Tuesday, January 13, 2009

About Education

Today, I attended classes in high school.
Now, I'm staying at my friend's house.

By the way, he is going to the same college. So, he is not a high school student.
He took me to his high school.
Actually, we went there to meet his high school teachers.


We met many teachers there, and all teachers remembered him.

After that, we took two classes.
In the first class, students made a presentation. I listened to 5 or 6 students' presentations.
In their presentation, to use Power Point is required.
Everyone was assigned laptop from high school and made their original presentation.
When I think about my high school, I had no such classes.
I don't even remember that I had used PC for the classes.
Although it has passed almost 3 years since I graduated from high school, I don't think to use PC is adopted to classes even now.
And, my friend said he did the same presentation. So, it is obvious that it is not a new trial to adopt PC into classes.

Above all, the most impressed thing in those presentation is that students did presentations without reading notes. They expressed their ideas about works by their words.
It is not easy for high school students to do that.
Many other students were listening to he/her presentation. So, it is not unnatural that the presentor becomes nervous and cannot tell what they want.
However, there were no students who hesitated to speak in front of many people.

If this is in Japan, I think most of students will just read notes that they made for the presentation.

And, I remembered presentations in college.
We had a couple of opportunities for presentation when I was in Japan.
Most of students made notes for their presentation and just kept reading that one.
Especially, almost all women students spoke with reading the notes.
Honestly, such kind of presentation was so boring for me because the presentators become like a machine.
I think American students were used to speak in front of other people.

Next was a discussion class.
That class was so active. Many students expressed their ideas whether their ideas are correct or not.
This is a big difference with Japanese education.
Usually, a teacher keeps talking and students only take notes.
They have no opportunity to speak in the class, and they are not expected to speak in classes.

It was boring for me to just listen to teachers' explanation.
So honestly, I slept a lot and read cartoons in classes in high school....
But, if I had been in classes that I attended today, I could enjoy classes and create my ideas.
Moreover, if I were a teacher, I want to teach in a class that I saw today.


Today, I saw the differences between education in America and Japan.
Now, I'm trying to find advantages of Japanese education. However, I find much more advantages in education in America than in Japan.....

No comments: