Regarding the Sept. 20 article "Education spending renders Japan second to last in OECD": Japan has few clear national education standards for teacher education requirements, teacher certification and re-certification standards, student subject-matter learning standards, or student subject-matter testing standards.
Most K-12 students in Japan have no clear expectation of what is expected of them either in the learning process, or in preparation for tests. Tests are most often an exercise in vagueness, as most are administered without the students knowing what specific knowledge they are expected to master.
Since there are no clear national standards for the contents of these tests -- which are administered by schools and private testing companies -- parents, colleges and employers often find it impossible to interpret the meaning and value of the test results. This is a bizarre and frightening state of affairs in a nation that places such blindly high value on test results.
Most Japanese high school graduates do not know how many constitutions Japan has had in its history. Most teachers in Japan have never taken a course in basic child developmental psychology -- one of many requirements for teachers in most other first and second world nations.
Given these and many other unforgivably chaotic conditions in Japanese schools today, most parents have difficulty understanding what legislators and the education ministry are doing with their time, or with our tax revenues, or with the future of our children and this nation. These issues and much more are at stake today as the world watches Japan closely at a critical time in its history and development.
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