What Are Some Similarities and Differences in Education Between the United States and Asian Countries Such as Japan, China and South Korea? What Could the U.S. Do to Emulate the Leaning System of Asian Countries?

Ashraf Ahmed

Professor Craig Smith

ENG1020

8 March 2017

What are some similarities and differences in education between the United States and Asian countries such as Japan, China and South Korea? What could the U.S. do to emulate the leaning system of Asian countries?

My I-Search Paper

        What are some similarities and differences in education between the United States and Asian countries such as Japan, China and South Korea? What could the U.S. do to emulate the learning system of Asian countries? I picked this question for my I-Search paper because Asian education is something that is important to the American education system. Education in Asia gives us an idea of the tools that they use to improve their education system each year, and what could us, as students here in the U.S., do to emulate their learning system. Asian education also benefits us to see outside of ourselves, and be surrounded with global education that could help us gain more knowledge and stay connected with Asian countries. I also picked this topic for my I-Search paper because I have some background knowledge about the topic that I experienced while growing up in an Asian country. I was born and raised in Bangladesh, a country that is in South Asia. I started my schooling in Bangladesh and moved to United States at age eight. Schools in Bangladesh are a lot more similar to other Asian countries such as Japan, China, and South Korea, rather than schools in the United States. Almost all the Asian countries have similar education system, and education is the number one priority to the students in Asia.

        When I was eight years old, my family and I moved to the United States. The experience that I had my first day of school here in the U.S. was very challenging for me. I did not know how to speak English nor did I know anything about the education system here in the U.S. I had classmates that were the same age as me with different backgrounds. As days went by, I started feeling comfortable about the education system, and my classmates and teachers gave me all the research and knowledge I needed, to fit into the education system right away. My motivation for picking this topic was not an issue because, I am a student who started my school in an Asian country, before moving to the United States. So, after knowing and experiencing a bit of education in Asia, I decided to pursue this research question where I compared the U.S. school’s system to Asian school’s system, in which I tried to find possible benefits that Asian schools system policies could have on U.S school, by researching using different sources in Wayne State library database.      

        When I started thinking about this research process, I had to figure out how to find peer review articles about the topic in Wayne State Library database. I have not done anything that relates to doing a research paper using the library database. So, I was inexperienced and did not know how to start the research process. After professor assigned the instructions about the paper, I had a conference the following class day, where I was able to get all the help to feel comfortable about the assignment. I also went to the Wayne State WRT Zone for help about the paper and they provided everything I needed to know about this research process. They also gave me a brief explanation on how to get started in the library database and get to the articles.

        First I started my search at library.Wayne.edu, as this made the most sense to me, to find the articles about the topic. My topic is Asian education and once I typed “Asian education” into the search bar in Wayne state library database, I found lots of articles, Journals and other important aspects of the topic. As I scrolled down, I looked at the left side of the computer screen and I clicked on the Journal article, as that is where I needed to go to find the articles. Once I clicked on Journal article, I found lots of articles about the topic, and I briefly started looking at the articles one by one to find the right one that fits the topic. After going over several articles, I felt little distracted about the research process, because few of the articles did not have the right sources, and I also felt like some of the articles were useful but I needed more information.

        After going over several articles, I finally found an article that made the most sense for my topic, and it also had all the information I was looking for. I looked over the article carefully and took notes using the annotation note taking strategy. I also made sure the publication date and the source it came from were accurate. The title of the article was “Asian education must change to promote innovation thinking” (William K. Lim). In summary, William argues in his article about the changes in Asian education culture and how it affects other Asian countries. As he indicated in his article “a radical change in Asian’s education culture with workforce and innovation” (William 1) meaning other Asian countries have the same workforce and innovation when it comes to changing the education system if needed, to make a significant change in the way the government views the country’s education system.

        After reading through this article, I wanted to know more about the education system in a specific Asian country and compare it to the U.S. education system, to figure out how the U.S. could emulate the learning system of Asian countries. So, I began to do my research again but this time on the search bar I typed “Chinese Education” in Wayne State library and I found over thousands of articles. As I looked at some of the articles, I was getting useful information about the topic, but I needed more general information that would help me get to the answer of my research question. I was getting bored by reading through all these articles but suddenly I found an article called “legal education in China: reform and requirements” (Weidong). I began to read the article and took notes using the annotation strategy.  

        As I began to figure out the education system in China, I found a paragraph in the article that explained about how the U.S. does not just emulate the learning system of Asian countries, but the United States also helps countries like China to improve in the quality of Chinese education. In the article, Weidong Ji stated “countries like United States has a primary focus of both officials and enterprises is with cultivating Chinese legal experts who can deal with international disputes and make improvement in the quality of Chinese education.” In this portion, Weldong is trying to persuade the reader that, not just the U.S. follow the education system of Asian countries, but the United States also has the capacity to help Asian countries like China to improve on the quality of their education system. This article also included that Chinese education Association makes a big impact to the United States education system by sharing ideas and knowledge, and both countries help each other when needed to achieve their prospective educational goals.  

        Moving on, after figuring out in the previous article about the ways the United States emulate Asian countries education system and the relationship between China and the U.S, in terms of education, now I wanted to look at the main point to my research question. I wanted to compare the Asian education system to the U.S. education system. So, once again I started my research in the Wayne State library database. On the search bar, I typed “Asian education system” and I found lots of articles just like I did with the previous searches. I started going over the articles to see if they match with my research question. I looked over several articles but I did not get what I was looking for, that would help me get to the answer to my research question. This felt like a long process because some of the articles were long and weren’t helpful to the research question.