Mozilla Japan!

MozFest in Tokyo

東京のモズフェストへようこそ！ 

With an enthusiastic “Welcome to MozFest in Tokyo!” Chibi, the Chair of Mozilla Japan, kicked off the first localized Mozilla Festival on September 15^th at Shibaura House in central Tokyo. Despite severe typhoon warnings, over 120 people came to experiment with and learn from 27 different sessions across 4 floors, loosely divided into themes:

• Animation
• Make the Web Physical
• Webmaking for Mobile
• Mozilla Factory groups

Weaving everything together was Mozilla’s open-source ethos; even the venue, with its floor-to-ceiling windows and balcony-access stairs, contributed to the day’s openness.

After one-minute introductions from each session, participants spread out to celebrate monozukuri  – literally “making things” – the tradition of making that is an integral part of Japanese culture. With this year’s Maker Party campaign encouraging a learning-through-making philosophy, the festival was abuzz with excitement as traditional concepts and modern tools came together in cutting-edge, sometimes odd-looking, projects.

On the ground floor, Maker Party was in full swing with Popcorn Maker fired up for remixing. A national media conglomerate shared access to some anime characters, so middle school students and university professors alike created original stories like this one.

  Of course, no festival in Japan is complete without manga: Html5j showcased their animated manga maker that, using html5, converts video into black and white anime in real-time.  People lined up to make funny faces, recite poetry, and give shout-outs to their friends in manga form. Since a picture paints a thousand words, here are some unique manga gifs.

In Make the Web Physical, activities used the web as a medium to connect the tangible with the virtual. For example, Make the Web Haptic uses a DIY amplifier producing inaudible wavelengths to create vibrations in connected objects. When running a mouse over a textured surface on a screen, the mouse vibrates to create the sensation of feeling the texture.  So far, ideas for using the Techtile Toolkit focus on Internet shopping; come “touch the web” at MozFest in October, and share your ideas!

 

 Plant de Interface was all about integrating natural phenomena with technology. One project proposed attaching very small solar battery cells to phototropic plants to increase the exposure to the sun. This is still very much in the idea stage, but it would be cool to see if/how/where this goes.

Mozilla Factory, a holistic initiative that brings together student-mentors, NPOs, universities, and employers around the central themes of openness and making, showcased as well. Sessions included building Firefox OS apps using geolocation to insert images into photos, testing new Firefox OS phones being developed by KDDI in Japan, and remixing cell phones. This session was led by two middle school students showing how to create your ideal cell phone by mixing parts from several phones.

A slightly more serious program, OpenStreetMap Foundation/OpenRelief shared a prototype of a remote-controlled airplane with a wingspan of about 1.5 meters that will collect geographic data to create maps of remote areas. Its first trip will be around the Fukushima devastation site for everyone to see. The project leader is a driving force behind MozBus and its relief efforts.

Speaking of which…

MozBus

Thursday afternoon saw the launch of MozBus, a giant, orange camper van outfitted with a satellite dish on the roof, a 3D printer whirring away inside, and plenty of space to cart making materials around the country. Japanese media, university students, and Mozilla community members heard Professor Jun Murai -- Father of the Internet in Japan and 2013 inductee in the Internet Hall of Fame – Moz Japan’s Chibi, and prominent Japanese engineers and professors explain the rationale for this Nomadic Web Factory.

 

The concept of MozBus rose from the ashes of the Fukushima disaster, when victims were without any means of communication for weeks. Reports were strictly controlled by the government – including the famous picture of the roads being fixed just days after the earthquake. With cell towers knocked down, information coming out and going into the area – when there was any – was heavily censored. Professor Murai refers to this experience as the line that divided recent history into “pre-Internet” and “post-Internet” in Japan.

MozBus not only bring Internet access to remote and/or devastated areas, but also provide printed goods when needed, and education about everything from how to make Ethernet cables to the importance of the open web. As 3D printing gets more sophisticated and accessible, the range of printable items increases. At the launch, plastic whistles that had been printed moments earlier were displayed as examples of how printing could be used for relief. You see, in some parts of Japan wild boars threaten residents; an energetic tweet from a whistle can scare them off to give people time to get to safety. A simple plastic whistle that scares of a couple boars may seem inconsequential, but as the bus moves along relief will become customizable and printable.

