Does the west rely too much on media to educate children?

[IamQ]

Watching anime you see all sorts of things we wouldn't have in the west: Blood, dismemberment, nudity, foul language, yet japan is seen as one of the most orderly countries in the world. I've started to think that maybe this is because in japan "society" is an actually defined concept. There are strict rules of what to do within sociey: how to act, how to speak, etc. etc. The rules are very clear, and everywhere you are encouraged to follow them.

In the west, we encourage individualism, which, while it's not bad, doesn't mesh with following rules either. Rules are strict and give very little room for adjustments. When we in the west hear about a society dominated by rules, we don't think about modern japan, we think more about nazi germany or the soviet union. So we've decided to rely on sort-of-subliminal-messagning instead, through cartoons. Individualism tells us we can't tell you whats wrong or right, so instead we will create scenarios within meadia that reflect the appropriate behaivior for a functioning society.

We can't tell you that X is right, but Y is wrong, but if we create a cartoon wherin the person supporting Y is seen as really mean, we will get away with it, no problem.

 

[Saelune]

I think we dont rely enough on Education to educate children. Look, I like Japan and all...but they are good at making robots cause they are good at turning people into robots. Hell, thats why I think anime and things like that is so weird...cause art is usually made by those who rebel against conformity rather than embrace it. When we use anime as a measurement of what is "Normal" in Japan, it is like saying South Park is what is normal in the US.

Really we just need to reform our education system to be about actually teaching people and making people smarter and more prepared for life. Currently our education system -want- to make us all robotic workers, but is bad at that, just as it is bad at encouraging us towards a scholarly academic life, so we end up in this shitty limbo where it sucks for all of us.

...Dude. (To add to how hippy I probably sound)

 

[Catnip1024]

So, the conclusion I draw from this argument is that we should learn from the Japanese and make kids learn by watching explicit animes?

Let's be honest, there are a lot of useful things that could be learnt from the Japanese education system. Anime is not one of them. My guessing would be that more people watch anime outside of Japan than inside. The same way that certain segments of the Japanese music world are bigger outside of Japan than in Japan.

I don't think we rely on the media too much to educate children - I have seen kids TV recently, and let me tell you, the quality has gone downhill. Beyond the overly self-righteous drumming home of moral messages, nothing useful gets learned, and most of the moral messages are so overly simplified they probably do more harm than good - things like "try being nice to the bully". Most actual moral lessons are picked up through life - for example, that wonderful moment when you realise that the authority (teachers) is made up of people who just want as little hassle as possible in the working day, and don't care about who is actually wrong or right.

 

[Borty The Bort]

The media is a brilliant education tool, I think people need to rely on the media somewhat to educate their children, however there comes a point where there are things that must be thought by experience alone, otherwise you have a society of people who may(for example)be taught non-stop about romance, and the beauty of love, but never truly feel it for themselves. It's a sad world which does not experience the best things the human psyche can offer to you.

 

[Marik2]

Well that's kinda how I was raised

I learned more from watching PBS and cartoons. Murican school is too focused on memorizing to pass the state exam.

 

[twistedmic]

Watching anime you see all sorts of things we wouldn't have in the west: Blood, dismemberment, nudity, foul language.

Not all anime is geared towards children, just the same way that not all western cartoons are geared towards children.
For every anime equivalent of Spongebob Square Pants there's probably an anime equivalent of Archer or HBO's Spawn.
And it's probably similar to the fact that live-action, scripted, television runs the gamut from Sesame Street and Lazy Town to Game of Thrones and Sons of Anarchy.
I'm also pretty sure that the kid-friendly anime fare has far fewer decapitations and headshots than the adult-oriented stuff.

 

[DaCosta]

This is the first time I've ever heard that individualism means we can't tell right from wrong.

Also, do you think that just because it's animated that means kids watch it? Any anime that has the things you said is not shown to kids. You want to know what japanese kids actually watch take a look at Doraemon or Yokai Watch, and yes, those things are filled with the same "let's all be nice to each other!" messages that all western cartoons have.

Finally, taking into account the suicide rates in Japan, I wouldn't consider theirs a perfect model for a society.

