Again, in my own case, every time I run into a sexist idea I may have, I think "hmm, where did that come from?" and I remember being taught it by my smart, well-educated, empowered mother.
I think women have a lot to do with the problem, and can do a lot more than men can about it, in the long run. Guys are puppets.
Finally, I also have to echo someone else's comment above: Just let people choose what they like. I want to be sure that people are all given equal opportunities so that they can do that, but I don't think that's going to lead to 50/50 gender representation in every field, and that's okay!
Heheh, a lot of my friends in college were art majors. Here's how that panned out: The smart and more technically-minded people went on to well-paying jobs (or starting their own successful companies) as graphic designers, except for one, who went to architect school, and now also makes tons doing something she loves. Then one of them (with whom I'm not close anymore), who was whiny, lazy, perpetually in trouble with collection agencies, perpetually showing up to things with no money... sweet guy, but a disaster otherwise... He works at Banana Republic.
Here's what I think is going on: People are frickin' exhausted from staying so late and then riding packed trains home, sleeping for 3 hours, and coming back in. They aren't slow because they are incompetent; they are slow because they are slow. First it's just a culture thing that you don't want to be seen walking out at a reasonable time, but the more you do it, the more you wear out, the more you actually need to stay late.
I seriously think that if people just took more vacations, really unwound, and moved closer to work, their productivity would go up.
There is a really bad Japanese culture of suffering, though. Suffering is seen as noble, and so as a result, you see people going out of their way to make things hard.
I have some very strong suggestions for my boss this next semester about the stuff we have to do during registration week. I saw a lot of places we could streamline the process and make it serve the students, administration, and ourselves better. I don't expect them to fly, but you gotta try.
Yup, this is one of the major problems--the whole system is structured around filling in a checkbox of grammatical forms, instead of "can-do" statements. There is never any pretense that students will ever use any of this. No wonder they hate it. I'd hate it too, and I actually really like foreign language (because what you can do with it is cool!).
How is passing 90%+ students that would fail keeping the reputation up?
Two reasons:
1) They've already been vetted by the entrance exam. Schools don't let people in they don't want their names on.
2) It doesn't matter what you learn in school because the company is going to do most of your training anyway; you're not really expected to know anything when you start. So it doesn't matter.
American companies tend to go to far in the other direction. Some will turn down a brilliant programmer who just hasn't used this particular framework in favor of someone who barely passed a certification test.
You said it. I have been worrying this whole time that I was coming off as totally negative on the Japanese way of handling all this, but it most certainly isn't all bad. The companies here don't expect you to walk in the door already knowing how to do a job; they will actually teach you, and consider that part of their job. Yes, of course, for highly technical work, you want people coming in with a good grounding, but as anyone who has ever had a job knows, you learn so much more from actually doing a job than you ever did going over fundamentals in school.
And you're right about grad school. That doesn't seem much different from the Western system at all.
Yeah, but that doesn't change for a second the fact that the SAT and ACT are racist.
The phrase you're looking for is "race-based differential item functioning (DIF)," and the study you're referring to is decades old.
DIF is a major field of inquiry within any major test, but having done some work on that myself, here's the thing: just because you find DIF, or DTF (differential test functioning), you never know why. My partners and I found some listening questions that showed significant DIF favoring women. The next step is setting down and trying to figure out why, but all you end up doing there is trotting out a lot of really stupid stereotypes (e.g. "I dunno, the passage was about shopping... Maybe girls like that stuff more?").
At the end of the day, DIF could be something about who those people are, how they were raised... You just don't know why DIF appears, and there's no way to know about it until you have tons of data.
So basically, if you can't find the specific problem with an item, and the DIF isn't a nightmare, you just leave it in the test. It usually all comes out in the scaling process anyway (you know your raw score doesn't matter on any major test, right?).
Heheh, I started as an ALT, too. I'm sure your JTEs and you have sat around bitching about it plenty. Everyone in the education system knows the problems, but even as a lowly ALT, I had to ask myself "do I start teaching language the way that people actually learn it, or do I prep them for the test?" If you answer the former, then you're just sabotaging the students' lives; single teachers can't change it; the problem is systemic. Everyone knows what it is, but the system would have to be overhauled from top to bottom to fix, so everyone just keeps doing the best they can.
To think that Japanese schools at a similar level are worse is painful, especially since the uninformed (myself until this) generally hear the reverse is true.
It depends a lot on the university, of course. The university I'm at now is really hard to get into, and I have to say that these kids are pretty bright. That does not, however, mean they are as serious or emotionally invested in their studies as typical US students.