MozBus will set out on its maiden voyage in early October, heading north to Fukushima with the OpenStreetMap Society/OpenRelief team aboard. The current vision includes multiple buses across Asia, starting with disaster prone areas. No doubt food, water, and shelter are a priority when travesty strikes; still, Fukushima made the argument for communications also being a high priority, to let the world hear from the suffering communities about their needs and realities, and not blindly accept what the talking heads have transmitted.

What do words mean?

As an educator – or educationalist as is often said in the UK – I’ve had the opportunity to attend numerous conferences on the abysmal state of education, and how to fix it. I used to be bothered that words like empowerment and accountability were batted about as if they had only one connotation, but I’ve gotten over it; at least they’re actual words!

Conferences I’ve been to lately seem driven by a made-up lexicon that causes the tongue to dance around gnashing teeth, and an assumption that mashing together two words results in something with one definition. When presenters use this jargon, I wonder who they are speaking to, and what they are trying to say (many of these words have found their way to the Twitter #wankwords feed). Instead of decoding their messages, I’ve written a little poem to release that valve of frustration whose ugly head pops up from time to time.

An Edupreneur’s Plea

Over the past 6 months

                                                                I’ve heard many a conversation,

                                                                Whether it be at the Google conference,

                                                                Or another on technovation.

                                                                Chaired by thinkfluencers,

                                                                Panels reach a consensus on innovation:    

                                                                Change isn’t enough anymore,

                                                                Real disruption is needed in education!

                                                                Listen to changemakers

                                                               With synergistic thinking,

                                                               Those who took STEM to STEAM;

                                                               They’ll save learning from sinking.

                                                               Don’t focus on topping league tables

                                                               In schools across the UK,

                                                               Kids need commercial coding skills;

                                                               Teacherpreneurs lead the way!

                                                               Apps and iPads are their game,

                                                               Teachnology is their bread and butter,

                                                               GCSEs don’t determine your fate,

                                                               And Michael Gove? He’s a proper nutter,

                                                               Educationalists see money in edutainment;

                                                               But attracting girls is key.

                                                               Womenomics could save the world,

                                                               So let’s lean in; get techy.

                                                               Break through silos, tear down walls;

                                                               Let’s move forward together and edcelerate!

                                                               We can unpick ideas and drill down later;

                                                               For now, step into your bigness and celebrate.

                                                               So much inspiration and motivation;

                                                               The speakers put on quite a show.

                                                               I look forward to learning more,

                                                               But enough of the portmanteau!

What if the boys in Lord of the Flies had experienced Escuela Nueva?

Scale up, then down

On Monday, Vicky Colbert, founder and Executive Director of Escuela Nueva, stopped by for an informal chat in the green pod over wine and cheese sticks. Charlie Leadbeater guided the conversation, with about 15 others asking questions about her journey of creating an innovative and viable educational model, scaling up to Colombian national policy, then shrinking down to an NGO when the government decentralized. 

In a nutshell, Fundación Escuela Nueva is a Colombian NGO that offers a model of cooperative, self-directed, democratic education aimed directly at the child. Realizing in the 1980s that teachers were ill-prepared and using teaching-centered pedagogies, Vicky and her team collaborated with local governments and civil sector partners to restructure the classroom with round tables where students problem-solve together, built learning corners for science and art using local materials, and set up voting stations to practice democratic rights. The emphasis on leadership skills through empathy is prevalent in other Escuela Nueva models, like EN for emergency situations, and EN for women (you can read more about the models and their recognition here).

Flies

So what do collaborative, self-directed, empathetic, democratic children look like? Let’s apply the Escuela Nueva lens to the boys in William Golding’s classic Lord of the Flies. The novel addresses the age-old struggle between good and evil, represented as civilization (good) vs. savagery (evil), embodied by adolescents and little boys (Littluns). 

