Assimilators
Media
Part of Panorama
- Title
- Assimilators
- Language
- English
- Source
- Panorama. IV (10) October 1939
- Year
- 1939
- Subject
- Education policy
- Education -- Japan
- Military education
- Rights
-
- Abstract
- In Japan, the education system is very important to them. The school system includes rigorous physical training, which becomes even harder during military service. The training of the Japanese private is unique, they are trained to die.
- Fulltext
- in East Europe and Asia, in what was regarded not so long ago as one of the most backward regions of the globe, a demand for education, the spread of learning, the beginnings of culture, have not merely developed-for that is far too tame-but have raged like a forest fire. Here is a cultural progress like a national stampede. Athens that stretched from Land's End to John o' Groats, instead of wallowing in one gigantic football pool. If the English had developed during the same period at the same rate we should be living in a new So now I close my ears to this talk of a war ending our civilization. It is not only too pessimistic, but also too conceited. Civilization is taking its own road, and in both hemispheres it is not a road easily accessible to the bombers and obliterating tanks.-]. B. Priestley, condensed from News Chronicle, London. 24 * * * ASSIMILATORS THE Japanese are assimilators, not mere imitators. Nothing is taken over as it is. Not even the English language, so much in demand for the access it gives to Western technical knowledge. With Japanese teachers predominating in its tuition an extraordinary brand of English has grown up. Students taught by Anglo-Saxons have difficulty in passing the University entrance examinations, their pronunciation being at variance with the accepted Japanese English. The school system includes rigorous physical training, which becomes even more rigorous during military service. The training of the Japanese soldier is unique. In contrast with those of other nations, they are "trained to die." Military training may be said to begin at the age of six, and there is serious competition for entry into the Army, only one candidate in eight being enlisted.-Orienta[ Affairs PANORAMA