They tend to be very involved in club activities (sports, music, whatever), and this is not because they are lazy; this is what employers want to see. They want to see that you have worked hard in a group organization for 4 years and have come up through that system to train new students, which is basically exactly what they'll be doing at work.
But yeah, the US system, compared to the Japanese, ain't too shabby. Well, it wasn't, until we started copying the Japanese. As I said, I am a tester. I believe that with sound statistics and applied psychology, we really can figure out what someone knows. That being said, I don't think that's the point of education. Education is supposed to teach you how to think. It's supposed to stretch you and challenge you and give you a safe environment in which to fail, and in which to learn how you get things done. As the US moves to a more testing-based system, I just groan. It's not good. Standardized tests should be few and far between. In fact, I can't think of a single psychometrician I know who doesn't agree. We design tests and tell people what it will tell them, and then watch administrators try to use them for something else (then complain that they don't do that something else well!).
I'm an assistant professor at one of the top universities in Japan. Check out my ridiculously-long post above. I forgive you if you skim it. I had a lot to say.
Yeah, this is partly a cultural difference, but it's a lot more than that; the academic and then hiring systems are also totally different. See my abusively-long post above.
Also, I've lived in Japan for about 10 years, worked in every level of the Japanese education system, am married to a Japanese high school teacher, and have even taught Japanese in the US university system and... I've never heard of this monster program. And I've lived out in the sticks (which is where I taught K-12). Where did this information come from? (Note: I'm not saying it's bunk; it sounds like the kind of awesome thing rural Japanese parents would work out with each other, I just suspect it's out of date)
I saw this come up on Hacker News yesterday and knew it was only a matter of time before it hit Slashdot, and I'd be typing this (more people read Slashdot, so I thought I would just save my energy).
I am an assistant professor at one of the top schools in Japan (Aoyama Gakuin, by the way, is also in the top 10 for sure). Allow me to explain what sounds like crazy-talk to someone from the Western university system.
Here is the lynchpin for the whole thing. You understand this and you understand everything:
In Japan, it's very hard to get into a good college, but once you do, it is customary to do virtually nothing until graduation. Companies hire people largely on the name of the school on their degree, and GPAs don't even exist at most schools, and are most certainly not given to prospective employers. Furthermore, the employer is actually who does most of the real-world education. When I worked at a foreign-language college, I had students--bright, definitely technically-inclined students--being hired by IBM to be system engineers. Except, our school only offered foreign language and other "international studies" classes. No math, no science, no engineering. I don't even think we had any history professors. (The term "university" here does not mean what it means in the West. It really ought to be translated as "post-secondary school.") But our graduates were (correctly, I think) identified as people likely to succeed in IT by IBM-Japan's entrance examinations, and they were hired. The first few years of their "employment," therefore, will actually be CS classes--but only on what IBM does.
Now, the companies aren't really all that stoked about this, especially companies like IBM, but they have hit their work visa limit and can't bring in any more Indian guys who actually know what they're doing, and besides, it's awfully nice to have native speakers of the local language working at your company. But this is how it is going these days, and how it pretty much has always gone. Universities are finishing schools.
Here's the other point that contributes to rampant truancy: The job hunt is a nightmare over here. Companies only hire once a year. Everything in Japan goes on an April-March schedule. So if you don't have a job lined up by the time you graduate in March, you are screwed until next April. Doubly screwed, in fact, because the lingering question next year when you do the rounds of examinations and cattle-call interviews will be "why didn't this person get a job last time?" So Japanese university students tend to cram all their classes for 4 years into the first 2 and a half years. They literally have classes all day every day. They can do this because there's no homework.
You read that right.
I have taught at every level of the Japanese education system, from primary school through university, and I can tell you this: Homework is an anomaly. Yeah, they have it, but nothing like what I had in the US system. So all this shock and horror over "cram schools?" Guys, if these kids' parents didn't send their kids there, they wouldn't get any studying done. Basically, those places are small-group tutor companies, and they do a really important service. Don't feel sorry for the kids because they have to go to "cram school;" feel sorry for them that their academic and vocational lives are going to hinge on a single, poorly-designed, multiple-choice test designed by professors who don't know that "trick questions" are the worst thing you can put on a test, because all they do is create noise (full disclosure: I design standardized language tests; I actually know what I'm talking about here). Unlike the US, which uses highly-reliable, at-least-arguably-valid standardized tests (SAT or ACT) designed by some of the best psychometricians in the world, people are judged here by whether they can figure out the "correct" answer to an item that someone who knows nothing about test design and implementation penned in his spare time.
1) This is a great time for whiskey. American and Scottish producers are producing wonderful, wonderful spirits these days.
Don't leave Japan out of that list, my friend. The Japanese distilleries are now starting to mature, and Japanese whiskeys are raking in the awards these days.
