I have once read about that Makoto Oda, a Japanese writer, made a score of less than 50 on an entrance exam of a university, answering the questions about his own sentences, or that Heisuke Hironaka, a world-famous Japanese mathematician, also made a score of only 50 on a math test given to senior high school students.
We had to memorize a formula to calculate the area of spherical surface when we were at elementary school. Long time later, in the office where I worked, five men including three with a master's degree, all of who majored in technology at good universities, tried to prove the formula and it was never easy. In the sociology class at junior high, we were taught that Columbus discovered the New Continent in the year of xxxx. From Western movies, even kids know that there were Native Americans, when the European landed on the continent. Why was it the discovery then? Furthermore, we have known the arguments that people used to travel by ship freely between Europe and America across the Atlantic Ocean in the years before Christ and that people also arrived at South America across the Pacific Ocean. I believe that schools teach mathematics so that students can acquire logical way of thinking to solve problems, and sociology so that they can understand the meaning of our history depending on its facts. If not, it is a waste of time to learn these subjects.
As soon as we entered a junior high, school abruptly began to teach us English, while we had been taught the way how to write Japanese sentences by alphabet. In those days I lived in the countryside of Osaka and there were not any foreigners who spoke English in my neighborhood. But, there were some Korean students at the school. Why were we not taught Korean language? OK, let me make a concession and accept English. However, why don't many universities have a curriculum for the language of the neighboring country? Well, I make a concession once more. We had to learn English for a long time - ten years in total from junior high to university. But few graduates can speak the language. With regard to this finding, teachers always answer that they only teach reading and writing. But I have never seen a person who can freely read and write in English after graduation from university. Besides the finding, it must be more important to have student who can doubt in this way, "Why do I have to learn English?". As we always lack the view point to ask "why?", we also, I am afraid, lack the ability to solve a problem. As a result, we suffer from the syndrome to approve blindly that English is without doubt the best language. From this way of thinking, we never can have the idea that we need a truly international and neutral language beyond ethnic languages.
I sometimes have a doubt that on the contrary the purpose of education in this country might lie in this point. The real purpose is seemingly to produce docile men who keep working as precisely and obediently as a robot, and who never resist and easily accept even a unjust or false assignment. There are too many young men who do not take part in sports at school, who do not associate themselves with classmates, accordingly who give up having a date. As a result, they confine themselves within doors and pass their young days, which otherwise should be the best period of life, in vainly memorizing meaningless things. A mentally sane person, who necessarily ask "why", never does such a stupid deed as this. Therefore, only the person that has stopped thinking can pass an entrance exam for a well-known university. However, this only certifies that the person in concern is already robotized. And, most of the big companies or the governments want to employ a person like this. A man of thinking is dangerous for them, for he or she finds problems about the management or ethic of the organization. The above-mentioned way must be effective while the society is stable and the organizations can make a success by mechanically repeating the same things. This, however, cannot be applied to the present society in a great change. A person who has never played with friends cannot take the leadership of the organization. A person who has never solved a problem of any type by himself through thinking "why?" cannot find a proper answer to a new problem. In addition, such a person has already lost his mental energy like a robot.
If Japan loses in an international economic war and Japanese economy collapses in the near future, its responsibility will be owed by the older generations who have bred young people in such a way. Those generations have only themselves to thank for it.
I don't have great hopes of my senior life. However, I dare to say I will once again educate myself somewhere in the country far away from the entrance-exam war together with young people who have grown up in the nature. We will talk each other, looking at the map of the world, about geography, history, culture, language, politics, etc. of the countries where I will have already visited or never visited. We will also need a motorcycle as a self-education material. In this the essence of modern science is found - dynamics, mathematics beyond the level of calculation of the area of spherical surface, and so on. Besides, we will learn Esperanto.