Japan looks to India for a better way to learn

At the Little Angels English Academy & International Kindergarten, the textbooks are from India, most of the teachers are South Asian, and classroom posters depict animals out of Indian tales, including dancing elephants in plumed turbans. The kindergarten students even color maps of India in the green and saffron of its flag.

But Little Angels is situated in this Tokyo suburb, and only one of its 45 students is Indian. Most are Japanese.

Despite an improved economy, Japan is suffering a crisis of confidence these days about its ability to compete with its emerging Asian rivals, China and India. One result has been a growing craze for Indian education.

The Indian boomlet reflects the insecurity of many Japanese in their country's schools, which once turned out students who consistently ranked at the top of international tests. One response has been to look for lessons from India, the country many here see as the world's ascendant education superpower.

Bookstores are filled with titles like "Extreme Indian Arithmetic Drills" and "The Unknown Secrets of the Indians." Newspapers carry reports of Indian children memorizing multiplication tables up to 99 times 99, compared to Japan's relatively lax elementary-school requirement of knowing nine times nine.

And Japan's few Indian international schools are reporting a surge in applications from Japanese families.

The thought of viewing another Asian country as a model in education, or almost anything else, would have been unheard-of here just a few years ago, education specialists and historians say.
Much of Japan has long looked down on the rest of Asia, priding itself on being the region's most advanced nation. Indeed, Japan has dominated the continent for more than a century, first as an imperial power and more recently as the first economy in Asia to achieve Western levels of economic development.

But in recent years, Japan has grown increasingly insecure, gripped by fear that it is being overshadowed by India and China, which are rapidly gaining in economic weight and sophistication.

The Japanese government has tried to preserve the country's technological lead and strengthen its military. But the Japanese have been forced to shed their traditional indifference to the region.

Suddenly, Japan is, grudgingly, starting to show a new sense of respect for its neighbors.
"Until now, Japanese saw China and India as backwards and poor," said Yoshinori Murai, a professor of Asian cultures at Sophia University in Tokyo.

"As Japan loses confidence in itself, its attitudes toward Asia are changing. It has started seeing India and China as nations with something to offer."

In education, Japan's respect has grown in seemingly direct proportion to its performance below its Asian rivals on international tests.

Last month, a national cry of alarm greeted the announcement by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that in an international survey of math skills, Japan had fallen from first place in 2000 to 10th place, behind Taiwan, Hong Kong and South Korea.

From second in science in 2000, Japan dropped to sixth place.

While China has stirred more concern here as a political and economic challenger, India has emerged as the country to beat in a more benign rivalry over education.

In part, this reflects China's image in Japan as a cheap manufacturer and technological imitator.

But India's success in software development, Internet businesses and knowledge-intensive industries where Japan has failed to make inroads has sparked more than a tinge of envy here.

Most annoying for many Japanese is that the aspects of Indian education they now praise are similar to those that once made Japan famous for is work ethic and discipline: learning more at an earlier age, a heavier reliance on rote memorization and cramming, and a stronger focus on the basics, particularly in math and science.

India's more demanding education standards are apparent at Little Angels Kindergarten and are the main source of its popularity.

Its 2-year-old pupils are taught to count to 20, 3-year-olds are introduced to computers, and 5-year-olds learn to multiply, solve math word problems and write one-page essays in English - tasks that most Japanese schools do not teach until at least second grade.

Japanese anxieties about the declining competitiveness of the country echo the angst of another nation two decades ago - when Japan was the economic upstart.

"Japan's interest in learning from Indian education is a lot like America's interest in learning from Japanese education," said Kaoru Okamoto, a professor specializing in education policy at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/01/01/business/yen.php