Golding’s argument that humans are inherently savage, kept in check only by society, is played out between a few boys: we have Ralph, who represents civilization and order; he leads the boys to build huts and find a way to be rescued. When Jack – power-hungry and violent – becomes obsessed with hunting and preys on the group’s fears, the boys ditch Ralph and turn to a life of destruction and blood-lust with Jack at the helm. Then there’s Simon – spiritual, human goodness – who believes in the inherent value of morality. He is kind to the Littluns, and recognizes that the Lord of Flies is the beast inside everyone; still, Simon is killed at the hands of the others.

Skills, not spears

If their boarding school had followed the Escuela Nueva model, the boys would have been more productive in their group work. Instead of relying on one leader to tell them what to do, the Littluns would have known how to work together using materials at their disposal to find solutions. 

Their self-regulated learning would have prepared them to be more confident and less distracted, ultimately saving their new homes – even a friend – from a raging fire. With a profound understanding of democratic education, Jack would have been more gracious when losing the election, and found other ways to be an effective leader, while the voters would have respected the outcome instead of destroying their fragile system. Hunting still would have been a struggle, but their empathic mind-set could have supported Jack and not let him get isolated with his violent obsession. 

Equipped with analytic thinking skills instead of spears, the boys would have questioned the sudden appearance of the beast instead of blindly accepting the parachute to be evil. And the officer who rescues them would have been proud to see proper British boys building a society, instead of appalled by the destructive nature of the blood-covered, barbaric little boys crying with fear and shame at the depths of their inhumanity.

Open-source wounds

The Escuela Nueva model is already in over 16 countries, helping 5 million young people realize their potential for good through collaborative problem solving. In Colombia, rural students outperform their urban peers in all but the largest cities. The peace-building efforts to rebuild the social fabric after decades of violence are literally grassroots. It is a testament to Vicky’s vision and drive that the organisation is the longest running successful NGO coming out of the global south, but the road ahead for Escuela Nueva promises to be difficult. 

As Charlie Leadbeater said in our talk, Vicky was open-source before open-source really existed. This has led to widespread use, but the same openness has distanced the organization from potentially useful feedback (and profit). The lack of access to data outside of the Colombian context means Escuela Nueva doesn’t know how the program has been adapted, and to what ends. As they join forces with new partners to spread the relevance and ride the wave of digital education, the organisation’s scaling strategies will be crucial for its continued success.

Schools and Companies: Who's Listening?

Last Thursday, I had the opportunity to speak to 150 arts teachers, ICT heads, administrators and a handful of industry specialists at the AQA Creative Education Conference in Birmingham, UK. We were 3 key-note speakers: Tim Lindsay, the CEO of D&AD -- an education charity that promotes excellence in design and advertising; Andrea Robertson, Director of Customer Operations at UCAS -- the organization responsible for managing applications to higher education courses in the UK; and me, a researcher on the Digital Education Team at Nesta -- the UK's innovation charity. Tim gave a great industry perspective about what professionals are looking for in potential hires, and Andrea shared statistics on student interest and qualifications in arts offerings, so I decided to focus on digital tools (websites and activities) teachers can incorporate in their classes to bring together the arts and technology. I was hoping attendees would tweet to share ideas with their networks, but after a full day of speeches, panels, round table discussions, and Q&As, there were only 6 tweets, 3 of which were retweets of the 2 I contributed. To me, this represents a huge gap between the digital tech we think teachers are using, (it's thought that teachers use Twitter a lot), and what's really going on. When I kicked off my speech with a short online poll using socrative.com, only 34 of the 150 attendees participated; if this were just because they didn't want to answer my question, that would be fine, but I heard some people saying they'd left their phones in the coat closet so as not to be distracted. That cell-phones -- especially smartphones -- are still being viewed as distractions is worrying indeed.

More importantly, it became quite clear that there is a huge gap between what the creative industries are looking for in candidates, and the skills on which schools and exam boards are focusing. Tim talked about how the creative industries in the UK earn £36 billion a year, making up 10.6% of exports, and yet they're constantly under threat from the government in terms of cuts and tax hikes. Andrea shared numbers on how interest in arts courses (represented through applications for the GCSEs and other exams) has been declining, while applications for STEM courses has increased, no doubt due to the worldwide importance placed on math and sciences. She spoke critically of coming curricular changes, saying that major reforms were being made without any piloting program or evidence to support the shift, and the declining interest in the creative and artistic subjects was sure to negatively influence the future of the creative industries.

A large part of the problem, I believe, is that while industries are integrating, education is becoming more siloed. We continue to measure a country's education standards by looking at individual math and literacy exams, like the TIMSS and PISA, and not at how students are able to apply these studies to future jobs. Both the US and UK are heavily pushing for intense STEM programs while cutting back on the arts and even taking away recess. We're no longer cultivating well-rounded people, but rather raising generations of slow-computers; instead of encouraging the skills that separate us from the technological tools we use, we want kids to do mental math faster. The danger is that there are more jobs that require excellence in math and physics, as well as in art; we're doing a disservice to many of our kids by narrowing their future prospects through concentrating so hard on a few topics.

So the question is, how do we better communicate the professional industries' needs to the education sector, and vice versa? There was a gentleman at the conference who shared his complaints about how the incessant need for accreditation by the education sector was shrinking the pool of usable products, when in reality there is a plethora of fantastic tools. One can understand this man's perspective, but industries must also understand the very real need for ensuring high standards for what students are exposed to. This doesn't mean that the existing process is the best, but we must provide a viable alternative rather than complaining. Susan Bowen, Hewlett-Packard's Chief of Staff in the UK and Ireland, talked about how there is a lack of people who have the skills to fill the jobs available today. To mitigate this, HP employees are now volunteering a few hours a month at schools, helping students and teachers gain a better grasp of the technology side of things. This focus on the "Employability Ecosystem," their term for bringing together educators and industry professionals, is an honest start, but should we rely on a few hours a month to change the relationship between schools and companies? The good news is that things can only get better. I think attitudes on all sides of the equation have to change; industries shouldn't wait until university to approach young people, and school shouldn't be satisfied with a career day, when parents talk about what they do at work, to expose students to the world beyond school. Both industries and schools should strive to be more porous, and build a creative way to get kids excited about contributing to society. We should encourage young people to create and share -- I love those YouTube tutorials, which are sadly behind firewalls at schools -- and focus less on using and consuming.

I found the mix of speakers and audience quite perplexing; it seemed that the teachers were interested in what was being shared, but only superficially. Even though I tried to share ideas about activities that could be used in the classroom, I got the feeling that the audience thought, "that's cool, but it's not for me." Finding the right streams for conversation will be a challenge.

Assessing is Sharing

In response to last week’s post, @Carloper posed some great questions: what “mastery” are we measuring? If kids are learning in a more open environment, why do we insist on assessing them in a closed, traditional way?

I hated giving tests. It didn’t seem natural to have a room full of silent teenagers, and I spent my evenings squinting at their chicken-scratch handwriting in a classroom cluttered with papier-mâché mummies left over from the Ancient Egypt unit. I cherished any opportunity for student presentations, both to get them comfortable with public speaking and to experience being informative to peers – it also meant peer evaluations and drastically reducing my grading load. Science fairs and research expos were my favorite; students explored each other’s creations and asked questions about processes. Although my school was extremely conservative (teachers and students wore uniforms, and “inspectors” monitored student behavior and reported to the “general inspector,” the school disciplinarian, by whom I was constantly berated for taking my biology class outside), I probably could have incorporated more creative methods of assessment.

Turning again to Aaron Sams, we see that recent iterations of flipped learning incorporate process oriented guided inquiry based learning (POGIL) and promote a meta-cognitive element of “learning about learning.” POGIL’s roots are in chemistry, but it can be applied to other subjects because it focuses on process skills like collaboration (learning with others) and expressive writing. Since “whole education” is a major focus these days practicing the scientific method in history class would be fantastic. POGIL starts with a piece of information and some guiding questions, and has students use the scientific method to reach a conclusion. The more general the initial piece of information and the more open the guiding questions, the greater breadth and depth the students explore. And remember, this doesn’t have to start in the classroom!

