I’m one of the IM students studying abroad in Canada. Today, I want to share my opinion on the differences in education between Canada and Japan.

      At first, my impression of Canadian schools was freedom. In my high school, we don’t get a lot of assignments and if students don’t catch up with them, teachers will change the due date. I was really surprised by how nice they are! It was a very surprising fact for me.

      However, in my opinion, Canadian students really focus on what they want to do, but on the other hand, some of them don’t really care about grades. I think it is because they don’t have an entrance exam like ours to go to high school and university. Of course, it depends on the person. If they want to get a scholarship for university, they need to study hard. Last semester, I did a presentation in my English class to talk about Japanese culture and school life, and they were surprised at how long we study and how many assignments we get. From here, it’s obvious that Japanese school life is harder than the Canadian one.

      Next, I want to write about the good point of Canadian Schools. I think it is a long free time. In our free time, we can think about what we want to be, what we want to study. Especially Canadian Summer vacation is long without homework, so I could spend a long time thinking about my future. Also, if you want to be an artist or musician, which needs a long time to put any effort into and not have a strong relationship with studying, the free time will be a very variable one.

      On the other hand, what is a good point of Japanese school life? For me, the image of it was hard, without free time, and lots of assignments which seems like bad things, but from another perspective, I think these can be good points, too.

      Has ever thought about why Japanese education is hard? In my opinion, it’s because one of the criteria to look at people in Japanese society is how much they can put an effort into one thing. It’s easy when you think of being employed. Japanese society is still called an “education-conscious society”, which means graduating school is important to be employed by famous companies. I can understand why they want to hire people from famous universities because they have already put lots of effort to go there, so it’s obvious that they have the tenacity to get the job done. Even when we haven’t studied hard before, the situation where need to do unfavorite and tiring things will happen, and we can’t escape from there whatever the jobs are. Therefore, from another perspective, it’s a good point to get lots of assignments and study hard to prepare for the job and have the occasion to endure hard work.

      I guess these differences in education came from historical and cultural backgrounds. Obviously, Canada has a huge land, so it was easy to get lots of resources from there. On the other hand, Japan is a small island country, so they needed to make products and exported them to other countries to get money. When they made products, they had to put in lots of effort and learn skills. Also, in other Asian countries education is hard and Japan is affected by this. I guess the Japanese education style came from there.

      As a result, education is affected by the country’s economy and historical background. I learned the teacher’s attitude the way of thinking to be happy is also different. I guess Canadian teachers want students to love the way they are and pursue what they want. Japanese teachers want students to be successful, and we learn better techniques for doing hard tasks in school and common thing are both teachers want students to be happy. Therefore, education is different, but both Japanese and Canadian ones suit the cultural background and both countries’ teachers’ opinions.

     Learning is the way to make our eyesight wider and make many choices for the future. During this studying abroad, I learned lots of things by talking with Canadians and other international students and it changed my common knowledge, and it might change my future. It’s a very variable experience for me, and I’m grateful to come here in this covid situation. By learning, I want to keep improving myself.