#3: Education System

When I was 16 years old, I studied abroad in Hereford, the UK. I had been to Korea and Shingapore, but it was the first time for me to go to Europe and stay there. The life in the UK was completelly different from the life in Japan.

The most different thing was education system. For example, in a music class everyone freely plays different instroments. Then end of the class, they plays one song together. That is interesting, isn't it? In Japan, basically everyone do the same thing in the class. If you do different thing from everyone, that is bad and teachers get mad at you. I feel that Japanese education system doesn't admit free. It requires kind of cooperativity.

By the way, how about the differences of education system between Tokyo and Taipei?

                     

At first, in both Tokyo and Taipei, there are 6 years elementary school, 3 years middle school, 3 years high school and 4 years university. This is the same point. 

On the internet, I found one surprising report.（ビックリ仰天！台湾事情）

It says that in Taiwan 99.52% of middle school students go to high school after graduation. In Japan, the rate is 97%. That is not so different, but in Taiwan it's almost 100%. In addition, in Taiwan over 95% of high school students go to university after graduation. In Japan, the rate is under 60%. This is a really big difference!

Of course Japanese society also attaches importance to education. Like in job hunting, the name of university you go is SO important.  But I guess that Taiwanise society take education more seriously than Japanese society because of these percentage of entering school of high grade.

Questions

1. In Taiwanese elementary and secondary education, do students study almost the same things or different things depends on each other?

2.Why education is so imprtant in Taiwan?

3.Do you know some differences of education between Taiwan and Japan?