If you want to try something really wonderful, see if you can find some Taketsuru 21 year. It may be the most amazing single malt I've ever had (I'm really partial to Compass Box's blends, as well).
Should you find yourself in Tokyo sometime, be sure to check this place out. The guy there is incredibly knowledgeable about whiskeys, especially Japanese, and has an astonishing collection. He's also a really laid-back, nice guy, which is uncommon for specialty shops of any kind in Japan (so many of those places are run by self-important asswipes). He even speaks some English, and sampling the tastiness there feels a lot more like you're kind of hanging out with some cool guy who has the same hobby as you. Great spirits at a really relaxing place.
The iphone is not actual progress is you compare it to three year old Japanese phones or even other brands you will be able to get locally which have the same or more features.
--None of which work. (I live in Japan--I've had access to the fancy Japanese phones for a decade, and when the iPhone came out here, I almost literally kicked my top-of-the-line Sharp to the curb. And don't even get me started on Panasonics.)
I have no more mod points today, but just let me say that was really, really interesting. I don't know that I agree, but I definitely will think on it. A very interesting way of looking at things.
Try pulling "the rug of technology" out from under the population of rural China and seeing if the majority of the population dies. Bearing in mind that you'd mostly be "puling" the odd telephone, and maybe the occasional tractor, I'm sure life would go on.
You'd also have to pull the massive socialist healthcare system that Mao engineered, and yeah, then you'd see people dropping like flies again.
China is a very interesting case; Mao did a lot of good, in addition to being responsible for the deaths of millions of his countrymen.
Thank you. I had a couple friends (a couple) who were going up to Canada to camp (from Colorado--long trip). The guy is white, the girl, Latina.
They were detained for half a day, subjected to lots of separate questioning... It turns out that for some reason these yahoos got it in their head that the guy had picked up an underage prostitute in Mexico and was fleeing to Canada. The girl was--and looked--27.
After every conceivable search and interrogation, they finally said "You're free to enter Canada," to which the guy said, "You know what? Fuck Canada," and they turned around and went back home.
So that's N=2 now, but I suspect there are a lot more.
1) The S. Korean army can defend itself from the North. The reason we (I'm American) were there originally was that it was assumed (probably rightly) that any confrontation would actually be with China, through North Korea, which would be a pretty big, horrible war.
2) The reason we're still there is basically the same: As a deterrent against China. If China misbehaves, we're right there. Also, we have a joint security treaty with Japan, and basically share militaries with them (they don't have one, officially, but... they have one). There are many Asian history scholars who basically see the current Korean situation (North/South) as a buffer to keep China away from Japan (remember that the US and Japan are old buddies, having only had that little spat in the 40s). Full disclosure: I live in Japan and my wife is Japanese; I'd like us to continue this deal (there's no reason to stop it--Japan is and always has been the only country in Asia whose values mesh well with the West--chivalry and Calvinism, basically, although they go by different names).
3) Who would benefit from a war in South Korea? Nobody in the short term, China in the long term. In the short term, Korea (both of them) would suffer, Japan might take some hits (they would be really not cool with that), and then China would take the area over, getting all that American infrastructure and brain investment, in addition to some of the shittiest land in East Asia. It wouldn't really be a desirable thing.
4) Koreans are crazily patriotic. They denounce everybody. They insist on serving kimchi with French food (I love kimchi, but, um... Do we serve ketchup with pulgogi in the US???), just to assert their Korean-ness. It's insane. They bitch and moan about Japan and burn the Japanese flag every time a politician has the audacity to honor Japan's war dead, despite the fact that a large percentage of their business comes from Japan and they have just basically copied the Japanese economic model--even where it makes no sense to their situation. Korea is nuts. Both Koreas. Crazy. A history of playing second-fiddle to whomever else was in power has bred a keen inferiority complex, which they overcompensate for. So saying they hate America is not really the whole picture. They hate everybody.
Finally, I don't really care if North Korea gets the bomb either, and I live in their closest target. 10 years ago when I was a student in Osaka, they fired a rocket over our heads and it landed in Osaka harbor. I think I was supposed to be scared, but my response was, "Oh fuck you." That's all I feel today, too. I'm not afraid of these morons. They're not going to do shit, and if they did, they'd be wiped off the map by mid-afternoon.
I live in Japan, and let me tell you, that you should never deal with the police, unless you are in immediate physical danger.
Japan has a 93% conviction rate. They like to tout this as a good thing, but here's the way it works: Something bad happens, we send someone to jail. Someone. It doesn't need to be the person who did it.