 

[Mechamorph]

I think what you are getting at is that Japanese media is not afraid about exposing youth to what is often termed "disturbing" imagery because they trust that the education system has provided sufficient socialization that aberrant behaviour is highly unlikely to emerge.

I personally was educated in a Sinicised school system and graduated from one of the best universities in Asia. I have had some exposure to foreign education systems but of course I can only provide a cursory and general set of observations.

In discussion with foreign academics, some of the key distinctions between the systems of East and West are the imposition of student discipline, the celebration of academic achievement and the teaching of civics. Whether this is a good or bad thing is debatable but lower education in Asia tends to also include a component meant to socialize the child into a worthwhile member of society. That in the end the school system is supposed to create a functional, worthwhile and upstanding citizen to join the workforce upon graduation. Thus in all of my report cards, there are lines written about my behaviour and conduct alongside my grades. People who do poorly are segregated early into classes meant to help slower students achieve the same results as their more academically gifted peers, albeit in longer time. Being held back for poor performance was a clear and present danger. Do badly enough in school and you will literally lose years of your life. Be noted as a trouble maker from a young age and potential employers will know about it as it is on your permanent record.

Competition is often strong in Asian systems, how students do and how well they rank are often publicised to the school at large. People who do well are often given awards, prizes and in some countries (like mine), cold, hard cash. Western systems over on this side of the globe tend to be criticised for a lack of academic rigour, especially in higher education. George Bush the Lesser's "No Child Left Behind" policy was met was constant mocking laughter and ridicule. If not complete incredulity and sheer disbelief. Spurious degrees and areas of study are seen as "bloat" on a university system's limited resources.

The American Public School System in particular is seen as underfunded, with a crumbling infrastructure and a teaching corps that is often a combination of underpaid, poorly trained, highly stressed and heavily demoralized. Jokes have often been made that teaching in the United States is not that far from teaching in a Third World country because your students can sometimes come to class heavily armed. Worse, they might decide to attack you if you hurt their feelings.

A commentary by an American academic once noted that in the Eighties, school boards noted that students with high self-esteem tend to achieve more in academics and lead better lives in general. Like any untrained, or willfully ignorant, mind they decided that self-esteem bred excellence rather than the logical conclusion that excellence often bred high self-esteem. Thus began a culture of "you are special, you matter" that eventually created generations of low achievers who are hit hard by the Dunning-Kruger effect and are massively entitled. Not having been in compulsory education in the States I do not know if this is true but the logic does appear to be sound if it is.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

Watching anime you see all sorts of things we wouldn't have in the west: Blood, dismemberment, nudity, foul language.

Not all anime is geared towards children, just the same way that not all western cartoons are geared towards children.
For every anime equivalent of Spongebob Square Pants there's probably an anime equivalent of Archer or HBO's Spawn.
And it's probably similar to the fact that live-action, scripted, television runs the gamut from Sesame Street and Lazy Town to Game of Thrones and Sons of Anarchy.
I'm also pretty sure that the kid-friendly anime fare has far fewer decapitations and headshots than the adult-oriented stuff.

Well sure. Just look at the difference between Dragonball Z and Dragonball Super. Less violence, fewer critical injuries, almost no vaporizations. All because they went from a teen friendly weeknight time slot to a more kid-focused Sunday morning time slot. Standards and practices are still a thing in Japan.

Finally, taking into account the suicide rates in Japan, I wouldn't consider theirs a perfect model for a society.

Yeah, I hear so many stories about Japanese millennials checking out of Japanese society, and I don't just mean suicide, that I'd say their system has some flaws in it's rigidity. After all, why ruin yourself in highly stressful academic competition for a handful of ever-worsening, ever-less-plentiful corporate jobs when you can do the temp/part time gig. Go full on parasite-single, as Abe would say.

 

[Satinavian]

Usually "western" is meant to include more than just the US. Education is very different in different western countries.

