johnshiomi comments

I am a basketball coach here in the US. The girls I coach often frustrate me a lot because they dont listen and fool around. But physically hitting a child is just going too far... for any coach, for any parent. In Japanese it is the old way of disciplining students. Pain and fear work... it WILL cause kids to behave better but the whole principle behind it is completely wrong. Kids should be encouraged and praised as much as possible. Coaches should look at their players potential and treat them in that way so they begin to see it and feel it within themselves. Through this interaction a relationship of respect develops and amazing things happen. Pain and fear on the other hand get players to do what the coach wants in the short term (or maybe even in the long term) but it damages the players psychologically for a lifetime. Students should want to do something not out of fear but because of love - love for themselves and love for what they are doing just for the sake of the doing.

Interesting idea. Personally, I dont think ipads at home should replace kids coming to school to learn... not completely anyway. Education is much more than just about learning math, science, and history. If kids are learning from ipads at home they are missing out on the valuable lessons of social interaction with other kids and adults at their schools. Although I personally do not like many of the methods at japanese elementary schools, I do think we should have students gather and learn together. We live in an interdependent society so we need to learn to work together with others at school and not just at home alone.