Future Watch: Education

Do you have your multiplication tables memorized through 99?
How about your children?

This morning’s New York Times had an interesting article about
the Japanese looking to India for educational models. Japan has
dominated their region of the world for the last century or so.
Of course, by now almost everyone is aware of the ascendancy
India and China as economic global giants.

But it is India with it’s powerful surge into the world of software
development, internet businesses and the knowledge economy that
has captured Japan’s attention. The Times reports that Japanese papers
carry stories of Indian Children “memorizing multiplication tables
up to 99 times 99, compared with Japan’s relatively lax elementary-
school requirement of knowing 9 times 9.”

Future economic prosperity lies in the sciences and technology and it
is these areas in which Japan –while still excelling — has fallen
comparatively speaking in the last few years.

The result? Get this- the success of Indian style education in Japan.
[This is in and of itself worthy of a post — the fact that Japan would
look to an Asian country reverses generations of prejudice]. The
philosophy is to teach children more facts at a younger age,
memorization and cramming of info.

For many Americans this will seem slavish. But that’s because we
live in the center of the world where everything is easier. In some ways
this makes us weaker. We push less because we’re the pinnacle. In the
meantime the developing world, like little turtles born on the shore, race
for the seas of math, science, discipline and achievement as if their lives
depended on it.

Here’s a future scenario. The USA replaces China as the mass producer
of cheap imitations and souvenirs (just visit Sunset and Hollywood Blvds
in Los Angeles or International Dr in Orlando to see what this would look like),
India becomes the world leader in Education and the Japanese learn to speak
English and write code from Indians.

God I love this planet.
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