Strange Japanese beliefs & urban myths

[Ma Cherie]

Since I've been on this forum I was able to gather some insight about misconceptions the japanese have towards the outside world. But the only I want to ask is what's being done to change the mentality? This is all I would like to know.

[Maciamo]

Since I've been on this forum I was able to gather some insight about misconceptions the japanese have towards the outside world. But the only I want to ask is what's being done to change the mentality? This is all I would like to know.

If something was being done, I would not be complaining so much about it. I am sometimes appalled to see that many Japanese know very well how poor and dysfunctional their education system is. The news tell them all the time. The Japanese are the world's 3rd worst performers in TOEFL (=English language) tests, they are among the worst at learning languages in general, they cannot debate, lack critical sense, have an almost inexistent knowledge of geography, geopolitics and world history. But I haven't heard that the government was going to tackle any of these issues (well yes, I heard about 2 years ago that they wanted to introduce "debate classes" but haven't heard it had been approved).

Anyway, the wrong has already been done. All the people above the age of 17 will not benefit from any changes to come, so that most of the active population will remain basically ignorant of the world and bad at speaking languages or thinking by themselves for at least 2 more generations (as people who are 20 now will still be working in 40 years from now, and the 6-year old now will only start working in 15-20 years from now).

[den4]

If something was being done, I would not be complaining so much about it. I am sometimes appalled to see that many Japanese know very well how poor and dysfunctional their education system is. The news tell them all the time. The Japanese are the world's 3rd worst performers in TOEFL (=English language) tests, they are among the worst at learning languages in general, they cannot debate, lack critical sense, have an almost inexistent knowledge of geography, geopolitics and world history. But I haven't heard that the government was going to tackle any of these issues (well yes, I heard about 2 years ago that they wanted to introduce "debate classes" but haven't heard it had been approved).

Anyway, the wrong has already been done. All the people above the age of 17 will not benefit from any changes to come, so that most of the active population will remain basically ignorant of the world and bad at speaking languages or thinking by themselves for at least 2 more generations (as people who are 20 now will still be working in 40 years from now, and the 6-year old now will only start working in 15-20 years from now).

You are right about the debate aspect of their education. When confronted in a debate fashion, very few people (students included) had any effective reasons they could offer in response to a challenge. Many that did offer an opinion used old, outdated misconceptions or cliched information that did nothing to better their arguments. I found the best way to get them out of this mode of thinking was to get them into an izakaya or pub, where, partially inebriated, they were less guarded of their opinions and more open about their personal thoughts. Having done this, of course, led to much amusing conversations about other more in depth misconceptions, but their opinions were not so filled with stock answers they are used to using in the classroom.

About the only way I have seen where the folks got rid of their misconceptions was to actually live in another country for a number of years. But like you have mentioned, even this doesn't always work....