“Sharing”

Now, if we’re asking students to learn in groups and generate questions they then answer, it’s only fair to assess them in the same way. This is where the meta-cognitive aspect comes into play: students become more aware of what they know and what they don’t know when they have to share. We need a paradigm-shift here, as it would no longer be teachers assessing students, but rather students sharing what they’ve learned; we should call assessment “sharing.” Sams gives his students a choice in sharing their learning; they can take a test that he designs, or they can create their own way of showing their understanding and applying what they’ve learned. He’s had students make computer games and design art projects; as long as they can show that they’ve reached proficiency of a standard, Sams doesn’t mind what form the sharing takes.

You see, flipping isn’t another method to deliver content; it’s about empowering students in their learning – it’s about having students learn from each other and be curious about the world around them. Teachers provide a framework, and have students practice skills like deconstructing complex problems and applying smaller units of information to other problems. As a science teacher, Sams has students use programs like PhET (research-based interactive computer simulations), and Wolfram|Alpha (an online answer engine for computations), and even gives tests where students have open access to the Internet – just knowing how to Google isn’t enough; one must be able to filter the answers to find what best serves them. It’s the skill of knowing to access information when you need it.

Assessment Expression

What I find more interesting than types of assessment is how teachers express assessment. Most teachers grade on a scale of points, usually 10 or 100, and we express these with corresponding letters (A-F), sometimes with plusses and minuses to give even more wiggle room. We say our grading is uniform because an A means excellent and a B is satisfactory, after which come differing levels of unsatisfactory until you hit failure. What does this mean when we’re talking about proficiency in standards? Using these flipped tools allows for standards based grading (SBG) where it’s not about points, but rather about whether or not the student has proficiently met the standard. The culture around grading would have to change, since the goal would be to get all students in the A or B range. 

I think more teachers should take on the role of researcher, and try out new methods; after all, flipped learning started in a classroom. The learning about learning element should become part of teaching culture; you don’t know what you don’t know until you question. Of course, this always brings in the argument that students shouldn’t be guinea pigs, and that just 2 years of exposure to ineffective teaching can heavily affect student achievement. As researchers, teachers would have the responsibility to evaluate and change their methods as rigorously as they expect change and growth from their students. Seems fair.

As part of the Digital Education team, I'm looking at the philosophy, practice, and technology behind 'flipped classrooms'. Future posts will touch on evaluating existing products, implementation experiments, and other topics. Over the course of my flipped journey, I invite commentary and discussion on this practice. Please comment below or email me at Melissa.Romaine@nesta.org.uk.

What the Flip?

Flipped Classroom 
In my first official teaching job I was a swimming teacher for kids aged 4-12 at a summer program in Japan. Terms like “classroom management,” “student-centered learning,” and “collaborative learning” did not exist in my vocabulary, and “flipping the class” meant doing somersaults underwater. Discipline was never an issue, and homework was competing with friends to see who could hold their breath the longest. I didn’t know it as such then, but differentiated learning was everywhere: some kids practiced standing dives into inner tubes or showed peers how to start by kneeling, while beginners focused on getting comfortable in the water (“it’s just a big bathtub!”). I was either in the water encouraging kids to jump towards me, or jumping in to scoop up kids who ran out of steam mid-lap.

When I became a classroom teacher in Ecuador I wanted to keep the peer-learning attitude I’d seen in my swimming classes, so the first thing I did was put everyone in groups. Actually, the first thing I did was accidentally threaten to kill my students if they were tardy; there’s a funny story about that. After I assured my students that I wouldn’t be hacking them to pieces, I laid out the plan for the academic term: by the end of the term, each student would give a presentation about some aspect of X. To get there we’d cover certain topics and do activities in class, but they had to do the reading and think up questions for homework. How many of you had to read at home and come to class with questions? This is the main idea behind the “flipped classroom.” For something that’s billed as revolutionary, it has a simple foundation.

