New Book Teaches Japanese Kids Logical Thinking

[Mulboyne]

[floatl][/floatl]BusinessWeek: A Business Best Seller in Japan
What do you get when you combine a guitar-playing eggplant with McKinsey-style reasoning? In Japan, a best-selling business book. Titled The World's Easiest Problem-Solving Class, it aims to teach consultant-style analysis to middle and high schoolers in a country where test-taking and rote memorization are second nature to kids at an early age. But since its June release the book has been snapped up by adults, rising as high as No. 2 on Amazon Japan, where it currently ranks No. 26 with 250,000 copies in print. Author Kensuke Watanabe, a Japanese national who was educated in the U.S. and Japan and worked as a McKinsey & Co. consultant for nearly six years, says he wants to teach Japanese kids to "use critical thinking skills more and be more proactive in shaping the world". "The biggest issue with Japanese education is the lack of logic-based decision making and initiative-taking," he says...Since leaving McKinsey in June, Watanabe sees the book's message as both a mission and a livelihood. He has started his own company in Tokyo, Delta Studio, and envisions building a problem-solving franchise with, possibly, an educational TV show and a "brain game" for the Nintendo DS...more...

[Catoneinutica]

How ironic. In learning logic, Japanese would be, according to Fujiwara Masahiko in his asinine "Dignity of a Nation" (asinine, but a huge seller in Japan), would be undermining the "dignity" of their nation since one of the constituents of the unique Japanese identity (okay to say UJI from now) is an awareness of "the limits of logic."

[DrP]

Damnit Jim, that's not logical! <Spock> Having had far too much experience with/in Japanese consulting companies I can honestly say that one of the biggest challenges they have is in approaching any problem creatively, not logically. The other problem is that Japanese consultants tend to become nearly obsessive-compulsive in their utilization of 'western ways' without really understanding the core principles behind them. Like memorizing the entire works of PF Drucker then attempting to apply them by rote.

The biz here is full of cultural (and not) malaproprisms leading to companies that in the end just follow the Peter Principle.

[fucked]

DrP,

I too have (too much?) experience with Japanese and Western consulting companies in Japan. The fixation (partly unintended, partly intentional) of many Japanese cosultants with making the client happy with expected/ known conclusions presented in a "logical" step-wise fashion, complete with obsessively intricate powerpoint presentations, is a significant reason for the low-level of international competitiveness of Japanese companies.

Just like too many companies in Japan have a low tolerance for risk-taking, too many consultants in Japan have a low tolerance for shocking/ jarring conclusions that many clients need.

"In Japan, the clients want a report showing how to increase sales 1% next year; in Korea, 10%, in China, 100%." I love Japan.

I also love the fact that many Japan consultants do not have MBAs, but are fixated on MBA schoolbooks and lingo, but miss the core principles, as you say.

[Naniwan Kid]

I took a group of seven high-school kids to Nara a few years ago, and one thing we were forced to do was meet the head of the Board of Education in Tenri. He asked each of our students what their dream was. Each one of the students said "Writer" or "Doctor" or "Researcher" or "Teacher" or some sort of dream. He sat back happy, but also frustrated, and said "Ask 10 Japanese high-schoolers what their dream is, and 8 will say 'I don't know'."

We tested his theory at the school in Nara we were posted out of, and he was pretty much right...