Thoughts on Japanese education
The modern (post-WWII) education system in Japan was designed by the Allied Occupation Forces and enacted by two laws in 1947. These reforms completely altered education in Japan, and established an open-to-all, public education system consisting of six years of elementary school, three each of middle and high schools and four years of university. Attendance through the end of middle school is mandatory, though nearly 95% of students who finish middle school go on to high school.
Perhaps because of strong American influence regarding equal opportunity for all students during the educational reforms of 1947, the modern Japanese education system seems to embrace the philosophy that nobody should fail a class for any reason. In Japanese society, for the most part all students -- and later in life, all employees -- advance with their peers as a group.
Now, the Japanese education itself tends toward rote memorization for the sole purpose of passing tests. The case has often been made that no practical, functional knowledge is actually retained by the students. A perfect case in point is the mandatory study of English for 6 years. All Japanese who went to school since the occupation have studied 6 years of English, and yet very few can actually communicate in English, much less converse.
This does not mean that Japanese schools are "easy" in the Western sense. I mean, states like California have experimented with the "no grades, no failures" system, but they put a lot of other "no negative feedback" happy-happy-joy-joy stuff in there, too. Japanese schools are somewhat infamous -- within Japan -- for having the sort of strict, violence-backed control over students that would make English boarding schools look like California new-age kindergartens. For example, in the 1980s, a male high school student was beaten to death by his teacher, in front of his classmates, for bringing a hair dryer on a school field trip in violation of the rules (read "Shogun's Ghost" by Ken Schoolland for more on that incident). Studies have indicated that most Japanese students have been struck by teachers, or have witnessed the striking of another student by a teacher, either with a fist, open palm, or any object that is at hand, from ashtrays to books to baseball bats. My wife, for example, reported to me matter-of-factly that her junior high softball coach hit her in the head with a baseball bat in front of the other students because she took a called third strike during a game.
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