Different Flips

To be clear there’s no “right” way to flip a classroom, and there are different stages of flipping. Aaron Sams, a high school chemistry teacher and one of the driving forces behind the flipped philosophy, describes the 6 versions that he’s gone through since he first started, but let’s start with two.

What many understand to be THE flipped classroom is having students listen to pre-recorded lectures at home, and then come to class prepared to tackle worksheets and participate in analytical discussion. This way the teacher can answer questions about the topic at the beginning of class, leaving more time for lab work, problem sets, and group work. Teachers can help struggling students while everyone else is working in groups and focusing on each other rather than on the teacher. The weaknesses in this model have to do with ensuring kids actually listen to lectures for homework, and the fact that everyone is doing the same thing at the same time. Teachers don’t really know if students are understanding concepts until they give tests at the end of the unit (summative assessment). Enter iteration two: Flipped-Mastery.

Flipped-Mastery incorporates “testing” into daily activities (formative assessment) so teachers can see how their students are doing before the end of the unit. Khan Academy exemplifies this model with the integration of analytics: teachers can see which students are mastering the content, which are struggling, with what, and then guide these students to accomplish different tasks based on their understanding. Sams likens formative assessment to a GPS/SatNav system: when you’re driving along in your car, the GPS/SatNav tells you when to turn right or left, and when you miss a turn it “recalibrates” to find you a new route to your intended destination. Formative assessment allows teachers to see the same process, and redirect students who may have taken a wrong turn to get back on the road to master the intended content. This is where real differentiation comes in, allowing students to proceed at their own speeds: independent learners thrive, there’s more time for collaboration, students can support each other through peer-teaching, and teachers can interact with every student, every class period. This also means that students can’t go on to the next stage without a complete understanding of what they need, making sure they don’t get shuffled along curriculum. Successive models of flipped learning incorporate more autonomy for students, and shift the teacher’s role more towards “activator” or “advanced learner” alongside the students.

Why Not?

So if flipping the classroom means more time for hands-on activities, individualized attention for kids struggling with concepts, and encouragement for more advanced students to push ahead, why the resistance from teachers and parents to the approach?  Some teachers have asked how to ensure that students actually watch videos for homework; how did you previously motivate students to do homework? Others say that flipped learning isn’t the end, but rather a means to an end; what do you think? If you have an opinion or experience you’d like to share about flipped learning, please either comment below or send me an email at Melissa.Romaine@nesta.org.uk. 

As part of the Digital Education team at Nesta, I'm researching the philosophy, practice, and technology behind "flipped learning." I'll be writing a series of posts in a blog on their site defining, discussing, and asking for questions regarding the practice. If you have an experience, opinion, or question about flipped learning, please share!

Not Lost, Just Using a Different Map

I went to a launch last night, complete with a panel discussion, for a book about vocational education policies worldwide. When I walked in (admittedly half-way through), the discussion was dominated by talk of Japan's lost generation, the lack of Japanese presence in other parts of Asia, and how one Japanese policy maker -- a friend of one of the panelists -- thinks that Japanese youths are apathetic and don't have the drive to globalize the country.

I’ve heard this whole “lost generation” in Japan thing a number of times, usually from Japanese politicians and experts. There are up to 1 million hikikomori or young shut-ins across the country, unemployment among recent college graduates is high, and yet something like 70% of recent college graduates have no desire to live and work outside of the country (according to a study quoted by the Vice President of Keio University at a panel discussion at the Japan Foundation in London). But some of the most creative and motivated young people I know are Japanese; the main difference is that they live outside of Japan.

For example, one of Burberry’s menswear designers is a 33 yr-old Japanese man who left his home at 16 and moved to London. Erickson Beamon has a successful jewellery designer who was born and raised in Yokohama, then left for London at 27; some of her products have been chosen by Prime Minister David Cameron’s wife for events such as the royal wedding in 2011. Another Japanese woman, a daughter of a family friend, left Tokyo at a young age to be a professional ballet dancer in the Israel Ballet Company. I have a handful of friends who were educated in the Japanese public school system, became fluent in English on their own, and went to the US or UK for university. Most are now studying a third language (German, Italian, Portuguese, Vietnamese, and Burmese) and working in insurance, fashion, and international development around the world. Almost all are women (a discussion point for another time, perhaps). Although all of their stories are different, the common thread is that they left Japan in search of opportunities.

