The headline in a recent Nikkei article tells many recent graduates something they already know first hand.

Japanese Firms Increasingly Hiring Foreign Students

Other recent articles have told the public that not enough students are studying overseas (read: the West) to help Japan remain competitive in the global environment.  Major universities are considering beginning fall enrollment on the mistaken idea that the only thing keeping foreign students out of Japanese schools is a lack of school-year coordination (let’s face it, the only foreigners who study in Japan are children of executives stationed in Japan or those foreigners who have relatives here or Japanophiles, kids who just want to be immersed in the “cool” culture of Japan).

Additionally, government has been constantly complaining that there aren’t enough English speaking Japanese graduates, this despite an inordinate amount of public and private money being wasted on the scam.

So, what’s behind all of this?  Because we aren’t seeing much from the government except a lot of whining about it.  What makes it completely ironic is the fact that the government has been in charge of educating the Japanese people since the early Meiji era which means that all of these complaints are nothing more than self-criticism.  The government has simply failed to properly manage the education of the nation, not surprising since it does little that one would consider competent.

Aside from its collective howling about its failure, however, the government is broadcasting a very dangerous message every time some officious politician or bureaucrat opens his mouth about it and that message is being picked up in the subconscious of the nation, especially the youth.  And that message is, being Japanese is just not good enough in a Western-controlled world.

Think about that for a moment.  No one in the government is talking about setting a goal to make Japanese universities the envy of the world.  No one is on a soapbox admitting to the failure of the current system and producing strident plans for reform in order to raise the level of education in Japan.  No one is defending the Japanese nation as being more than good enough to compete with anyone in the world, past, present, of future.

Instead, the leaders of the nation are conceding to being second rate.  The surrender mentality from 1945 has survived to this day.  And it has turned the current crop of elites into whimpering lapdogs to the rest of the world.

When the Democratic Party of Japan-led government conducted the budget screening after taking power, Renho, one of the DPJ lawmakers in charge of the event, asked, regarding a budget request for the development of a supercomputer, “Is it no good that Japan is No. 2″ in the performance race of supercomputers? Perhaps the mentality of being content to be No. 2 has prevailed not just among companies but everywhere in Japan including bureaucracy, schools, universities and research institutions.

The government, in light of this, has chosen to blame the Japanese children for the state of the education system instead of accepting its own failure.  And this is most unfair as the system already robs children of a childhood with wasteful and, apparently, useless testing which requires children to enroll in cram schools.  Then there is the unspoken requirement that children have to become involved in after-school activities before being considered for a top university.  The result is that the Japanese children are busy with school activities from daylight to dusk.  This kind of effort by the children can not be brushed aside by the government just so it avoids well-deserved criticism.

In fact, there is much evidence that replacing a natural childhood with an adult-like schedule is detrimental to children.  One does not find this kind of school day in Western countries, the seeming holy grail for the Japanese chattering class.

The Japanese seem to believe that test results equal intelligence.  The truth is that the system teaches for the tests so that high scores are not the true indication of the value of the education, something that employers are learning in increasing numbers.

Grades are a problem. On the most general level, they’re an explicit acknowledgment that what you’re doing is insufficiently interesting or rewarding for you to do it on your own. Nobody ever gave you a grade for learning how to play, how to ride a bicycle, or how to kiss. One of the best ways to destroy love for any of these activities would be through the use of grades, and the coercion and judgment they represent. Grades are a cudgel to bludgeon the unwilling into doing what they don’t want to do, an important instrument in inculcating children into a lifelong subservience to whatever authority happens to be thrust over them.” – Derrick Jensen

Japan’s leaders want to have everything arranged in neat, tidy rows for proper administration, including the living, breathing flesh that will become Japan’s future.  After a century of this attitude applied to educating the people, what Japan has is a nation of dependents who are very good at taking tests, working together in groups, and taking orders from authority.  Those Japanese who do manage to become successful individuals do so from their own initiative and and, in many ways, in spite of their Japanese education.

The current leaders also moan about the lack of innovation in Japan.  But, what should they expect when the education system forces children to adhere to the group and to not think outside that safe environment.  Who wants to be the nail that sticks out in Japan, especially among children who have no authority over their own lives whatsoever and are not being taught how to develop this important aspect of their personality.

“All human development, no matter what form it takes, must be outside the rules; otherwise we would never have anything new.”— Charles Kettering

Consensus, the primary lesson that a child matriculating through Japanese schools learn, never invented anything.  It never created anything – except, in Japan’s case, historic debt and chronic decline.  No innovation came at the hands of a body of consensus.  And yet the Japanese education system spends most of its time teaching conformity and testing trivialities.

In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards. – Mark Twain

We append Twain’s quote to include central bureaucrats, politicians, and unions who profit from the Japanese school system at the expense of the children and the nation.

And finally we offer another observation from Albert Einstein, which quote the Japanese government seems intent on proving correct.

“It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.” – Albert Einstein