Here in Germany society has also the reputation of loving rules to the point of obsession, but our school system is not about teaching conformity and suppressing individualism (people are wary of anything that might look a bit totalitarian). But neither do we have a "no-child-left-behind" policy, instead we use different school types based on performence and repeating years is also an option.
We also don't emphasize memorizing content. Tests are nearly always about using the learned stuff and thus showing understanding, not about recalling minutiae.
And while private schools do exist, they more or less have to teach the same stuff, are pretty rare and have not a reputation of being actually better than public schools. Even what might be called elite send their kids to public schools.

German media however, well, while there exist some good and even educational programs aimed at children we don't actually produce that much in the age segment at all. Usually it is seen to be cheaper to localize the more successful of the foreign cartoons and animes. Sometimes stupid decisions get made like localizing Naruto as kids show and then editing all referrences to death and a big part of the violence out of it. But it seems after a couple of embarrassing failures like that media is now better at judging age appropriateness of foreign titles (can't just take over the foreign asassment, as cultural values of what is appropriate at what age differs a lot between Germany, Japan and the US)

And yes, the US has an utterly poor reputation as far as education goes. Not sure how justified that is though.

 

[Silent Protagonist]

I think we dont rely enough on Education to educate children. Look, I like Japan and all...but they are good at making robots cause they are good at turning people into robots. Hell, thats why I think anime and things like that is so weird...cause art is usually made by those who rebel against conformity rather than embrace it. When we use anime as a measurement of what is "Normal" in Japan, it is like saying South Park is what is normal in the US.

Really we just need to reform our education system to be about actually teaching people and making people smarter and more prepared for life. Currently our education system -want- to make us all robotic workers, but is bad at that, just as it is bad at encouraging us towards a scholarly academic life, so we end up in this shitty limbo where it sucks for all of us.

...Dude. (To add to how hippy I probably sound)

I think you are off on one key point. The education system doesn't want to make us all robotic workers, or at least if it does it is doing a terrible job at it. Our education system is terrible at preparing people for the workplace(and life in general but that's another topic). I learned more about engineering in two weeks at my first job than I did in over four years of college getting my degree, one of the handful of types of degrees not generally considered a waste these days, and very little of what I learned in college is even remotely useful in the field it was supposedly preparing me for. Education does not teach you what you need to know to be a good worker, it teaches you what you need for the next level of education until you reach grad school and begin to learn to be an educator in your field to complete the cycle, even in the supposed last bastion of useful degrees that is STEM. The Education System doesn't want us to be good workers, it wants us to be good customers, specifically their customers.

That's obviously a bit dramatic and hyperbolic and I highly doubt that the current state of things in education is the result of some sort of capitalist conspiracy. I think it's far more likely the byproduct of years of making the seemingly obvious assumption that the best people to determine what should be taught in schools are Teachers. Unfortunately, it turns out being highly skilled in HOW to teach isn't the same as knowing WHAT needs to be taught.

TL;DR: How do you think we ended up with a system that places more importance on explaining your math than the accuracy of your math, when the only people for which that will ever be the case in the real world are those who need teach someone math?

 

[DaCosta]

Finally, taking into account the suicide rates in Japan, I wouldn't consider theirs a perfect model for a society.

Yeah, I hear so many stories about Japanese millennials checking out of Japanese society, and I don't just mean suicide, that I'd say their system has some flaws in it's rigidity. After all, why ruin yourself in highly stressful academic competition for a handful of ever-worsening, ever-less-plentiful corporate jobs when you can do the temp/part time gig. Go full on parasite-single, as Abe would say.

I actually lived and studied in Japan for a while. Kids and elderly people, even teenagers, were super friendly. They would strike up conversations with you, or yell the only words in english they know from across the street, be they "Hello!" or "Fuck you!". That last one was usually with little kids XD. Adults on the other hand had a much higher ratio of douchebags per capita, they'd be dismissive if not outright grumpy, avoiding most social contact unless drunk, and even racist. I've gotten more than a few dirty looks in the street, and to my surprise it never came from old people, they were all from people in their 30s or 40s at most.

I swear, there's something about their college entrance exams, and later work life, that makes their butts clench so hard that it spoils the character of a lot them, and they don't recover until they can retire and finally unclench.

 

[Lisker84]

To be fair, Japan has been heavily censoring their video games for like a decade, and now the western versions of their games are more graphic.

