Feature: Japanese educators lament slackness of university students

For many Japanese youngsters getting into a reputable university will be one of their lifelong achievements, along with landing a good job, getting married and having a family, and establishing a lifestyle that involves owning property, annual international vacations and perhaps a stint working overseas as the career ladder is ascended.

For students from affluent backgrounds, much of this is laid out for them from a very young age with prestigious elementary schools being directly affiliated with notable junior high schools and high schools, which in turn are connected to top-tier universities with these often having favorable relationships with prominent companies here. This predetermined path through education, into a top-flight job, is known here as the "escalator system."

The system here is taken very seriously, with parents investing monumental sums of money into the institutions themselves and private tuition on top to ensure their child or children pass the requisite exams to propel them upwards to the next institutional level.

Such is the competition for places in prestigious schools that will virtually guarantee a child a successful career and status in society upon eventual graduation, that even at an elementary school entrance age, where children are as young as six years old, as well as their educational potential being assessed prior to being accepted, the schools also interview and assess the children's parents, to ensure they are suitable and represent the right kind of "stock" the school is looking for to continue its legacy.

But while there's no doubt that from elementary school through to senior high school, students in Japan aiming for top-tier careers, study extremely hard to get to the next educational stage; with kids as young as 7 and 8 known to attend "juku," or after school cram schools as they're known in English, extending their average study day to up to 10-hours, at universities in Japan, however, students here are famous for taking their foot off the accelerator and taking it easy for 4-years. Sometimes very, very easy.

"I spend more time playing soccer than I do studying and I also have a part time job, so I'm usually pretty tired in my seminars and lectures," Satoru Kudo, 20, an Industrial and Systems Engineering major at Aoyama Gakuin University, told Xinhua.

"At weekends I play in an international soccer league, so I get to learn and practice my English with some native speakers and that's kind of my priority and to be honest university students in Japan don't really study hard because in Japan entering a good university is tough, but graduating is practically automatic, so, what's the point?" Kudo said.

He went on to explain that the entrance exams for universities in Japan are notoriously difficult, so once this is passed students feel that they deserve a break from, what for many has been a lifetime of studying for tests to advance in the academic world and his sentiments are echoed by one of the language consultants at one of Tokyo's top universities.

"There's no doubt that these students are talented and the amount they've studied in the past shows in their latent knowledge about a variety of subjects, but when it comes to their conduct in class or how they apply themselves, it has to be said, the word 'lazy' springs to mind," Sevan Grey, a trainer in Advanced English and Business Communication at Waseda University told Xinhua.

"They know that because they are attending a prestigious university, they'll likely be headhunted by a famous company, or walk into a job relatively easily during their job hunting process due to their educational history, so in some respects it stands to reason they don't give 100 percent in class, although as a teacher this can at times be frustrating," Grey said.

He added that the advent of social media has been both a positive and a negative influence in regards to the behavior of his students in the classroom; on the one hand giving students instant access to all the latest trending news and topics, but on the other, being something of a nuisance, as the students, "simply can't leave their smartphones alone for 5-minutes," as Grey put it, adding that to counter this he often incorporates activities in the classroom that involve the use of phones and their many "apps" to stop the students merely drifting off into cyberspace.

Other teachers can be less accommodating to their languorous students, as Michael Gardner, an English Conversation teacher in the Department of English Language and Literature at Bunkyo University, in Saitama Prefecture, explained.

"I got so tired of the students' lazy attitudes and constant use of their mobile phones, that I created a new rule where the students have to surrender their phones at the beginning of class and collect them afterwards. This was literally the only way I could get them to focus on my class and make them study and improve," Gardner said.

"It might sound tough, but at the end of the day it's in their best interests as well as those of their parents who have invested massive amounts of money in their education over the years," he added.

The subject of lazy Japanese university students, while not being a particularly new topic here, has had social media here buzzing recently following a Twitter tirade from Koji Watanabe, a part-time professor at Tokyo's illustrious Waseda University, who suggested that Japanese students would do well to take a leaf out of the books of his hardworking Chinese and Southeast Asian students.

Watanabe, himself also a graduate of the famous institution he know edifies, slammed his native Japanese students stating, "When I give undergraduate or graduate lectures, it's almost entirely exchange students from China and elsewhere in Asia sitting in the front rows of seats. Even the ones who aren't so proficient with the Japanese language enthusiastically take notes and ask questions once the lecture is over."

"The back rows are occupied by Japanese students who are playing with their cell phones and munching on pastries. Those guys don't even show up to class if it rains, in which case it's just the students who sit in the front rows," Watanabe lamented in his online critique.

Needless to say a heated debate ensued on the popular microblogging site, with some of the Twitterati defending Watanabe and personally vouching for the fact that Japanese students have a tendency to be lazy in university, whereas others suggested that their Southeast Asian counterparts might study harder due to high expectations being placed on them from families back home who have forked out for tuition fees and living expenses.

One Tokyo University student in his Tweet suggested that Watanabe's lectures may in fact be boring and this could account for the students' lackluster efforts and over-interest in their phones.

But whatever the reason, most of those who have graduated from university and have gone on to establish themselves in worthwhile careers would probably encourage Japan's future social, business and political leaders to perhaps pay a little more attention in class and follow the examples set by their visiting Asian neighbors, as what may seem like a professor's dull Monday morning ramble, could in fact contain a life-changing nugget of unparalleled wisdom. Enditem