[Slice of Life]

I detect some lack of critical thinking here.

Originally Posted by Kyuusai

At least the stereotype of Japanese and German education being composed of strict, wrote-memorization and regurgitated facts isn't all bad:

Ow, ow, ow. nice that you think that "it isn't all bad", but sadly, it's bull. Where did you get that from? Check your sources, please. I am German and I can tell you exactly how all my history exams in the higher grades looked like: First, you had to prove that you are able to understand and summarize a given text, a primary or secondary source, second, you had to put it into a broader historical context, and third, you had to formulate an opinion about one of the points raised. in other words, you had to write texts, not fill in multiple choice tests about in which battle Napoleon fought when, where, and against whom. And I can't remember having actively memorized much dates at all.

Originally Posted by Autumn Demon

The schools in my district (a small town in north NJ) have been a lot more about writing/thinking than about testing/memorization. History classes are largely about testing during earlier grades but by high school testing is a much smaller part of the class and the tests we do have are usually more about writing.

Yes, pretty much like this.

Oh, and if you asked a German in the street about education in Japan then his very loosely fact-based prejudice would probably be that it is "being composed of strict, wrote-memorization and regurgitated facts". And depending on if he's more right-leaning or more left-leaning he'd probably add that it is a shame that Japanese kids learn so eagerly while ours slacking around or that it is a shame that the Japanese only teach useless facts to their children instead of teaching them how to think. That all looks pretty familiar to you, I guess.

And furthermore,

Originally Posted by hyperlion

Well that's just one class and my history teacher teaches us to be very critical and ask questions. And this is just what I think, western culture is more open to free thinking then the eastern culture, in the west there were many great thinkers like John Locke, Thomas Hoobes, Henry Thoreau

... when the first three thinkers of the Enlightenment that cone to your mind are all from the country where you get your education (loosely speaking, I think being from the UK counts from an American point of view, when it's pre-1776) what does that say about teaching facts and teaching critical thinking?

So bottom line: stones - glasshouse, speck - eye - plank.

Originally Posted by Wandering Knight

If you really think the enlightenment era was all about open minds, you'd better think again. In a sense it upheld an extremely closed perspective of the world, one where the Descartian values of "universal truth" were unquestionable and the belief of everything being explainable using Newtonian physics was ultimate. Not that it was a negative era, but let's look at it like it really was. If you were to compare it to current times, the enlightenment scientists would be extremely closed-minded.

You have to judge people by the time they lived in, not by your 2007 mindset which has been shaped not the least thanks to these people. Not only scientists, we all stand on the shoulders of giants.