Japanese Education System

I believe I've mentioned that Yosuke is good at math, but the sad truth is that he's not good at much else. His mathematics abilities astound me, and of course that's partly because he's naturally good at math, but it's also a result of the Japanese education system. In Japan, schools place a lot of focus on math and memorization, whereas here in the US, there's more focus on analysis.

As a result, my students have zero analytical abilities. For example, when Miki had to write a response to a poem, no matter how we approached it, she was unable to say anything but "It's weird." "Okay, but why do you think it's weird?" or "What's weird about it?" ... "It's just weird." (sigh) I can forgive Miki, though, because she's just in 7th grade.

Yosuke, however, is expected to have a bit of analytical ability in his 9th grade English class. Last night, we were discussing a character from a play who is described as "exploring her African-American identity." I explained that this meant she was asking "Who am I?" Yosuke asked if she had amnesia.

Another example is when I was attempting to explain a passage in the play where the aforementioned character had a discussion with her boyfriend about the purpose of school and books. Her boyfriend told her there was only one reason to read books - to pass a test, to get a grade, to complete the course, to get a degree. That's all. She called him a fool. Even after we discussed this conversation three times, for a combined total of two hours, Yosuke can still not understand the reason that the character thinks her boyfriend is stupid. He cannot understand that there is a reason to learn outside of getting a degree.

Yosuke also can only see things as one extreme or the other. Characters are either happy or sad, stupid or smart, rich or wealthy, lazy or hard-working. This is partly because of his lack of English abilities (it's easy to say somebody is rich or poor, but saying they're "middle class" is a bit advanced), but his inability to see complexity is also to blame.