We haven’t seen such delightful news for quite a while. An authoritative survey by an international organization evaluated Japanese adults, especially middle-aged men and women, as the world’s most skilled people. Not only were Japanese adults ranked top in terms of scores, but the gap between those who scored well and those who did not was small, which means that Japanese people are very well skilled in general. The good results are attributable to the high level of compulsory education which is provided equally to all people, and the existence of a thick layer of middle-class. Political leaders should recognize that neoliberalism will deteriorate such good qualities of Japanese people.
Japan’s competitiveness is based on its traditions and social system which foster diligence. Those who call for revitalization of the Japanese economy through competition and efficiency do not understand the nation’s true strength which has been built up over a long period of time.
Earlier this month, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development announced the results of the Survey of Adult Skills, which was conducted for the first time on roughly 157,000 people between ages of 16 and 65 in 24 countries and regions. Japan ranked top in terms of average score in most of the fields under the survey, and it was noteworthy that middle-aged people did especially well and few people scored really badly. For instance, about one-third of the surveyed people in Italy (32 percent), Spain (31 percent) and the United States (29 percent) did not understand the most basic mathematics, while the ratio was as low as 8 percent for Japan. Similar results were reported in the area of reading comprehension.
In analyzing the reasons for Japan’s high scores, we cannot ignore the long history of the nation’s rice farming. In rice farming, all of the people in the community need to understand and implement tasks in every process including water management and cultivation. Japanese people have learned over a long period of time the need and ways to share the wisdom. Under global perspectives, high-quality compulsory education also contributed significantly.
Although the ratio of people engaged in farming has declined, the long-standing lifetime employment system in Japanese companies enabled employees to share their wisdom through training programs. Japan’s social system, which was designed to avoid creation of large income gaps compared with other countries, also led to emergence of middle-class with financial security and time to spare for book reading and other intellectual activities. Although Japanese people were criticized by other countries as lacking individuality, they were aware of the importance of keeping pace with others.
However, since around the beginning of the 21st century, Japan has grown into a society with huge economic inequality by carrying out reform under the principles of competition and deregulation. The new system is based on the idea that only the winners who survived the competition will be given the chance and can afford to improve their skills and that it is only natural for those who dropped to lower classes to lose the chance.
In the countries which were ranked low in the survey, people are debating on why their countries did badly. Many said the reason why nations like Japan and Finland scored well is because of the society undisturbed by excessive competition. It is important for a society to justly evaluate ordinary adults and to have a deep-rooted value that wisdom should be shared by everyone. The ongoing Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade talks and a series of deregulation conducted in Japan are nothing but measures to destroy the nation’s true competitiveness.
(Oct. 13, 2013)