BAR (https://www.beyondallreason.info/) is an open source TA clone that proposes massive scale and that is totally open. After the recent disappointment over a series of failures to bring a new big RTS game in the last 2 years, the RTS community talks a lot about this one.
The mechanics are old school, as with basically all RTS, but the openness allows for far more experiments than one would assume in a proprietary game.
Well, HTML was supposed to be a generic language to describe typical documents. Most websites don't need more than the default elements.
From an outside perspective, it is perplexing to see the constant back and forth webdevs do between making website more complex and rediscovering the simpler first principles
Old people in Japan went through the deprivation of post-war Japan. Not all boomers were raised the same. It is harder for someone who has known famine to accept it is ok to throw food away for fun.
US grandparents think you can buy a house with a part time job, Japanese ones think that you could save a life with a watermelon. Different delusions.
My bet is advertisement. We know it is detrimental to informed decision, to market efficiency and to mental health. This is just an opinion that can't be relayed on any outlet that depends on advertisement (90% of them maybe?)
I am French, I live in Japan. My criticism applies to these two countries as well. Within European progressives, Scandinavian countries are seen as having a really different educative system and we are wondering what we are waiting before stealing it!
On the topic at hand, I am sure it is very convenient. That's the problem: maintaining privacy is a bit less convenient, but it is important, which is why it is good government do not allow people to trade short-term convenience for longer term privacy erosion.
School is the most authoritarian experience one typically experiences in a democracy. Here is a place where a strict hierarchy is enforced, through means of parental and peer pressure, anxiety over your future. Your schedule is planned by the minute, even peeing requires an authorization. Chatting is banned except on very limited time spans.
The fact that we have kept a part of middle-age inside our modern societies keeps fascinating and frightening me.
There is a very strange attraction between Japanese and French. A lot of people in both countries magnify each other culture. I think it is partly due to projection but also to a long history of collaboration and exchanges.
It is ridiculously easy to be a French in Japan. A lot of people immediately become very friendly to me when they learn where I am from.
Also, there's one thing I'll concede to Japanese culture: they do take food seriously here! That's also a strong shared point.
Yes, countryside area, teenager (my niece, not daughter) went back to Tokyo for high school because, indeed, she is aiming at something else than cashier at a kombini or waiter in a restaurant (which is what her brother did after failing university)
Japan is a country with the highest amount of bullshit jobs I have seen. I will agree happily that it is better than the homelessness that seems rampant in countries with high inequalities, but that's still a failure of the educative system.
"I think the main reason for the 1 choice only was that it used to be that students would write many exams and then pick the best high school they qualified for."
Yes, and what is wrong with that?
"The main result is that students tend to lower their sights to ensure that they get in."
Especially if their parents can't afford a good private school as a backup plan. It may be different where you are, but when we explored the options around Tokyo, private schools were more expensive.
Indeed, you can go after to one of the public school that still has slots left, but that is not your choice, that's a situation where you go "ok, I guess I'll learn bakery then" because you did not score well at one miserable test in your life. That's a ridiculous system.
"something like $1000 per student per month"
The one we found, which is apparently one of the best public school in Tokyo is closer to $1000 to $3000 a year: http://www.kokusai-h.metro.tokyo.jp/en/school/expenses.html and I heard similar prices in other public schools.
From what I hear in other countries, the school system in France is not too bad in comparison.
I think I dislike school in general as I think many of the concepts it is based on are outdated and should be improved. Fixed, imposed curriculum over the year with fixed, determined schedule on subjects. No collaboration between students, just competition. Arbitrary rules and authority bestowed upon random adults. Grades that are geared towards establishing a hierarchy rather than helping progress. Lack of interactivity and experimentation, etc...
Since I read more about it, I see France is pretty correct in comparison, with Japan being a conceptual opposite of what I think ideal.
I'll probably leave my son in primary in Japan, but I don't think it is a good idea after that.
My wife is Japanese, I thought at first like that, that our son should have a taste of the education system as I'd like him to have both cultures. I am starting to revise that judgement. The culture of obedience and resignation seems diametrically opposed to some notions of the French culture.
Indeed, you need to get the Japanese culture completely and uncompromisingly to see what the schools here "teach" in a positive way. However the Japanese culture is about more than just submission and obedience, the other parts, I am fine with, but I am not going to leave my son in a system that considers imagination and critical thinking like deviance.
> because you are allowed to apply for only 1 public high school and one private high school
Let's say it how it is: this is a gift to private schools at the expense of the poors' education. Private schools are expensive but always have some room left.
Here is how it works: you can only register at ONE public school (that is, a school that will not have prohibitive costs). You can play safe by choosing a low tier one or take a risk at choosing a high ranking one. Thing is, if you fail, you only have very expensive schools left, so most poor families will just skip that part of education or only register their kids to a "safe" high school with low scores. There is not a single good reason to not allow two or three fallback choices.
> never once did my students do their homework!
I am assuming you were teaching in a juku or another kind of additional education. If so, it could be because your homeworks were not mandatory and the school already had given them enough to fill 4 hours of work.
"the reputation Japanese schools have is completely undeserved."
I am not sure the reputation they have in US. French tend to think Japanese schools are good, I was appalled at what I discovered.
Our teenager is not into sports. The school only offers one non-sport club, the culture club, but, in the words of the principal "it is only for people who have a handicap and can't go to a sports club." I was appalled. We asked if club membership is mandatory, we got a very Japanese answer "It is not mandatory but everyone does it, please do it too"
I remember, discussing with the head of the kendo club why she was into kendo, she said she was not really into it. She could not answer why she chose it or spends so much time there. I think acceptance and resignation are things that are taught very early in the Japanese education system. And don't get me started on the sempai/kohai system that just normalizes peer pressure and a generational hierarchy. I have seen people in their 60s still obeying their one year older sempai!
I did not like the school system I went through in France, but almost every thing I disliked is magnified in Japan. Yeah, the students clean up their classrooms and the admins do their paperwork correctly that's about all I see as advantages. All the rest is about formatting perfect wage slaves with no room fro creativity or self-search.
The mechanics are old school, as with basically all RTS, but the openness allows for far more experiments than one would assume in a proprietary game.