The New York Times had a front-page story about a generational divide in Japan.
The article begins, “As Japan has ceded dominance in industry after industry that once lifted this nation to economic greatness, there has been plenty of blame to go around. A nuclear disaster that raised energy costs. A lack of entrepreneurship. China’s relatively cheap work force.”
The article says that the government’s decision to have a strong yen favors the elderly and protects their pensions, but makes Japanese products prohibitively expensive, which is “hollowing out the country’s industrial base” and “exacerbating the nation’s two-decade-long economic stagnation.”
As I read the article, I thought about how American policymakers look enviously at Japan’s high test scores on international assessments.
And it struck me that the economic problems in Japan are not caused by the schools. And the high test scores are not a source of entrepreneurship, nor have they guaranteed a strong economy.
All this deserves consideration. In our nation, our greatest strength is creativity, innovation, risk-taking, and imagination.
Now our policymakers want us to use Japan and other nations with high test scores as a model, claiming that this will lead us to even greater economic growth in the future.
Japan’s dilemma today disproves the theory on which contemporary corporate-driven school reform is based.
Let us learn from their example.
Economic decisions drive the economy. Creative people build a better economy. Higher test scores do not produce a better economy, nor do they nurture the creative genius needed for future innovation.
Will there be an “aha!” moment when leaders of the corporate reform movement realize they are on the wrong track?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Odd, isn’t it? Their economy has been in the toilet since forevah (WSJ: “Japan’s Lost Generation”), the Prius is a dangerous car and they are currently enjoying a double nuclear meltdown, maybe worse than Chernobyl.
Let’s do what they do!
“In our nation, our greatest strength is creativity, innovation, risk-taking, and imagination.”
Einstein would agree with you, Diane.
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”
This should be prominently engraved on every public school building in America.
I want to add that greed drives the economy by people who have influence over policymakers. We know that test scores don’t have anything to do with the economy, however those with money, thus power & control, are able to deceive and destroy the weak. If we continue to view politics as competition, reality becomes easily distorted by persuasion and corruption. We could avoid comparing ourselves in many ways with other countries, if we cared about who we affect by our actions in our own country.
People need to also realize that there are no winners in policy decisions. At the same time those decisions need to be made rationally based on research from all sides. NCLB was ill conceived and continues to extend its newly added features, for the worse, for over a decade. Japan has its economical problems, but their solutions may be more rational than ours. We need a new model for problem solving that eliminates competition and blame and allowing overly confident business people w/money to run the show.
JonS: Your comment about greed driving economic decisions is well taken. We didn’t suffer a mortgage industry collapse or a investment bank meltdown because of an real or perceived weakness in our educational system. We suffered those two major economic blows because of the greed of some very highly educated, but unprincipled, people.
Health care is also excellent in Japan, and Dr. Ravitch’s has said they have a relatively more equal income distribution then the USA. That to has not prevented the decades of slow growth in Japan.
I agree that we should learn from Japan’s example.
It would also be good if the working age population would not shrink as it has in Japan and if we could avoid the truly Byzantine business rules that make their rice twice as expensive as rice in the world market and an unbelievably inefficient retail sector.. Also avoid natural disasters.