Speaking from experience, when a call comes in reporting a crime, if they can't find who did it (hard to do when you don't show up until the next day), they'll go after the only name they have associated with it: the person who called. Also, they have been known to have interesting ways of getting confessions out of people, which helps with the 93% conviction rate.
If you mind your own business, you don't need to worry in Japan. Because the police are inept and untrustworthy, no one calls them and they don't find out about anything but the worst crimes. This is good for the Japanese self-image of being a totally safe, crime-free country, but it also means that you don't have Big Brother staring over your shoulder all the time.
Maybe we look down on the "grease monkey" at the Toyota dealership who comes out from the back, hands so dirty they'll never come clean, and tells us we need to spend one million dollars for what sounds like a minor problem to anyone who knows something about engines. But, take that same guy, give him some basic business classes (if he even needs them--a lot of people don't), and put his name on the sign over the garage. Now he's not a "grease monkey," he's a small business owner, and if he's good, he'll cost a little less than the dealer and the car will actually be fixed each time.
I have never looked down on people in the trades. My dad is an insurance adjuster, which is a weird hybrid job (which is why he likes it). Out in the field, he's crawling under cars, climbing on roofs, wading through mud, and donning the hazmat suit in his trunk to look at meth houses. He gets back to the office and it's all math, policy, and law. But when I go on ride-alongs with him (I still do, sometimes, even as a bona fide grownup!), I'm always really impressed by what a good contractor knows about materials; I'm really impressed by what a good roofer knows about water damage and how to work with even a poorly-designed surface to avoid it.
Can I build a house? No. Can I put on a roof? No. Can I fix a car? Usually not. So how can I look down on these people, just because they can't read a table of IRT output and tell me which items are misfitting?
But even then, it's not really equal, because of what you bring up. Who can start their own business, build it up, become successful, hire others to work for them, and basically just ride around in a truck checking the work of younger up-and-comers for half the day, then go home and hang out with the grandkids for the rest of the day? It sure as hell ain't me, and it's never going to be. I will always have to work for a university. I can always get side gigs (already have had a few), but they are usually one-off jobs that pay well for the time, but there just isn't that much of a market for independent language testers. And don't even bother mentioning what happens if the economy totally crashes. We'll always need houses; reliable and valid assessments of second-language listening proficiency, not so much.
This might be a peculiarly North American problem, though. Here in Japan, it doesn't seem that the trades are so stigmatized. The pay is better (people at the tops of companies make a lot of money, but not the crazy amounts they do in the US--cue the "but we take the risk" apologists, to which I will preemptively retort "how's that golden parachute treating ya?"). Even if you're an employee, and not a business owner, you'll still make enough to send your kids to college or a trade school. Hair stylists here study for 6 years (and you can actually get a good haircut--something that is impossible in the US).
The trades are incredibly important, and there is a lot of personal earning potential there. Many, many times I wonder if I would have been better off learning how to do something.
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God bless you. We need to get these ridiculous 1950s ideas out of our heads. When I was a child (in the 70s), I was told, in all sincerity, that I'd probably be able to go to the moon when I grew up.
Ain't gonna happen. Not now, not ever in my lifetime.
The thing is that the moon missions were batshit crazy. We were locking people up into tin cans and shooting them at the moon for no reason other than to say we did it. Yeah, it worked, but it was insanely dangerous and resulted in virtually nothing.
I am not so shortsighted as to say "never," but most of these sci-fi staples are so far off (even granting that science in science fiction is just a frame in which to tell a good human story--same as Shakespeare, who used the magical world of the royals) as not not really be worth discussing in real terms. We're probably not even going to make it to Mars in my lifetime.
It's a lot harder than just throwing together some vague concepts from physics and the plot of a pulp novel.
Yes. This is how I see society working as well. Men are expendable.
Also, as much as there are horrific abuses of women in the Arab world, I suspect they are aberrations. I have known a lot of Arabic guys in university, and with the exception of one creep, those guys dote on their wives and do what their wives tell them. The women really seem to wear the pants and make the big decisions; the guys are like children who are given a little more slack because they go out and earn the money.
I honestly think that this view of society needs to be put out there more. I live in Japan, and this is very much how this works. Guys go out and work themselves to death; housewives have the bank card and give the guy an allowance.
You know that saying "behind every great man there is a great woman?" Well, people think that it's sexist, because it implies that women are in a support role, but what it doesn't mention is the strings connecting the woman's hands to the man, and the fact that the man is in front because that's always where you put a shield. He's there to do the bidding of the woman and soak up bullets.
Okay, so the model of society I'm posing here isn't exactly true, but I would argue that it is no less true than the model of male dominance. The truth is always a lot more complex than any little caricature we can dream up.
