Surpassing Shanghai: Universal Effort in Japan

By Michael Diedrich, Policy Associate, January 11, 2012 at 8:30 am

The most populous country in our examination of world educational leaders, Japan squeezes a population more than one third the size of the U.S. onto a set of islands roughly the size of California. What's more, the land is highly mountainous, so the population concentrates in several cities. While high-density urban environments in the U.S. tend to struggle with education, hyper-urban Japan has spent decades at or near the top of the world in terms of education. There are myriad reasons for this, but we'll pull out a few particularly significant ones today.

Mindsets matter in education, and the Japanese mindset about learning and success has been key to the country's dominance. While many cultures—including the U.S.—emphasize the importance of ability, the Japanese elevate effort as the primary determinant of individual achievement. This lines up what we know about how the brain works and grows, and the internalization of this attitude has supported Japanese school practice.

As in Finland, Japanese teachers are held in high esteem. Unlike the Scandinavian success story, however, the prestige of teachers in Japan derives from long-held respect for teachers dating back to the era of the samurai. Despite the difference in origin of respect for teachers, the effects are similar in both countries; teaching routinely attracts high-performing young people, puts them through a rigorous preparation program, and sends them into a professional world where they are respected and held to high standards.

Unlike test-obsessed Shanghai, the focus in Japanese classrooms is on student engagement. Those world-class teachers put significant effort into developing lessons (rooted in a strong national curriculum) that catch student attention and uncover the desired principles through inquiry and experimentation. They are then in constant contact with the students' families, with the result that students cannot help but be in an environment that encourages them to work hard and engage with their learning.

As with all these different case studies, there is much more going on in Japan than can be captured in the length of a blog post. Still, we can see the importance of emphasizing effort over ability, building the prestige of the teaching profession, and accepting there is more to life than testing. Time and again, we've seen that high-performing school systems either don't test much or are moving away from high-pressure testing. It's time for us to reconsider our approach.

[This is the third post in a series on the findings of Surpassing Shanghai: An Agenda for American Education Built on the World's Leading Systems. Read part 4. ]

Posted in Education | Related Topics: K-12 education  Classroom Methods