 

[Trunkage]

I think we dont rely enough on Education to educate children. Look, I like Japan and all...but they are good at making robots cause they are good at turning people into robots. Hell, thats why I think anime and things like that is so weird...cause art is usually made by those who rebel against conformity rather than embrace it. When we use anime as a measurement of what is "Normal" in Japan, it is like saying South Park is what is normal in the US.

Really we just need to reform our education system to be about actually teaching people and making people smarter and more prepared for life. Currently our education system -want- to make us all robotic workers, but is bad at that, just as it is bad at encouraging us towards a scholarly academic life, so we end up in this shitty limbo where it sucks for all of us.

...Dude. (To add to how hippy I probably sound)

I think you are off on one key point. The education system doesn't want to make us all robotic workers, or at least if it does it is doing a terrible job at it. Our education system is terrible at preparing people for the workplace(and life in general but that's another topic). I learned more about engineering in two weeks at my first job than I did in over four years of college getting my degree, one of the handful of types of degrees not generally considered a waste these days, and very little of what I learned in college is even remotely useful in the field it was supposedly preparing me for. Education does not teach you what you need to know to be a good worker, it teaches you what you need for the next level of education until you reach grad school and begin to learn to be an educator in your field to complete the cycle, even in the supposed last bastion of useful degrees that is STEM. The Education System doesn't want us to be good workers, it wants us to be good customers, specifically their customers.

That's obviously a bit dramatic and hyperbolic and I highly doubt that the current state of things in education is the result of some sort of capitalist conspiracy. I think it's far more likely the byproduct of years of making the seemingly obvious assumption that the best people to determine what should be taught in schools are Teachers. Unfortunately, it turns out being highly skilled in HOW to teach isn't the same as knowing WHAT needs to be taught.

TL;DR: How do you think we ended up with a system that places more importance on explaining your math than the accuracy of your math, when the only people for which that will ever be the case in the real world are those who need teach someone math?

I think that what we expect out of education has changed. I remember hearing about children in the 50s, after leaving school, were taught how to do a job at a particular workplace that they obtained a job from. I think that has changed, as most employers expect you to be an expert before your first day. Its one of the reason why school leavers have trouble getting jobs - not many businesses want to spend the time to teach kids how to be in a workplace.

I say this because I remember my first time in the full time workforce where I had a mentor, and I was lucky enough to see five hours of her over a year. I personally think she did a terrible job at being a mentor and I've never been offered a mentor since. I don't know whether my friends were different. Most didn't even get a mentor or any training.

In fact, the most on job training I ever got was when I started at McDonald's at 14. I actually had people showing me how to do a job.

I think school is doing exactly what was expected out of it 50 years ago, and its not matching what's happening today. The question is - should it? For example, let's take two online stores - Amazon and Ebay. They might look the same but are completely different and require a different skill set. So... does the school need to pick which company it caters for. Because that sounds like a terrible idea. You'd have no reason to do things like music, languages, sports, science or history. Also, it means your probably locked into one company because you still aren't being taught if you switch.

I think school is problematic but I don't know if getting you "workplace ready" is its job.

Also, I remember talking to a German parent (she did school in Germany) about her child's progress (the kid was in Kindergarten in my country.) I tried to explain that she, as a parent in this country, still had to take charge of their learning. Because apparently (at least in her school), the teachers were expected to do everything, including showing kids how to cook and draw.

 

[Kolby Jack]

Look, I like Japan and all...but they are good at making robots cause they are good at turning people into robots.

Yes, exactly. Japanese society has for DECADES conditioned its people to overvalue work while at the same time underestimating the need for kids because kids are a financial liability. Only recently has Japan realized that their citizens not fucking while also being extremely against immigration has created an unsustainable society. Unlike other countries in similar situations where they can just try to reform social programs and educate the populace, Japan has to practically fundamentally change its entire societal structure to overcome its abysmal birthrate. The US is the best off of any post-industrial country because we are a) maintaining a nearly sustainable birthrate and b) we are very open to immigration despite orange, douchebag-esque appearances.

