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[Black_Beer_Man]

Earlier this month, The Japan Times reported that...

Japan ranks 2nd lowest in education spending among OECD countries just barely above Hungary.

They used the percentage of a country's GDP spent on education for this study.

Now at first, my reaction was "So what? Japan's GDP is a lot higher than most other countries, so the amount spent per child is likely to be high.

However, on the other hand, the cost of living in Japan is higher too. They have to pay out higher salaries.

And based on personal experience in public schools, I think they are underfunded.

For example, earlier this year, I was working at an elementary school. I was pretty shocked that each classroom did not have a computer and that the teachers would pass one laptop to the next teacher to use in class. Is this public school so poor that it can't buy a laptop for each class?

Contrast that with public schools in Japan's poorer neighbor, South Korea. I worked in 3 public schools there and all of them had a desktop computer in each class for the teacher with a large TV or screen projector. The computers were hooked up to the Internet too.

Article: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/09/15/national/japan-ranks-second-lowest-education-spending-among-oecd-countries/#.V-nKlIh97cs

Japan probably needs to start spending more money on education or it will lose its edge against its neighbors South Korea and China.

[kzjohn]

Do you ever say (or think) anything positive?