Also, it's not entirely the fault of men. I think women have almost just as much to do with the problem.
I don't know how I will be modded for this, but yes.
Statistics on child-rearing consistently show that women do the bulk of it (not a value judgement; that's what the numbers show). In my own case, my mom has more education than my dad, and I would say their relationship is pretty equal (if not tipped toward my mother in most things), but yes, she is the one who raised me and taught me values about the world, etc. My dad wasn't absent or anything, but he was the guy who taught me how to do stuff--build things, fix things, make bad puns. It seems that this is the norm, from the sociological data I've seen.
How is it, then, that women find themselves the victim of "social gender roles?" Men, I think, in a very real sense, do not make society. Women do. Women raise kids and instill values in them; men's behavior is almost entirely based on doing things that will score and keep women. If mothers raised children with egalitarian values and young, fertile women did not hook up with guys who had sexist ideas, guys would fall into line almost immediately. Think how quickly the American image of men changed from "strong and silent" to "soft and sensitive" in the 90s. We were told that's what gets girls, and next thing you know, guys are bawling over every damn little thing. Eventually this started annoying women and there was a backlash in recent years, asking where all the "real men" (look at that choice of adjectives, ladies) went, and guys of the current young generation aren't so weepy as we Gen-Xers were. Guys do what they are told.
Again, in my own case, every time I run into a sexist idea I may have, I think "hmm, where did that come from?" and I remember being taught it by my smart, well-educated, empowered mother.
I think women have a lot to do with the problem, and can do a lot more than men can about it, in the long run. Guys are puppets.
Finally, I also have to echo someone else's comment above: Just let people choose what they like. I want to be sure that people are all given equal opportunities so that they can do that, but I don't think that's going to lead to 50/50 gender representation in every field, and that's okay!
Heheh, a lot of my friends in college were art majors. Here's how that panned out: The smart and more technically-minded people went on to well-paying jobs (or starting their own successful companies) as graphic designers, except for one, who went to architect school, and now also makes tons doing something she loves. Then one of them (with whom I'm not close anymore), who was whiny, lazy, perpetually in trouble with collection agencies, perpetually showing up to things with no money... sweet guy, but a disaster otherwise... He works at Banana Republic.
We're all in our mid-30s now.
Do cars shipped to China have trip, km and other english words on the dash instead of the equivalent Chinese?
Yes.
You've never been to another country, have you?
Here's what I think is going on: People are frickin' exhausted from staying so late and then riding packed trains home, sleeping for 3 hours, and coming back in. They aren't slow because they are incompetent; they are slow because they are slow. First it's just a culture thing that you don't want to be seen walking out at a reasonable time, but the more you do it, the more you wear out, the more you actually need to stay late.
I seriously think that if people just took more vacations, really unwound, and moved closer to work, their productivity would go up.
There is a really bad Japanese culture of suffering, though. Suffering is seen as noble, and so as a result, you see people going out of their way to make things hard.
I have some very strong suggestions for my boss this next semester about the stuff we have to do during registration week. I saw a lot of places we could streamline the process and make it serve the students, administration, and ourselves better. I don't expect them to fly, but you gotta try.
Thanks for chiming in from the business side. I have only worked in education in Japan (used to work in IT in the US).
I say it all the time: I really like living in Japan. Working? Not so much. --Even though I have one of the sweetest jobs in the world.
Yup, this is one of the major problems--the whole system is structured around filling in a checkbox of grammatical forms, instead of "can-do" statements. There is never any pretense that students will ever use any of this. No wonder they hate it. I'd hate it too, and I actually really like foreign language (because what you can do with it is cool!).
How is passing 90%+ students that would fail keeping the reputation up?
Two reasons:
1) They've already been vetted by the entrance exam. Schools don't let people in they don't want their names on.
2) It doesn't matter what you learn in school because the company is going to do most of your training anyway; you're not really expected to know anything when you start. So it doesn't matter.
American companies tend to go to far in the other direction. Some will turn down a brilliant programmer who just hasn't used this particular framework in favor of someone who barely passed a certification test.
You said it. I have been worrying this whole time that I was coming off as totally negative on the Japanese way of handling all this, but it most certainly isn't all bad. The companies here don't expect you to walk in the door already knowing how to do a job; they will actually teach you, and consider that part of their job. Yes, of course, for highly technical work, you want people coming in with a good grounding, but as anyone who has ever had a job knows, you learn so much more from actually doing a job than you ever did going over fundamentals in school.
And you're right about grad school. That doesn't seem much different from the Western system at all.
We're really OT here, but which one are you using? When I did jr. high, it was Sunshine. There were actual grammatical errors in it.
