You’re right. Something I meant to say but didn’t in my comment above is that Japanese schools are more diverse than they seem to many people, including Japanese.
In the U.S., people tend to be keenly aware of school differences, because public schools have a lot of local autonomy and are typically locally funded. In Japan, because the curriculum and many other education-related matters are determined by the Ministry of Education, there is a large degree of apparent nationwide uniformity, especially between grades one and nine. For example, in every elementary and junior-high-school classroom I have been into in Japan, and in almost all that I’ve seen in photographs, all of the desks face the front of the room and the outside windows are on the students’ left-hand side [1]. There doesn’t seem to be any similar uniformity at least in California [2], where I went to elementary school more than fifty years ago.
This apparent uniformity can give people who have experienced Japanese schools only as students the impression that whatever they happened to experience in school—a lot of bullying, say, or none at all—must be typical of the entire country.
Of course, people in other countries might overgeneralize their individual educational experiences, too.
[1] Google image search for 小学校 教室 [elementary-school classroom]
In the U.S., people tend to be keenly aware of school differences, because public schools have a lot of local autonomy and are typically locally funded. In Japan, because the curriculum and many other education-related matters are determined by the Ministry of Education, there is a large degree of apparent nationwide uniformity, especially between grades one and nine. For example, in every elementary and junior-high-school classroom I have been into in Japan, and in almost all that I’ve seen in photographs, all of the desks face the front of the room and the outside windows are on the students’ left-hand side [1]. There doesn’t seem to be any similar uniformity at least in California [2], where I went to elementary school more than fifty years ago.
This apparent uniformity can give people who have experienced Japanese schools only as students the impression that whatever they happened to experience in school—a lot of bullying, say, or none at all—must be typical of the entire country.
Of course, people in other countries might overgeneralize their individual educational experiences, too.
[1] Google image search for 小学校 教室 [elementary-school classroom]
https://www.google.co.jp/search?q=%E5%B0%8F%E5%AD%A6%E6%A0%A...
[2] Google image search for elementary-school classroom California
https://www.google.co.jp/search?q=elementary-school+classroo...