The system of education in Japan, in terms of numbers is very large a very high percentage of the relevant age cohort receiving postsecondary degree. It is extremely competitive, since access to top universities has a high impact on career ladders in government and large corporations. Its curriculum and level of expansion are influenced by America.
The system of education in Japan is alleged to be rig id and there is a strong relationship of university education with business career as well as with job hierarchy. Japan’s investment in education supports development of human and intellectual capital to promote new industries and technologies to compete globally.
Educational reforms in Japan helped in abolishing the feudal status system and effectively stripped the samurai class of its official privileges (Azumi, 1969). The reforms established scholastic achievements as the channel to elite recruitment.
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University education became the substitute for feudal class status as the primary avenue to elite status. This led to the use of severe, competitive examinations as the critical screening for university admissions.
Thus, educational reforms gave rise to a new class structure based around elite occupations of merchants, industrialists and bureaucrats, who in turn, instituted a new social phenomenon, viz., Japan as a nation of predominantly middle class, educated citizens.
Japan now has a multi layered educational class which provides career leaders based on educational credentials. It is a stratified society where social class is a function of university education, which in turn, is a function of egalitarian, meritocratic performance.
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The Japanese system of education is characterized by a high suicide rate among even young students, the lack of individuality promoted by curriculum and a highly regimented, business oriented system covered under the garb of equality.
However, its positive features include production of minimal levels and standards of learning for all students at all levels. The Japanese educational system aims for a balance of all basic subjects. The Japanese government encourages and promotes equal facilities among all regions and school districts in such a way that the gap between the best and the worst is substantially reduced.
Due to a. strong emphasis on educational performance, a child gets socialized to accept status differences on the basis of merit rather than on social class. Thus, students learn to accept achievement criterion rather than ascriptive criteria.
Common school uniforms, irrespective of socio-economic status of a child, promote egalitarianism. This is also reinforced and supported by identical uniforms of workers and managers in factories. Students and teachers share sanitorial and cleaning duties thereby minimizing the distinction between manual and intellectual work.
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According to Vogel (1977), the uniformly high quality of training provides Japan with an unexcelled supply of generally competent labour power prepared for company life and receptive to learning more specialized skills at the workplace.
As opposed to this, the system of education in India has not been able to reduce or eliminate caste-inequalities. Rather, education is seen as reinforcing existing inequalities both, social and economic. Though academic merit and achievement are partially used as criteria for recruitment, we also use traditional, ascriptive criteria for recruitment such as caste, linguistic, religious or regional affiliations of candidates.
The system of education has failed to break down traditional social structure based on caste hierarchy. Minimum levels of learning are not being attained by all students. Besides, the system of education has not been able to foster a sense of dignity of manual work and labour.