BULLETIN JAPAN: LEGO TO THE RESCUE

We have heard it before: The average Japanese student is doing as well in mathematics as the best US students. In test after test, the top 5% of US math students are matched by the top 50% of their Japanese counterparts.

Why should that be so? Surely US students compare well with Japanese learners in terms of intelligence, and potential.

Well, we know that schools stay open longer in Japan, an average two hours per day longer, than in the US. It has also been pointed out that in order to promote proper attention to classroom lessons each Japanese classroom period is followed by a recess aimed at allowing excess youthful energy to be discharged. Sadly, this is at a time when many US schools are being forced to abolish recesses altogether because of the threat of violence recesses pose.

Until recently, the one area in which US students continued to outperform their Japanese counterparts was that of creativity. That is, in tests measuring the ability of students to innovate, US learners seemed to be able to consistently rank higher than Japanese learners in their ability to formulate a number of solutions to any given problem.

However, beginning roughly in 2004, Japanese schools introduced a system of creativity training that seems to be opening doors for Japanese students. Today, Japanese students' performance on creativity evaluation instruments is at least as good as that of American students.

Surprisingly, the creativity training system being referred to here was developed by an American University (MIT), and is available to every American school and family. However, the system has not been utilized as in the US as hoped. The name of this magic system is Lego Mindstorms.

Dr. M. Csikszemtmihalyi, in his work entitled Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention, emphasized the importance of providing a sense of freedom, a sense of educational flow to students if we wish them to be creative in mind and spirit.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mihaly_Csikszentmihalyi

Mindstorms provides unlimited opportunities for all students to practice free flow thinking as they create mechanical systems of various kinds. However, it is only the Japanese who have fully internalized this message.

Creative flow is, unfortunately, the one environmental element that formal accredited US school programs, especially at the middle and high school levels, find difficult to promote. This is no one individual's fault really. It is rather a logical result of an emphasis on strict adherence to administratively approved programs geared to satisfy state mandates, and the effect these programs have on creative flow, especially when accompanied by the bells and buzzers that John Dewey introduced into American education after his exposure to successful Prussian military training camps at the turn of the last century. See: http://www.sntp.net/education/school_state_3.htm

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