PhD's Notes

Three years ago, I joined to a campaign for finding the solution of the lack high quality teacher in Indonesia. One of The solution that we proposed for Indonesia in that time is by doing a selection to some teachers in all over Indonesia to do an exchange program to several high quality education place such as Japan by our community scholarship. We hoped those selected teacher could share their experience to their students and their working place.

By collaborating with my friends, I also published a book about Japan University environment to Indonesian student who want to continue their study in Japan, this book still can be purchased in Indonesian e-commerce. https://shopee.co.id/Ohayou-Japan-i.138724721.4438951644

Keep promoting about Japan education system, in the same time will rise a question, is Japan is that perfect to be a place for study?

To know the answer, I discussed with my colleague Dr. On, who is currently really active in Japan academia. In the beginning, I got difficulty to start the discussion because there are many questions in my head that I am still not sure how to select the best question, so my discussion partner can catch what I want to know. Especially talking about education system, it is too wide, to big and I am too young too dumb to understand (maybe). And the person who I talked with is a person who has bunches of experiences in his life, he has experience to be academia in western and in eastern countries. Me? I am just a “fresh graduate”, who just got my degree last year. I am a potato.

So, I finally opened the discussion by asking him,

me : Do you think Japan Education system is perfect?

Dr. On : Japan education is not perfect.

me : Could you elaborate your answer?

Then he started to explain that basically one of the reason of the imperfectness in Japan education system is Japan bureaucracy system. There are many moments where the law makers and academia could not match in the way of finding the solution of Japan education, and ended in ineffectiveness of bureaucracy system.

Is that Japan bureaucracy system is that sucks?

Well, I cant say so much because I am not a Japanese, and I am just starting to be Sakai jin (社会人）last year. But based on my experience, when discussed with some Japanese ojiichan, some of them were disappointed with Japan bureaucracy. So, I tried to take a look the statistics number of the effectiveness of government works in the world based on data from We Forum in 2015, I found that Japan was not included in top 10th of the least nor the most efficient government. I also take a look where is the most corrupt and least corrupt countries in the worlds. Based on Forbes Magazine, I also did not find Japan as a countries to be mentioned in this issue.

There are several aspects in my hypothesis why some Japanese feel disappointed with their country,

1. Maybe because they never go and stay at least one month in a developing country.

2. The economic is stuck.

3. The lack of teachers in their society (I considered this hypothesis after discussing with Dr. On.)

4. Hierarchy system

But mostly, when I asked Japanese, Do you want to be a government someday? I never got a yes replied for people who I know.

My father once told me : To fix a society you need to be part of political system. Be the leader, be a law maker.

how can I become a law maker when I cant hide my emotion when I disappointed with something. I am also not interested with money.

So how to make Japan bureaucracy become better?

One of the way is by produced more teacher, even high quality teacher to teach the society, Japan need to prioritize their education systems comparing to other aspects. By having more teacher, especially youngster, Japan will have big chance to educate their people that live problem is not only about making money. For your information, currently, Japan actually spends less on education than many other developed countries, investing 3.3 percent of its GDP in education, compared to the OECD average of 4.9 percent. It spends $8,748 per student at the elementary school level, compared to the $10,959 that the United States spends. (from theatlantic.com) But I am not sure, allocated more spend to education is the best way. Ma, let me update again this blog someday.

someday…