As for education, I don't know what Japanese children's cartoons are like, but American children's cartoons outside of the age range of toddlers aren't educational at all. They have milquetoast morals of "be nice to people" and "teamwork makes the dream work" but actual life lessons are few and far between. Education of societal norms as you describe, IamQ, is mostly passed down from the parents and school. Really, it's only later in life that people get complex lessons in society from media. Even then, I think you're over-estimating how much influence the media has. Most people in America at least are primarily concerned with their own small lives and regard the national affairs as a discussion piece, not something to actually get involved with outside of election day.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

The vagueness and blanket assumptions are just too much. I can't see any logic through through the thick fog of 1-dimensional personal bias.

 

[Silent Protagonist]

snip I hope. New to doing this on my phone.

I think that what we expect out of education has changed. I remember hearing about children in the 50s, after leaving school, were taught how to do a job at a particular workplace that they obtained a job from. I think that has changed, as most employers expect you to be an expert before your first day. Its one of the reason why school leavers have trouble getting jobs - not many businesses want to spend the time to teach kids how to be in a workplace.

I say this because I remember my first time in the full time workforce where I had a mentor, and I was lucky enough to see five hours of her over a year. I personally think she did a terrible job at being a mentor and I've never been offered a mentor since. I don't know whether my friends were different. Most didn't even get a mentor or any training.

In fact, the most on job training I ever got was when I started at McDonald's at 14. I actually had people showing me how to do a job.

I think school is doing exactly what was expected out of it 50 years ago, and its not matching what's happening today. The question is - should it? For example, let's take two online stores - Amazon and Ebay. They might look the same but are completely different and require a different skill set. So... does the school need to pick which company it caters for. Because that sounds like a terrible idea. You'd have no reason to do things like music, languages, sports, science or history. Also, it means your probably locked into one company because you still aren't being taught if you switch.

I think school is problematic but I don't know if getting you "workplace ready" is its job.

Also, I remember talking to a German parent (she did school in Germany) about her child's progress (the kid was in Kindergarten in my country.) I tried to explain that she, as a parent in this country, still had to take charge of their learning. Because apparently (at least in her school), the teachers were expected to do everything, including showing kids how to cook and draw.

I agree that parents need to stop expecting the state to raise their kids for them and I share the perspective that school isn't necessarily about teaching you necessary life skills as life will do that on it's own but rather filling in the gaps of what life might leave out. However, I only think that holds true before you reach college and are pursuing a degree that in some cases is deemed a necessity before you can work in the related field. If I am required, legally or otherwise, to complete a specific degree to work in a specific field, that degree better prepare me to work in that field. I agree that all companies are different and require different skill sets in aggregate, but many of the individual skills are ones that are shared by multiple businesses, particularly businesses in the same field. I'm not saying we need a "Work at Amazon" degree, but if we have an Accounting degree then someone who earns that degree should be better prepared to be an Accountant at Amazon out of the gate than someone without it. Students aren't getting themselves into tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars into debt to get a degree out of a sense of self improvement or horizons broadening when their are far more effective, less expensive, and(not or)easier ways to do that in this day and age. They are doing that because they think that degree is necessary for them to get a decent job and that it will pay for itself eventually. That's the current reality even though that was not the case in the past. I would be fine with that if the massive amount of time, energy, and cold hard Cash one has to put into getting a degree actually made one more qualified to do the kind work they need that piece of paper to do. Unfortunately that is not the case as it increasingly just seems to be a massive hurdle designed to thin out the resume pile.

 

[Trunkage]

snip

Yeah, college degrees - the only opposing thing that I can add is that economist have been thinking on this for a while. One possible reasoning is that a degree is just a entry pass to work. Others say its more like a show of discipline rather than actually learning.

I think of what you could term as computer science (programming or whatever). There are range of languages, that aren't really transferable. But there is a structure that is useful (like heuristics) that is. A company might need to train for them to change languages. I think of a law degree and how that degree is so splintered but still doesn't cover what you need. In my country, they have in place a full year, post degree, before you can attempt to pass the bar. In teaching, they are assessed by a mentor for at least a year before you can get full registration.

I also think about how, at 18 or whenever you start, maybe you should personally take more charge of your own education.

That being said, I found my degree pretty useless