Yeah, but that doesn't change for a second the fact that the SAT and ACT are racist.
The phrase you're looking for is "race-based differential item functioning (DIF)," and the study you're referring to is decades old.
DIF is a major field of inquiry within any major test, but having done some work on that myself, here's the thing: just because you find DIF, or DTF (differential test functioning), you never know why. My partners and I found some listening questions that showed significant DIF favoring women. The next step is setting down and trying to figure out why, but all you end up doing there is trotting out a lot of really stupid stereotypes (e.g. "I dunno, the passage was about shopping... Maybe girls like that stuff more?").
At the end of the day, DIF could be something about who those people are, how they were raised... You just don't know why DIF appears, and there's no way to know about it until you have tons of data.
So basically, if you can't find the specific problem with an item, and the DIF isn't a nightmare, you just leave it in the test. It usually all comes out in the scaling process anyway (you know your raw score doesn't matter on any major test, right?).
Heheh, I started as an ALT, too. I'm sure your JTEs and you have sat around bitching about it plenty. Everyone in the education system knows the problems, but even as a lowly ALT, I had to ask myself "do I start teaching language the way that people actually learn it, or do I prep them for the test?" If you answer the former, then you're just sabotaging the students' lives; single teachers can't change it; the problem is systemic. Everyone knows what it is, but the system would have to be overhauled from top to bottom to fix, so everyone just keeps doing the best they can.
To think that Japanese schools at a similar level are worse is painful, especially since the uninformed (myself until this) generally hear the reverse is true.
It depends a lot on the university, of course. The university I'm at now is really hard to get into, and I have to say that these kids are pretty bright. That does not, however, mean they are as serious or emotionally invested in their studies as typical US students.
They tend to be very involved in club activities (sports, music, whatever), and this is not because they are lazy; this is what employers want to see. They want to see that you have worked hard in a group organization for 4 years and have come up through that system to train new students, which is basically exactly what they'll be doing at work.
But yeah, the US system, compared to the Japanese, ain't too shabby. Well, it wasn't, until we started copying the Japanese. As I said, I am a tester. I believe that with sound statistics and applied psychology, we really can figure out what someone knows. That being said, I don't think that's the point of education. Education is supposed to teach you how to think. It's supposed to stretch you and challenge you and give you a safe environment in which to fail, and in which to learn how you get things done. As the US moves to a more testing-based system, I just groan. It's not good. Standardized tests should be few and far between. In fact, I can't think of a single psychometrician I know who doesn't agree. We design tests and tell people what it will tell them, and then watch administrators try to use them for something else (then complain that they don't do that something else well!).
I'm an assistant professor at one of the top universities in Japan. Check out my ridiculously-long post above. I forgive you if you skim it. I had a lot to say.
Yeah, this is partly a cultural difference, but it's a lot more than that; the academic and then hiring systems are also totally different. See my abusively-long post above.
Also, I've lived in Japan for about 10 years, worked in every level of the Japanese education system, am married to a Japanese high school teacher, and have even taught Japanese in the US university system and... I've never heard of this monster program. And I've lived out in the sticks (which is where I taught K-12). Where did this information come from? (Note: I'm not saying it's bunk; it sounds like the kind of awesome thing rural Japanese parents would work out with each other, I just suspect it's out of date)
I saw this come up on Hacker News yesterday and knew it was only a matter of time before it hit Slashdot, and I'd be typing this (more people read Slashdot, so I thought I would just save my energy).
I am an assistant professor at one of the top schools in Japan (Aoyama Gakuin, by the way, is also in the top 10 for sure). Allow me to explain what sounds like crazy-talk to someone from the Western university system.
Here is the lynchpin for the whole thing. You understand this and you understand everything:
In Japan, it's very hard to get into a good college, but once you do, it is customary to do virtually nothing until graduation. Companies hire people largely on the name of the school on their degree, and GPAs don't even exist at most schools, and are most certainly not given to prospective employers. Furthermore, the employer is actually who does most of the real-world education. When I worked at a foreign-language college, I had students--bright, definitely technically-inclined students--being hired by IBM to be system engineers. Except, our school only offered foreign language and other "international studies" classes. No math, no science, no engineering. I don't even think we had any history professors. (The term "university" here does not mean what it means in the West. It really ought to be translated as "post-secondary school.") But our graduates were (correctly, I think) identified as people likely to succeed in IT by IBM-Japan's entrance examinations, and they were hired. The first few years of their "employment," therefore, will actually be CS classes--but only on what IBM does.
Now, the companies aren't really all that stoked about this, especially companies like IBM, but they have hit their work visa limit and can't bring in any more Indian guys who actually know what they're doing, and besides, it's awfully nice to have native speakers of the local language working at your company. But this is how it is going these days, and how it pretty much has always gone. Universities are finishing schools.
