Secret of Japan’s brilliant minds.
Japanese way of smartness
Nippon( the sun’s origin, that is, where the sun originates) is another name of Japan. Just beneath the landmass of this country, is nature’s own kiln — the Pacific Ring Of Fire(Japan is one among many countries that are a part of Pacific Ring Of Fire)— a horse-shoe shaped region where the volcanoes, earthquakes and tsunamis frequently occur. The country is divided into forty-seven parts (47 prefectures) — each of which ranks immediately below the country’s national government, in turn forms the level of jurisdiction and administrative division.
As a part of G4 nations seeking representation for the permanent candidature in United Nations Security Council, to being the second-highest-ranked Asian country in the Global Peace Index, and not to forget, being ranked as third-largest national economy in the world, after the United States and China, in terms of nominal GDP — the country has no match.
Managing such a large territory is a challenge. But Japan has its own way of dealing with challenges — by investing in the education of its children.
And how did Japan invest in the future of its children?
In Japanese system of education, students are not expected to take exams until they’re in fourth-grade. The initial years are spent on teaching the children manners, as well as, building the character of these Japanese citizens of tender age. — Teaching them the qualities of empathy, compassion, generosity and love for nature and its beings.
Once they’re in schools, students clean their schools themselves. For this purpose, a division of students into smaller groups is preferred. Not to forget, some of the Japanese students grow the crops in farms, in the vicinity of their schools, growing crops like rice is a common practice here, but students love to work upon other things too: like cultivating vegetables and fruits. Children don’t bring lunch from their homes. They just have to bring their own luncheon mat, chopsticks and cup; food is provided by the school. With delicious soup prepared from fresh vegetables, who would like to miss a healthy meal?
And when the lunch duty-staff, takes utmost care of hygiene — masks on faces, covered heads, proper outfit and not just this, but also taking into consideration, if anyone of them has diarrhoea, cough, or some other communicable disease.
Let’s explore the secret to Japan’s brilliant minds.
Independence of Children
Many young men and women are struggling academically, socially, spiritually, and financially. They are living at home in their late 20s and 30s, choosing to remain in the comforting confines of societal care in one way or the other instead of tasting the power of independence. The product of this is, they are perceiving the reality, through the lens of society and their own individuality never gets developed. But the case is not true in Japan. The seeds of individuality are planted here, right from childhood.
Japanese culture encourage their children to be independent and self-reliant. Children learn to travel to-fro from their school alone.
From the small kids taking bath their own, to taking care of the house when their parents are not around — that’s the thing the smartest people in the world have taught their children. Imagine your child commuting by trains and buses by their own, without any help, and that too, when he/she’s only seven or eight years of age.
Psychologists says that, ‘In children after birth, the mind is informed by recent and more remote memories. Self-awareness gets evolved through independence and self-reliance — from both developmental and evolutionary perspective’. We humans conceive ourselves not through our own eyes but through the eyes of others. The young children do start to have others in mind when they behave.
Now, imagine a Japanese child travelling all alone by himself/herself — understanding the interplay of nature through the window — getting to know the psyche of humans while aboard — solving problems without any help, like not catching a wrong train or a bus. Children begin to mirror or imitate at around this age — which is the expression of ‘‘self-consciousness.’ It means Japanese children get a sense of “self-consciousness” at quite an early age. Plus, the advantage in the practical realisation of the principle of independence is the country’s low crime rate, especially with regard to child abduction and all.
Juku Schools(academic)
You can estimate the care of Japanese parents for their children from the existence of Juku schools. There are two types of Juku schools:academic and non-academic.
The academic Juku schools are private schools, that charge a fee in return for supplementary classes. Usually, the classes are for preparing the students for prominent schools and university entrance exams.
These schools are not an alternate system of education but they strengthen the already established education system — by operating classes after regular school hours, on weekends, and during school vacations.
Parents try to give the best education possible for their ward. So, with the help of Juku schools parents’ aspirations get satisfied as these schools have helped to fill the potholes(if any)in the already best developed education system. Juku provides education usually in the five subjects: Mathematics, language(Japanese), science, English, and social studies. They are given importance for their role as “cram schools” — where children (sent by their parents) can study to improve their scores.
However, there is another type of juku schools that provide supplementary education, that is remedial courses to help children that are behind in their studies, refresher courses to explore the study material in much more detail, or courses that cover the study material on advanced level and thus change the mindset of children already bored by the standardized education structure.
Abacus Method(non-academic Juku)
The interplay of human mind with the machines led to the discovery of two devices or methods — analog and digital. Analog method(or computing) are represented by physical things like how much the wheel has moved in a machine. Antikythera mechanism is believed to be the world’s oldest analog computer.
Now comes the turn of digital computing. The earliest digital computing device known is the Abacus.The abacus is a calculating tool which has been continuously used from the ancient times — used in the ancient East, Europe, China, and Russia, centuries before the adoption of the Arabic numeral system. Ancient civilisations used abacus as an instrument for keeping track of large sums. It is said that abacus was first used in Babylon around 5200 years ago.
When in most countries abacus lost its prominence. But in Japan it still enjoys its prestige. — Here it is called Soroban. As a part of non-academic juku, the students in Japan can be seen nimbling their fingers at the speed of light over the ancient instrument. Doing calculations that not only involves thousands, millions or billions, but trillions and quadrillions. It’s the secret to Japan’s cognitive memory.
Children find it interesting. You’ll find a child of six years, performing the complex calculations, when the other children of his age in other parts of world have problems learning the numbers.
During 1900s, a plenty of abacus schools were opened. It is considered that abacus based education played a significant role in the country’s post-war recovery. In this education system, students are given qualifications similar to the grades on the basis of performance. Japanese call these grades or ranks as “dan”. The highest dan is 10.
What happens to the mind when you do calculations on abacus?
The simplest looking device with beads is best in improving memorisation, calculations and even concentration. It was found that, calculating with the help of abacus may improve capacity for mental calculation.
What type of calculations does Abacus perform? — Some students perform the calculations without the help of abacus, just moving their hands on the table , as their mind and hands get trained in doing so. They just imagine an abacus and the rest is the work done by their minds. That’s called Abacus-based mental calculations!
It is best cognitive skill that performs calculations at a much faster rate and more efficiently. It was observed that, hand movements of a child create a “mind-body synchronisation” which in turn results in an active and engaging neural activity. It was found that the people who were performing Abacus-based mental calculation training for a longer duration exhibited higher numerical memory capacity and experienced more effectively connected neural connections.
Through abacus the children play with the abilities of their memory — transcending them further. The child’s mind gets used to retrieve memory in order to deal with complex processes.
Abacus-based mental calculation involves both visuospatial( visual perception by the brain — identify, integrate, and analyse space and visual shapes, structure and details) and visuomotor( exhibits the coordination of movement and visual perception by the brain)processing generate the visual abacus and move the imaginary beads.
The strongest and hardest metals are produced at a high temperature. Despite all the extreme conditions, ‘The Pacific Ring Of Fire’ has benisoned Japan in producing the strongest and the evolved humans ever possible. An independent and self-reliant child can evolve the structure of the society in diverse ways than the dependent one…..
