[wdutch]

> The notion of “fairness” dominates English education policy in Japan. Because of the importance of educational credentials in Japanese life, any policy that seems to favor one group or another—the rich, the urban, children with highly-educated parents, or children who happen to have acquired English fluency on their own—will attract popular opposition.

I teach ESL in Vietnam. The above quote boggles my mind. I've taught disadvantaged rural students and urban students with educated parents. Of course I tried my absolute best for the rural students, I worked a lot harder for them than for the privileged students. However, it would be madness to hamstring the students who happen to be privileged. Holding the whole country to the lowest common denominator doesn't benefit the country at all.

I thought Vietnam was very Confucian and uniform but Japan seems even more extreme. Maybe Vietnam also applies Marx's doctrine of "From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs" to offset it.

Thanks for your great write up on this topic. This was a very interesting read for me.

[sodfj11240]

I think it's more apt to compare between Korea / China / Japan where the written language is not Latin-based.

From my experience, most Vietnamese students catch up quickly with extra-curricular English class during their 4 years university.

[unrealhoang]

Not really, there's little to almost no difference in English literacy between Viet, Korea & China. Yet there's a big gap compare to Japan, the reason is either culture and economic incentive rather than because of the native script.

In Japanese TV, you can even see that for influencers (idols, singers, comedians) being bad in English is considered a cute "feature", this is uniquely apply to Japan.