>>2
(1) Why all the hostility toward religion? it isn't christianity that graduates kids illiterate, it's lazy-ass parents. If you compare the quality of Christian schools to public schools, the students score far far higher in reading and in math. A student in a Christian school will graduate first grade knowing reading, writing, and basic addition and substraction. By 3rd grade, they'll be able to multiply and devide as well -- by hand.

I'll grant you that Christian schools aren't particularly good at teaching Biology. But for just about anything else, Christian schools are hands down better schools than public schools.

(2) What exactly are we considering "multi-cultural brainwashing"
Is it Western is the only way to do things, Christianity is the true religion kind of thing? That's the kind of stuff I hear from people who are pissed about multiculturalism.

Also, Japan is pretty much a single ethnic group (minus the Ainu), so you couldn't be multicultural if you wanted to... It would be like a multi-religious Christian community. Same with ethnic gang wars. They're all Japanese, who are they going to have an ethnic gang war with?

(3) Well, yeah I agree actually.

(4) WTF? I don't know that the US is all that much more anti-intellectual than other places. It isn't like you'll go to ... say England, or Israel, or Korea and find that the garbage man is reading shakespeare on his lunch break. Heck, I doubt you'll find many garbage men reading at all, no matter where you go. Most people just learn enough to get by.

(5) would seem to work against Japan. More distractions for the kiddies and more things that they'd rather do than study. I mean really, any kid on the planet would probably rather play a game than do algebra.

(6) So do we, if you live in an urban area.

(7) is obviously why Toyota and Honda have US based plants.

I think what it comes to is work ethic first and formost. We play more, they work more.