A Comparative Study on Meritocracy Between Japan and Singapore

日本社会过去是一个任人唯贤的社会。孩子们有学习的动力。他们在学校取得的成绩越高，他们获得的社会经济地位就越高。但今天，情况发生了戏剧性的变化。作为20世纪90年代日本“渐进式”课程改革的产物，我们的孩子们发现他们的课程很容易，也很有趣。然而，他们失去了学习的热情，学习不努力。有一些假设可以解释他们学习兴趣的下降和学习动力的下降。首先，有吸引力的全职工作的数量已经减少，使得就业市场无法激励高中生努力学习。此外，由于高等教育的入学范围更广、更容易，高等教育也未能激励高中生。其次，在大都市地区，四分之一的男性高中毕业生没有工作，也没有继续接受高等教育。对他们来说，学习和学历似乎都无助于赚钱。此外，在大都市地区，学生们没有时间学习。他们忙于赚钱和花钱。但我们的研究结果显示，新加坡学生认为课程有趣的比例远远超过了日本(新加坡=，日本=40.0%)。这两个百分比之间的差异在第五轨道上尤为明显，日本和新加坡的得分分别为37.1%和78.8%，这表明日本排名较低的工业课程高中未能让课程变得有趣。造成这种差异的主要原因是新加坡的学习内容与学生未来的工作之间存在着很强的相关性，而日本则不存在。

Japanese society in the past was a meritocratic society. Children were motivated to learn. The higher they achieved in their schools, the higher socio-economic status they attained.But today the situation has dramatically changed. As an outcome of the Japanese "progressive" curriculum reforms in 1990s, our children find their curriculum easy and enjoyable. However they lose their zest for study and don't study hard. There are some hypotheses explaining their flagging interest in study and decreased motivation for learning.First of all, the number of attractive full-time jobs has shrunk, making the job market unable to motivate high school students to study hard. Also, because there are wider and easier entrances to higher and further education, tertiary education fails to motivate high school students, neither.Secondly, in metropolitan areas, one fourth of male high school graduates don't work and don't proceed to tertiary education. To them, both learning and educational qualification do not seem to be useful for getting money.Moreover in Metropolitan areas, pupils have no time to study. They are busy getting and spending money.However our research result shows that the percentage of students in Singapore, who agree that lessons are interesting, largely exceeds that of Japan (Singapore=64%, Japan=40.0%). The difference between the percentages is especially huge in Track 5, with Japan and Singapore scoring 37.1% and 78.8% respectively, showing that lower-rank industry-course high schools in Japan has failed in making their lessons interesting. Main factor of this difference is that strong relevance between the contents of learning and students future job exist in Singapore but not in Japan.