Japan known, for as long as I can remember, as one of the world's best educators is inadvertently proving what many Americans already know about our own education system. People always rise to the level of their expectations and the less you expect of them, the worse they perform. Now the rich heritage of the Japanese language is getting short cut in Japanese educational reform.
Some observers trace the decline of the Japanese language to recent government education reforms. In 2002, the Japanese government revamped the school system. Its pet name for the project? "Relaxed education." Ever since, many parents have been shocked to note that their offspring have difficulty in writing kanji at grade level. A number of these same moms and dads, increasingly reliant on Japanese word processing software, admit they are hard-pressed to handwrite the same kanji they expect their children to master.
Typical of Japanese popular culture, this decline in language education has launched four television shows. I haven't seen the shows, but I'm betting they ridicule the ignorant similar to Jay Leno's "Jaywalking" segments.
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