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Short-sighted education reforms mean Japanese students now lack the abilities of comprehension and expression that are crucial to success in the modern world, writes Takamitsu Sawa.

High school students nowadays are divided into two courses in their second year: humanities and natural sciences. The former group specializes in English, Japanese and social studies and the latter in English, mathematics and sciences.
In 1991, the education ministry — known for launching one “reform” after another — set new standards for establishing universities that drastically liberalized the education curriculum and, for all intents and purposes, eliminated the need for students to receive a basic general education. While these steps may have elevated the standards of specialized knowledge that students gain, there appears to have been a conspicuous decline in college graduates’ ability to think, make judgments and express themselves....Keep reading on the Japan Times