Here's the other point that contributes to rampant truancy: The job hunt is a nightmare over here. Companies only hire once a year. Everything in Japan goes on an April-March schedule. So if you don't have a job lined up by the time you graduate in March, you are screwed until next April. Doubly screwed, in fact, because the lingering question next year when you do the rounds of examinations and cattle-call interviews will be "why didn't this person get a job last time?" So Japanese university students tend to cram all their classes for 4 years into the first 2 and a half years. They literally have classes all day every day. They can do this because there's no homework.
You read that right.
I have taught at every level of the Japanese education system, from primary school through university, and I can tell you this: Homework is an anomaly. Yeah, they have it, but nothing like what I had in the US system. So all this shock and horror over "cram schools?" Guys, if these kids' parents didn't send their kids there, they wouldn't get any studying done. Basically, those places are small-group tutor companies, and they do a really important service. Don't feel sorry for the kids because they have to go to "cram school;" feel sorry for them that their academic and vocational lives are going to hinge on a single, poorly-designed, multiple-choice test designed by professors who don't know that "trick questions" are the worst thing you can put on a test, because all they do is create noise (full disclosure: I design standardized language tests; I actually know what I'm talking about here). Unlike the US, which uses highly-reliable, at-least-arguably-valid standardized tests (SAT or ACT) designed by some of the best psychometricians in the world, people are judged here by whether they can figure out the "correct" answer to an item that someone who knows nothing about test design and implementation penned in his spare time.
The "no homework" culture is exacerb
1) This is a great time for whiskey. American and Scottish producers are producing wonderful, wonderful spirits these days.
Don't leave Japan out of that list, my friend. The Japanese distilleries are now starting to mature, and Japanese whiskeys are raking in the awards these days.
If you want to try something really wonderful, see if you can find some Taketsuru 21 year. It may be the most amazing single malt I've ever had (I'm really partial to Compass Box's blends, as well).
Should you find yourself in Tokyo sometime, be sure to check this place out. The guy there is incredibly knowledgeable about whiskeys, especially Japanese, and has an astonishing collection. He's also a really laid-back, nice guy, which is uncommon for specialty shops of any kind in Japan (so many of those places are run by self-important asswipes). He even speaks some English, and sampling the tastiness there feels a lot more like you're kind of hanging out with some cool guy who has the same hobby as you. Great spirits at a really relaxing place.
The iphone is not actual progress is you compare it to three year old Japanese phones or even other brands you will be able to get locally which have the same or more features.
--None of which work. (I live in Japan--I've had access to the fancy Japanese phones for a decade, and when the iPhone came out here, I almost literally kicked my top-of-the-line Sharp to the curb. And don't even get me started on Panasonics.)
I have no more mod points today, but just let me say that was really, really interesting. I don't know that I agree, but I definitely will think on it. A very interesting way of looking at things.
Try pulling "the rug of technology" out from under the population of rural China and seeing if the majority of the population dies. Bearing in mind that you'd mostly be "puling" the odd telephone, and maybe the occasional tractor, I'm sure life would go on.
You'd also have to pull the massive socialist healthcare system that Mao engineered, and yeah, then you'd see people dropping like flies again.
China is a very interesting case; Mao did a lot of good, in addition to being responsible for the deaths of millions of his countrymen.
Thank you. I had a couple friends (a couple) who were going up to Canada to camp (from Colorado--long trip). The guy is white, the girl, Latina.
They were detained for half a day, subjected to lots of separate questioning... It turns out that for some reason these yahoos got it in their head that the guy had picked up an underage prostitute in Mexico and was fleeing to Canada. The girl was--and looked--27.
After every conceivable search and interrogation, they finally said "You're free to enter Canada," to which the guy said, "You know what? Fuck Canada," and they turned around and went back home.
So that's N=2 now, but I suspect there are a lot more.
A few things:
1) The S. Korean army can defend itself from the North. The reason we (I'm American) were there originally was that it was assumed (probably rightly) that any confrontation would actually be with China, through North Korea, which would be a pretty big, horrible war.
2) The reason we're still there is basically the same: As a deterrent against China. If China misbehaves, we're right there. Also, we have a joint security treaty with Japan, and basically share militaries with them (they don't have one, officially, but... they have one). There are many Asian history scholars who basically see the current Korean situation (North/South) as a buffer to keep China away from Japan (remember that the US and Japan are old buddies, having only had that little spat in the 40s). Full disclosure: I live in Japan and my wife is Japanese; I'd like us to continue this deal (there's no reason to stop it--Japan is and always has been the only country in Asia whose values mesh well with the West--chivalry and Calvinism, basically, although they go by different names).
