Kevin Ryan in Tokyo

Category: politics

  • Ministry of Education back tracks

    On the backs of babes.

    backpack200-bbIt seems since the scores are falling in international tests, and Japanese kids aren’t learning stuff you can test as much, there is a panic to find a solution.

    About 10 years ago there was a move to restrict time at school because kids were not very well-rounded. They tend not to play together, or learn about cultural activities. To increase “humanity” among the kids, they were given most Saturdays off (yes, they used to go most Saturdays). The number of school days dropped from about 240 to 210 (the US has about 180).

    The drop in scores on these international tests didn’t start appearing until about 5 years after the change. Of course, the first thought on the cause of the drop was the changed schedule. No solid indication of causation here, but everyone thought something must be done.

    So what did the Ministry of Education come up with? Reinstate Saturdays, and double the page count of the textbooks. You see, the system here in Japan is incredibly centralized. There is a week-to-week curriculum that everyone in K-12 follows. So a kid could move from Hokkaido down to Kyushu over the weekend, and pick up exactly where he left off. (The textbooks might be different, the content is the same.)

    So now the kids will be carrying much heavier backpacks, and the publishers fat and happy. There is a constant outcry when new textbooks are brought out, because of their (non) treatment of WW2 and things like the Rape of Nanjing. Now they will have twice as much room, but we can be fairly certain there won’t be twice as much content.

  • Saving money by treating sewage

    Over at Freakonomics an interview with Rose George, author of The Big Necessity, about treating human waste, shows that for every dollar spent on sewage treatment, seven dollars in health care costs are saved. Truly, the best health care invention of the last 200 years is toilets.

    Rose George
    Rose George

  • Bowling Alone in a Recession

    Reading the news today, a paragraph from David Brooks stands out as a prediction on the social fabric of the US as they (we?) enter into a prolonged recession.

    Finally, they will suffer a drop in social capital. In times of recession, people spend more time at home. But this will be the first steep recession since the revolution in household formation. Nesting amongst an extended family rich in social capital is very different from nesting in a one-person household that is isolated from family and community bonds. People in the lower middle class have much higher divorce rates and many fewer community ties. For them, cocooning is more likely to be a perilous psychological spiral.

    Having seen this first-hand as a consumer in Japan, and as a provider of services (education), I can attest that adjustments are harsh, but usually not swift. If you can start to rebuild your personal infrastructure, and adapt, you will eventually achieve both an adjustment of expectations and possibilities that will leave you with a cleaner outlook on the world.

    The title refers to a book about socialization in the US. Will follow up later.

  • Implicit Knowledge

    Thanks to the guys over at Freaknomics, specifically Ian Ayers editorial in the Los Angeles Times by the Police Commissioner, I have found a new tool.

    Ayers did a study on who gets stopped by the LA PD. Minorities are stopped much more often, searched, frisked and questioned much more than whites, even when violence is controlled for. His study also shows that these minority searches and questionings turn up far fewer results than when questioning and searching whites.

    So the Police Commissioner complained in an editorial about Ayers study. The link above is the response by Ayers to those remarks. Very telling, and very scientific. Clear thinking, as opposed to the blustering of the Police Commissioner.

    In any case, near the end of the post, Ayers suggest that to begin to alleviate the problem, every officer on the force should take the Implicit Association Test, developed at Harvard and free online. These tests measure whether you have a prejudice (prejudging) toward some group of people or ideas. I took the Fat/Thin test as an example. It showed fat people and thin people in pictures. I had to quickly identify by pressing one of two keys on the keyboard (one on the right, the other on the left) as quickly as I could, without thinking. Then I had to match vocabulary to the words GOOD and BAD. Then the pictures and words were combined in different orders. I had to match faces or vocabulary quickly, without thinking.

    It takes about 10 minutes to do a test, and it takes your full concentration. Try it out for a number of possible unconscious (or pre-conscious) leanings. I am going to get my students to do the gender one. They have versions in many different languages.

  • My daughter, the Obama Fan

    About two weeks before the election, my daughter Anri and her English teacher, the best one in the school, started working on a speech contest. Anri was barred from the Prince Takamatsu Speech contest because she had an American passport. But there were a couple of other prestigious contests, and Anri was gunning for some competition with my other daughter, Julia, who got second place in the Japan finals of the world-wide Churchill Speech Contest last year.

    The agenda two weeks ago was to choose an appropriate speech. Anri had started with the standards, like the Emancipation Proclamation by Lincoln, or the Gettysburg address. Suggested Chief Joseph‘s surrender speech. He was leader of the Nez Perce, chased by the US army from their homes and captured just short of the Canadian border after leading women and old men for hundreds of miles. Or Lou Gehrig‘s retirement speech, since she was a softball player. Lou Gehrig had a very bad brain disease, but played every Yankee’s game he was in for 12 years, and was an MVP. Or Robert Kennedy‘s speech the day Martin Luther King was assassinated. She (rightly) found all of these a little to negative.

    So I suggested a speech by Obama, because I had just watched it on YouTube. It was the one in Ohio in October, his most powerful one about the economy. But the last part shined. Anri picked that speech two weeks before he got elected. She has it memorized already, and will take it up against others in a speech contest for junior high students.

    This country and the dream it represents are being tested in a way that we haven’t seen in nearly a century. And future generations will judge ours by how we respond to this test. Will they say that this was a time when America lost its way and its purpose? When we allowed our own petty differences and broken politics to plunge this country into a dark and painful recession?

    Or will they say that this was another one of those moments when America overcame? When we battled back from adversity by recognizing that common stake that we have in each other’s success?

    This is one of those moments. I realize you’re cynical and fed up with politics. I understand that you’re disappointed and even angry with your leaders. You have every right to be. But despite all of this, I ask of you what’s been asked of the American people in times of trial and turmoil throughout our history. I ask you to believe – to believe in yourselves, in each other, and in the future we can build together.

    Together, we cannot fail. Not now. Not when we have a crisis to solve and an economy to save. Not when there are so many Americans without jobs and without homes. Not when there are families who can’t afford to see a doctor, or send their child to college, or pay their bills at the end of the month. Not when there is a generation that is counting on us to give them the same opportunities and the same chances that we had for ourselves.

    We can do this. Americans have done this before. Some of us had grandparents or parents who said maybe I can’t go to college but my child can; maybe I can’t have my own business but my child can. I may have to rent, but maybe my children will have a home they can call their own. I may not have a lot of money but maybe my child will run for Senate. I might live in a small village but maybe someday my son can be president of the United States of America.

    Now it falls to us. Together, we cannot fail. Together, we can overcome the broken policies and divided politics of the last eight years. Together, we can renew an economy that rewards work and rebuilds the middle class. Together, we can create millions of new jobs, and deliver on the promise of health care you can afford and education that helps your kids compete. We can do this if we come together; if we have confidence in ourselves and each other; if we look beyond the darkness of the day to the bright light of hope that lies ahead. Together, we can change this country and change this world. Thank you, God bless you, and may God bless America.