TOKYO, September 13, 2013—The role that honor plays in Japanese culture is unlike anything I, and most other Americans, know. It appears in the most public of ways, from the unflinching politeness of taxi drivers, to the absence of trash cans, to the nearly ubiquitous use of cash. You don’t need credit cards when you need not fear petty crime.
As I try to conceive of honor in the abstract, one precept stands out: a culture that values honor must value it unconditionally. Toleration of even the slightest breach would threaten the entire value structure. Conversely, in a culture that does not value honor, anyone who relies on it entirely – expecting the rest of the world to respect his good faith – does so at his own peril.
It may be possible to preserve honor on a chain of islands, proudly removed from at least some of the chaos of the rest of the world. What happens, though, when one value system – one that actually takes honor seriously – runs headlong into a continental enormity that does not?
This week I spoke with a college counselor at an excellent English-language international school in Tokyo. The counselor told me that, in her experience, Japanese families often consider admission to highly-regarded American universities to be a matter of honor. Rejection from these schools—some with single-digit acceptance rates—can bring disgrace, or so the parents perceive.
I will not name the obvious colleges nor will I give credence to the “rankings” that confer upon them much of their prestige. To do so would only exacerbate an unfortunate situation.
We should all be so lucky as to live in a world where trust and repute are so important. We would be even luckier to live in a world where rewards match up with virtues. The trouble is, there’s nothing necessarily “honorable” about the American college application process. To stake a family’s honor on a child’s admission is like judging her ballet skills by how well she hotwires cars.
I often remind anxious students that admission to highly selective universities depends nearly as much on luck as it does on grades or test scores. These universities receive an overabundance of strong applications, and the admissions readers are only human. The more elite the college, the less exacting and, perhaps, less fair the process is.
An application read after a light lunch might receive more favor than one read at midnight through a Starbucks-fueled haze. The Yankees fan may look askance at the student who innocently mentions the Red Sox. Improbably, they may already have enough would-be James Joyce scholars or Japanese speakers. Who knows? Maybe last night someone got a bad piece of sushi.
There is nothing ignoble about insisting that children work hard, respect their teachers, and better themselves through academics. Unfortunately, parents may view college admissions as a referendum on their children’s efforts rather than the academic and personal adventure that it is. Parents may assume that universities value the same things that they do – and that the universities can evaluate students accordingly.
I don’t have a solution to this. Colleges have a hard enough time legitimizing the honor codes that govern students’ schoolwork. I would not want to question an honor code that governs an entire people. And yet, I would advise parents that honor does not lie in any particular college: it lies in a students’ diligence, curiosity, and intellect – all of which can be put to good use at any college. Perhaps honor lies in their performance in college, and it surely lies in the mere commitment to attend college in the United States in the first place.
The divide between Japanese idealism and American pragmatism will manifest itself countless times in the four years that a Japanese student spends in the U.S. Much the same could be said for students who come from any other culture. Students’ willingness to embrace the unknown, pursue their dreams, and figure out exactly how they fit into this madly diverse world of ours – those are things that should make any parent proud.
--Josh Stephens
Josh Stephens is ArborBridge’s Director of International Development. He can be reached at Josh@ArborBridge.com.