Of course, this is an extremely small sample; I mean, these are just my friends! But hearing politicians and friends of politicians talk about how young Japanese people aren't motivated just drives me nuts. Blaming the generation does nothing; I think the fact that there’s a “lost generation” in Japan says more about institutional and de facto social policies than about young people in general. Why didn't my friends stay in Japan where their families and friends are? What does this say about the Japanese institutions that couldn't keep these amazing people in their home country?

The panelist commented that his policy-maker friend complains that not enough young Japanese are involved in international development. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs runs JICA (Japanese International Cooperation Agency), similar to the US Peace Corps, where volunteers aged 20-39 live in communities in developing countries for 2 years working on a range of programs. I met two volunteers in Machala, Ecuador; one was training car mechanics, and the other was working in the prenatal care unit in a hospital. They were both in their early 30s, and said that although JICA says you only have to be 20 years old to join, because you need to have a trade skill and learn to speak the local language, most volunteers are a bit older. I would imagine it’s very hard to convince people who are just getting their careers off to the ground, perhaps starting families, to leave everything and volunteer abroad for 2 years of their lives. At that point, it’s not a resume builder like the Peace Corps is in the States, but a resume disrupter. And the way Japanese society venerates career-consistency and corporate samurais, it’s no wonder everyone isn't jumping at the opportunity. (Quick comparison: The Peace Corps currently has 8000+ volunteers, JICA has on average 900 volunteers per year; the Japanese population is roughly ½ of that of the United States. )

I seem to have gotten a bit off topic, but my point is that there are creative and motivated young Japanese people who are products of the Japanese education system and culture as a whole; many of them just don’t seem to stay in a country where either their talents aren't recognized or they personally don’t fit in. Politicians who complain about the “lost generation” but don’t do anything to engage more people from within the Japanese population – creatives who don’t subscribe to corporate samurai-ism, mixed-race Japanese, or internationally educated/raised Japanese people – are just useless. And, I bet they’re wrong; I bet there are tons of driven young people in Japan, who are trying their hardest to believe in a country whose government doesn't even see them.

Sources:

Grisafe, M. (16 Nov 2012). Can Culture Create Mental Disease? The Rise of Hikikomori in the Wake of Economic Downturn in Japan. Mind the Science Gap. 06 Feb 2013. http://www.mindthesciencegap.org/2012/11/16/can-culture-create-mental-disease-the-rise-of-hikikomori-in-the-wake-of-economic-downturn-in-japan/

JICA. (n.d.). JICA at a Glance: JICA Activities in Numbers. JICA. 06 Feb 2013. https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:5w25OcEhqm0J:www.jica.go.jp/english/publications/reports/annual/2012/c8h0vm00002qe6vj-att/glance.pdf+&hl=en&gl=uk&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESivWz21295lsuCUskCxlGNmJAmQXtoxrBrdkUyjUaxkzC-qYAN9jFJRzmDHdizCR4ximE5bIOQxpmIKUo_t-56zxefzBak9QZMF_xMC-oZXkSRws0Gaqg3J4XqxegA0uWsibMX1&sig=AHIEtbTS2_XsiFIx26hUohItHdxn4SUYcw

Jones, Maggie. (15 Jan 2006). Shutting Themselves In. The New York Times. 06 Feb 2013. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/15/magazine/15japanese.html?pagewanted=all

Keio University, Office for Global Initiatives. (08 Nov 2012). Lecture and Panel Discussion on Globalization in Japanese Universities. Keio University. 06 Feb 2013. http://www.ogi.keio.ac.jp/english/news/nfnjs800000003yj.html

Peace Corps. (30 Sep 2012). Fast Facts. 06 Feb 2013. Peace Corps. http://www.peacecorps.gov/about/fastfacts/