Quote Japan
Interesting, odd, outrageous or informative quotes about JapanByron K Marshall- Quotes from “Learning to be Modern”
“Contrary to myth, Japan is not a single, monolithic culture persistently characterized by harmony and consensus…Rather, Japan is a nation of complex subcultures and has a plurality of traditions that have undergone considerable change over time… nowhere is this past better seen than in the repeated controversies about schooling over the past 150 years.” “Learning to be Modern” by Byron K Marshall
“It was called a “university” but its proper name was a school of languages. The Japanese had very primitive ideas concerning the fitness of men to teach… Anyone who could speak English could evidently teach it. The idea of a trained professional foreign teacher was never entertained by them… The “Professors” at first obtained were often ex-bartenders, soldiers, sailors, clerks, etc. When teaching, with pipe in mouth, and punctuating their instructions with oaths, or appearing in the classroom top-heavy, the Japanese concluded that such eccentricities were merely national peculiarities.”
William Elliot Griffis, visiting the first Meiji era university in January 1871. Not much has changed!
Quoted in “Learning to be Modern” by Byron K Marshall
