Society Better English skills would be in Japan's security interest

Nancy Snow, a strategic communications adviser to Japan's International Security Industry Council, argues that Japan needs better English language skills to reduce linguistic isolation. Otherwise, its global outreach will continue to lag behind that of China and other countries with much higher English proficiency levels.

In a national English-speaking assessment test earlier this year, only 12.4% of the ninth graders taking part answered the questions correctly, and most students failed to get any questions right.

This is a bad sign for a country now taking on many more diplomatic and security obligations. At the same time, it is experiencing a population decline that is forcing the government to loosen its immigration restrictions. Japan needs better English language skills urgently to reduce its linguistic isolation. Otherwise, its global outreach will continue to lag behind that of China and other countries with much higher English proficiency levels. China, ahead of Japan in moving from a memorization-driven English curriculum to a communications-driven learning model, has linked English proficiency to national interest outcomes. Graduate students and faculty at leading universities like Peking University and Tsinghua University are expected to publish research in English-language journals.

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Proportionally, more Chinese students than Japanese students go abroad to study, often in an English-speaking environment. Upon returning to their homeland, most Chinese students are bilingual and well-equipped to contribute to their country's growing scientific and technological community. In contrast, more Japanese students who study abroad, especially women in science, technology, engineering, and math, prefer to remain overseas as they perceive greater professional opportunities there than at home.

According to Sae Shimauchi, a professor at Tokyo Metropolitan University who researches international education, Japan is still an exception in a world of academic publishing primarily shaped by global networks of scholars, institutions, and publications. Many research studies in Japanese academia, particularly in the social sciences and humanities, are published primarily or exclusively in Japanese.

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Not to toot our horn, but both our daughters chose the 理系 track in high school, and went on to science in uni. The older one did miss and took a year to study before taking the exams again, but then did applied chem at Osaka. And after graduation was able to stay on the technical side of things in the job she got, working on some simulations which involved a lot of computer work, then later (after childcare leave) was able to get into something different, building an app or two used internally in the company.

The younger one was always a whiz, and tested into the 2nd department of science at U-tokyo. After that, which included a year abroad, she went to the states, worked as a lab assistant for a couple years (something connected to RNA and grinding up fruit flies), and then entered grad school. She'll be done with that a year from now (if everything goes right), a little more if her advisors get picky. Phd in bioinformatics..., big data as used in medicine. She doesn't do any "wet lab" work, it's apparently all stats, python, R, and so on, but also working with people to get projects done. Tho she hasn't closed the door on returning to japan, I think she'll be staying in the US to work, probably some pharma/biotech job.

The older one was lucky, in that her husband was seconded to california, so she has, after taking care of their kids' daycare and now 1st grade there for the older one, been looking at work and interviewing. She did work briefly for a branch of Itochu last winter, but the company didn't suit her. Their stay there is not permanent, maybe a few more years, and I hope she is able to assemble a path and some experience that will lead to something satisfying that she can do here when they get back--either in person here, or remote, something like that.

But yeah, I don't think 'the system' here in japan (even tho it had a strong hand in producing them) is really set up to take advantage of and utilize these kinds of people/women.