Reading this just made me so *sad* for the future of the US. We had such great potential -- and I do believe the potential is still there, if buried deeply under layers of conservative, fundamentalist close-mindedness -- and it's being tossed away. Buried
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IIRC one of Japan's biggest pop-rock stars shared an apartment with his sister to pay the rent. Then again that was years ago and I do not follow Gackt that closely.
In South Korea it is also a very very short turanround on being a member of a boy band because of mandatory armed service. So you can strike it big but you're not going to be making a living from it.
Ironically you can make great money as a Starcraft player in South Korea if you're good enough so there's that.
Probably. Maybe. I dunno, it just seems like in this country, it's out of control. Excessiveness continually on display. But even more than that, it's...it feels like the culture of sports, in general, contributes adversely to everything.
I'm kind of torn on this. Because it's true--and I have relatives in both China and Japan who would corroborate this. But they would also point out that they lack many basic freedoms that I have in America, too--from the right to political dissent to growing support for LGBT rights to basic human rights to internet freedom (as long as that may be lasting, anyway...) to various other freedoms we possess that are absent in China and/or Japan. The state of gender equality in Japan is even more abysmal than it is in America. Socially and culturally, many in China and Japan are still stuck in a level of traditionalism and superstition and xenophobia that rivals conservative Christian fundamentalism in the U.S., although they do generally keep it out of secular matters such as education. In China, education is amazing in cities and towns (ignoring that there is a level of political indoctrination involved there, but you can't escape that anywhere; just look at U.S. history textbooks and the fact that people are trained to blindly dismiss
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I agree with this. I think it's really easy to start writing articles vilifying the shoddy education available here, but that's because we so intimately know our own problems. We don't see the problems of other countries as readily. For example, I have had conversations with some of the various Asian exchange students I've crossed paths with (also mostly from China and Japan) and they say that while it's true students get a better grounding in math and science, they also have very little emphasis on creativity. They memorize vast amounts of information but get less encouragement on how to utilize that knowledge creatively to solve problems. The US is most definitely bad at teaching math and science but if not in practice, at least in ideology there is encouragement for outside the box thinking and pursuing a passion rather than cranking out test results. I think that same creativity is really important to take into government, because problems you encounter as a national leader are complex and sometimes require novel approaches. Many
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On creativity--YES. One really notable example of this is the U.S. anime/manga craze. Anime and manga fans in the U.S. idolize their favorite manga-ka, and think everything they do is so amazing
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I'm not sure how widely supported classical art is in Japan, and know that there are great challenges to studying and performing it in China. I study classical Japanese dance(a chamber version of Kabuki dance), and as I understand it only a very few people training are training professionally (most are hobbyists, which are the bread and butter of most teachers and training families), and they struggle financially with a market that can be very limited. The social perception of status might be there, but the reality is not dissimilar to Ballet or Opera in the west, a substantial struggle with little practical support.
I do see what you mean by the status of Manga-ka in Japan vs. North America, but consider how most American comic book artists and writers are treated; low paid inconsistent contract work where the publishing house owns the rights to all your work. The High Culture/Low Culture divide is mired in social status challenges within many cultures.
(I love loosing the point and rambling about cool art and media study stuff)
I live and work in Singapore and I don't really envy anyone the education system here. It's brutal. It's just exam after exam after exam, in preparation for an adulthood that is just work, work, work. And I know it's not even half as tough as the Chinese system, either. Singaporeans are lucky in that respect: this is like Asia Lite. I think the culture shock may have hit me harder because I came here direct from living in Sweden, where the work-life balance is incredibly laid-back and I had five weeks of paid annual leave
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Japan is highly intelligent and a strong work ethic but there's also something worrying when one of your main social norms is "The nail that sticks out gets hammered down."
I grew up in the States until halfway through the 5th grade, when my family packed up and moved to Singapore. Honestly, I'm glad we did, because I really can't imagine having gotten the same level of education here in Texas as I did in Singapore (up to Secondary 4, then I went overseas). Yeah, it's kind of a brutal system and there's a lot of pressure put on you to do well during the PSLEs, O Levels, A Levels. And a lot of it is so focused on specific courses like sciences/math or getting into a JC and not a Poly or an (GASP THE HORROR) ITE.
But honestly? I feel like I got a first class education, even though my secondary school wasn't the top (okay, it was like top 20). I wouldn't have come close to that had I stayed in Galveston.
Now, if you want to talk about working in Singapore, hell to the no. That is a total rat race and I don't want any of it.
What do you mean you need people in the arts? That's nonsense. Arts is some namby-pamby nonsense for trust fund kiddies. Everyone should be an engineer. EVERYONE. With maybe a few doctors thrown in. That's the way of the future.
I remember being in high school, and we had a fresh-out-of-school teacher for Literature/English. She was so bright and shiny and eager to educate future generations. Then one day, one of my classmates raised his hand and asked her:
"Why do I even need to learn this stuff? I'm just gonna go work in my uncle's garage, so who cares if I know this Twain dude?"
I saw some of that light immediately fade, as she faced what was likely the first of many people who simply do not care about their education.
(Oh the other hand, I need to find that tumblr post I read once about the whole "Asians are better at math" stereotype. It discussed the linguistic differences between Asian languages and Western languages in terms of numbers and how this can make learning mathematics a bit easier or harder. It was really interesting.)
I'm curious as to how your teacher answered that, because I think about it now and again as I'm working on my MFA applications so I can eventually teach English 101/creative writing at a university level (I mostly want to go into English 101 so I can save students my pain of not knowing exactly how to write a proper literature analysis paper. No teacher properly showed me how to do it until my Renaissance class in my junior year of college, not even in the 180 class that was supposed to teach you had to do it but all I got were templates. TEMPLATES ARE FUCKING USELESS slka--), and while I'm sure the Literature/English people have their reasons, I know I'll be getting students there from different studies who are just there to fill in a GE.
It's not just ignorance though. Let us not forget the almighty dollar and how a college education is basically less about education and more about getting as many students through as efficiently as possible while charging the most in the meantime.
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In South Korea it is also a very very short turanround on being a member of a boy band because of mandatory armed service. So you can strike it big but you're not going to be making a living from it.
Ironically you can make great money as a Starcraft player in South Korea if you're good enough so there's that.
Not sure about pro athletes though.
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I do see what you mean by the status of Manga-ka in Japan vs. North America, but consider how most American comic book artists and writers are treated; low paid inconsistent contract work where the publishing house owns the rights to all your work. The High Culture/Low Culture divide is mired in social status challenges within many cultures.
(I love loosing the point and rambling about cool art and media study stuff)
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Japan is highly intelligent and a strong work ethic but there's also something worrying when one of your main social norms is "The nail that sticks out gets hammered down."
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But honestly? I feel like I got a first class education, even though my secondary school wasn't the top (okay, it was like top 20). I wouldn't have come close to that had I stayed in Galveston.
Now, if you want to talk about working in Singapore, hell to the no. That is a total rat race and I don't want any of it.
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(...I hope the sarcasm is self-evident.)
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"Why do I even need to learn this stuff? I'm just gonna go work in my uncle's garage, so who cares if I know this Twain dude?"
I saw some of that light immediately fade, as she faced what was likely the first of many people who simply do not care about their education.
(Oh the other hand, I need to find that tumblr post I read once about the whole "Asians are better at math" stereotype. It discussed the linguistic differences between Asian languages and Western languages in terms of numbers and how this can make learning mathematics a bit easier or harder. It was really interesting.)
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