3) Who would benefit from a war in South Korea? Nobody in the short term, China in the long term. In the short term, Korea (both of them) would suffer, Japan might take some hits (they would be really not cool with that), and then China would take the area over, getting all that American infrastructure and brain investment, in addition to some of the shittiest land in East Asia. It wouldn't really be a desirable thing.
4) Koreans are crazily patriotic. They denounce everybody. They insist on serving kimchi with French food (I love kimchi, but, um... Do we serve ketchup with pulgogi in the US???), just to assert their Korean-ness. It's insane. They bitch and moan about Japan and burn the Japanese flag every time a politician has the audacity to honor Japan's war dead, despite the fact that a large percentage of their business comes from Japan and they have just basically copied the Japanese economic model--even where it makes no sense to their situation. Korea is nuts. Both Koreas. Crazy. A history of playing second-fiddle to whomever else was in power has bred a keen inferiority complex, which they overcompensate for. So saying they hate America is not really the whole picture. They hate everybody.
Finally, I don't really care if North Korea gets the bomb either, and I live in their closest target. 10 years ago when I was a student in Osaka, they fired a rocket over our heads and it landed in Osaka harbor. I think I was supposed to be scared, but my response was, "Oh fuck you." That's all I feel today, too. I'm not afraid of these morons. They're not going to do shit, and if they did, they'd be wiped off the map by mid-afternoon.
I live in Japan, and let me tell you, that you should never deal with the police, unless you are in immediate physical danger.
Japan has a 93% conviction rate. They like to tout this as a good thing, but here's the way it works: Something bad happens, we send someone to jail. Someone. It doesn't need to be the person who did it.
Speaking from experience, when a call comes in reporting a crime, if they can't find who did it (hard to do when you don't show up until the next day), they'll go after the only name they have associated with it: the person who called. Also, they have been known to have interesting ways of getting confessions out of people, which helps with the 93% conviction rate.
If you mind your own business, you don't need to worry in Japan. Because the police are inept and untrustworthy, no one calls them and they don't find out about anything but the worst crimes. This is good for the Japanese self-image of being a totally safe, crime-free country, but it also means that you don't have Big Brother staring over your shoulder all the time.
Yes, you raise a critical point.
Maybe we look down on the "grease monkey" at the Toyota dealership who comes out from the back, hands so dirty they'll never come clean, and tells us we need to spend one million dollars for what sounds like a minor problem to anyone who knows something about engines. But, take that same guy, give him some basic business classes (if he even needs them--a lot of people don't), and put his name on the sign over the garage. Now he's not a "grease monkey," he's a small business owner, and if he's good, he'll cost a little less than the dealer and the car will actually be fixed each time.
I have never looked down on people in the trades. My dad is an insurance adjuster, which is a weird hybrid job (which is why he likes it). Out in the field, he's crawling under cars, climbing on roofs, wading through mud, and donning the hazmat suit in his trunk to look at meth houses. He gets back to the office and it's all math, policy, and law. But when I go on ride-alongs with him (I still do, sometimes, even as a bona fide grownup!), I'm always really impressed by what a good contractor knows about materials; I'm really impressed by what a good roofer knows about water damage and how to work with even a poorly-designed surface to avoid it.
Can I build a house? No. Can I put on a roof? No. Can I fix a car? Usually not. So how can I look down on these people, just because they can't read a table of IRT output and tell me which items are misfitting?
But even then, it's not really equal, because of what you bring up. Who can start their own business, build it up, become successful, hire others to work for them, and basically just ride around in a truck checking the work of younger up-and-comers for half the day, then go home and hang out with the grandkids for the rest of the day? It sure as hell ain't me, and it's never going to be. I will always have to work for a university. I can always get side gigs (already have had a few), but they are usually one-off jobs that pay well for the time, but there just isn't that much of a market for independent language testers. And don't even bother mentioning what happens if the economy totally crashes. We'll always need houses; reliable and valid assessments of second-language listening proficiency, not so much.
This might be a peculiarly North American problem, though. Here in Japan, it doesn't seem that the trades are so stigmatized. The pay is better (people at the tops of companies make a lot of money, but not the crazy amounts they do in the US--cue the "but we take the risk" apologists, to which I will preemptively retort "how's that golden parachute treating ya?"). Even if you're an employee, and not a business owner, you'll still make enough to send your kids to college or a trade school. Hair stylists here study for 6 years (and you can actually get a good haircut--something that is impossible in the US).
The trades are incredibly important, and there is a lot of personal earning potential there. Many, many times I wonder if I would have been better off learning how to do something.