Education's Problems Are Structurally the Same Across Borders

A Note Up Front: This Is a Hypothesis

Everything below is, strictly speaking, my conjecture. I run a small school in Osaka focused on elite junior high entrance exams (中学受験). I have not directly observed classrooms abroad, and I have not done a systematic comparative survey of education systems.

So this article has two layers. The first is what I have observed firsthand on the ground in Japan — that part is fact. The second is what I extrapolate from there to other countries — that part is a hypothesis. Please read it as a hypothesis.

I write it anyway because the hypothesis is grounded in structural reasoning, not in field experience abroad. The grounds are described below.

What I Have Observed in Japan

The structure my colleagues and I observe in Japan's elite junior high exam-prep industry can be summarized as follows.

The industry classifies problems by "type" (型) and trains students to identify the type and apply the matching solution. On the surface this looks like it works. But it carries a logical breakdown: the act of identifying the type is itself never taught. Students learn to recognize problems by their surface features, and the list of memorized patterns grows like a snowball. The moment that list exceeds what a student can hold, problem-solving collapses.

Why the industry cannot escape this pattern can be decomposed into four structural forces. Reformers talk but do not implement. Traditionalists protect their own status. Parents cannot evaluate teaching content directly, so they choose schools by published exam results. And in the short term, pattern memorization actually does get students into schools. These four forces, combined, have kept the industry essentially unchanged for forty years. (For a full version of this argument, see why this system exists.)

This is a description of Japan's elite exam-prep industry. But when I look closely at the structure, I notice something: almost nothing in it is specifically Japanese.

The Universality of Education

Education, at its core, is the activity of making people who cannot do something able to do it. This is true across every country, every era, every culture. Whether in Japan, the United States, China, France, or Brazil, this fundamental purpose does not change.

This is unusual compared to other social activities. Cuisine, marriage, religion, law — these vary enormously between countries. They are heavily shaped by custom. The word "marriage" can mean wildly different things in different places. The form, meaning, and function differ.

But "making people able to do what they could not do before" — the core of education — is nearly universal. A child learning to read. A child learning to compute. A child learning to construct an argument. The aims cross borders almost intact.

If that observation is correct, then the structural pathologies of an education industry are also likely to be similar across borders. The pattern I observe in Japan — an industry locked into surface-level pattern memorization — is, I suspect, what tends to happen wherever an education industry exists as an industry, for industrial reasons rather than cultural ones.

Why the Same Structure Could Recur Across Borders

Let me revisit the four forces that lock the Japanese industry into pattern memorization, and ask whether each is actually Japanese.

Reformers who talk but do not implement. Is this Japan-specific? Almost certainly not. Every country has educators who advocate reform without implementing it. The gap between rhetoric and the classroom is a structural feature of the industry, not a cultural feature of any one country.

Traditionalists who protect their position. Also not Japan-specific. If you have spent twenty years building expertise in a particular method, changing the method devalues your expertise. That dynamic exists in every country's education sector. Professional self-interest crosses borders.

Parents choosing schools by published results rather than by teaching content. This too is likely universal. When parents make decisions about their child's education, they cannot directly evaluate what is being taught, so they fall back on external proxies — exam results, reputation, word of mouth. This is a property of cognition under uncertainty, not a property of any particular culture.

The fact that pattern memorization actually wins in the short run. Wherever a selection exam exists, this force exists. As long as exams are the gate, the methods that pass exams in the short term will be rewarded — even when they damage long-term ability. Selection systems generate this force regardless of country.

All four forces depend on industry structure, not on local custom. That is why I expect the same shape to emerge in other countries — wherever the industry of preparing children for selective exams becomes large enough to be an industry.

If the Structure Is the Same, the Solution May Travel

If other countries have the same structural problem, then the approach we are building in Japan — teaching students to respond to the language of the problem and visualize the structure, rather than to identify a stored pattern — may also work elsewhere.

Our approach is grounded in how human cognition develops: from concrete objects, to diagrams, to abstract symbols. This sequence is a property of human cognition, not of Japanese cognition. So in principle, an approach that works because of how cognition develops should also work in other countries, with adjustments for local context.

This is still a hypothesis. It is not validated until it is implemented outside Japan. But the basis for the hypothesis is the universality of human cognition and the structural similarity of education industries — not culture, not custom. That is why I think the hypothesis has a reasonable chance of holding up under testing.

Why I Can Make This Conjecture: A Habit of Looking at Structure

I arrive at this conjecture not by surveying overseas cases but by looking at the structure underneath what I have observed.

When I look at a phenomenon, I try not to stop at the surface. Cultural and historical explanations — "this is the way it is in Japan because of Japanese culture" — never fully satisfy me. Culture and history are surface phenomena. Underneath them, there is usually a deeper structure: how human cognition works, how industries respond to incentives, how markets distribute information. These structures are mostly the same across borders. What looks different on the surface is often the same thing underneath.

Whether this view is correct is, in the end, a matter of empirical testing. But for someone trained to look at structure, the hypothesis above is not arbitrary speculation — it is a hypothesis with grounds, ready to be tested.

An Invitation: Looking for Connections Abroad

I have not directly observed classrooms outside Japan. That much is honest. For exactly that reason, if there are educators, researchers, or potential partners abroad who find this hypothesis interesting, I would very much like to make contact.

We are a small school. Internally, we have built a database of arithmetic problems classified by structure rather than by Japanese-style problem categories, and we have implemented a custom teaching system on top of it. Whether this system works outside Japan cannot be known without trying. If there is an opportunity to test it in another context, that is a step toward verifying the hypothesis.

I am not trying to change an entire industry. The opportunity to test, the opportunity to discuss, the chance to meet others who share the same line of inquiry — that is enough.

If this article serves as a way for that meeting to happen, that would be the outcome I am hoping for.