ARW: April 19th

     It was the first time I had an intense discussion in class. Coming back from the states about 6 years ago, I have had a Japanese education from junior high school. Discussions were rare in classes, and when there were discussions, my peers were often too shy to debate about anything. The discussions would almost always end in meaningless conversations, discussing nothing particularly interesting at all. This was not just because of the educational curriculum in Japan, but also the characteristics of Japanese people in general.
   
     This point came up when we were discussing if what Meiland is saying in his article is applicable in Japanese universities. I personally think that it is possible to change the education system in Japan to encourage an education which cultivates creativity instead of the cramming of knowledge. However, I believe that changing the hierarchical　relationship between students and teachers is somewhat impossible in Japan, not just because of the educational system, but because of the culture in Japan in general. Japanese people often have a vertical relationship (sennpais, kouhais, etc) for any kind of social group and it's been that way for longer than we can imagine. This can be found evident by reading Japanese history textbooks, where social statuses can be found for everything. Not only that, Japan in the past have even created low social statuses (eta, hininn) so that people of the lower and middle class have a target to exhaust their stress and frustration. It's just the way Japanese people are, and changing that is not realistic. Other members also pointed out that people in Japan in general tend to look at the status of the person (their education, where they work, etc.) more than people living in America or Europe. I agreed with them because I also think that Japanese people work too much to achieve higher status of themselves or their children by trying to enter "good" schools or "good" companies by cramming knowledge and killing their creativity in the process.
   
     The discussion we had about the basis of belief was also interesting. We discussed if religion should be something that needed reason or evidence to believe, or if Meiland was contradicting himself considering that he was a Christian. I feel that religion and god is something spiritual and needs no rational reason to believe, because we feel it somewhat from our souls. However, the beliefs that come with the religion are something that cannot be felt from the inside spiritually, and needs a rational reason to believe in. To make this more understandable, for example if rabbits were my gods, and I felt love from them, that would be something that is spiritual and can be felt from the inside, meaning it needs no reason for belief. On the other hand, if the sacred writings of the religion worshiping rabbits told me that I was not allowed to drink orange juice, this would not be something that I would be able to feel some kind of inner relationship with, and therefore needs rational reasons to believe. I would need reasons for why I am not allowed to drink orange juice instead of plainly believing it just because the rabbits told me so. However, I now realize that this is not always true because if I had a spiritual connection with the rabbits and felt instinctively that I should follow what the rabbits say, then I would not drink the orange juice, therefore there would be no need for a reason to believe that drinking orange juice is forbidden.
 
     I never thought that discussing an article that I personally found to be boring would be this much thought provoking. The topics given to us by Rab were very interesting and challenging, especially because I have an interest in education. Gaining insight from other members was particularly interesting because students in ICU have very unique backgrounds. I look forward to discussing a variety of subjects with other students.