Attitude toward Education - Difference between Australia and Japan

I’ve been to Australia for 2 years and studied at university. Before entering the Uni, I joined the pre-enrollment course at the affiliated language school. At the school, I learned the differences between Australia and Japan in attitudes toward education.

I noticed that the attitude toward sharing information or ideas was different between Australia and Japan. At a class in Australia, when teachers gave us some topics, they encouraged us to share ideas. They always said, “ Don’t think by yourself. Share ideas with someone.” Even when we write the essay, teachers said, “ Write the essay after sharing ideas.” On the other hand, in Japan, teachers always said, “ Think by yourself without talking with someone.” I was taught based on this idea from elementary school. I started to think that this attitude might be made the outstanding difference between western countries and Japan. At work, even if in Japan, we are encouraged to share ideas with co-workers to build up business solutions. However, Japanese tend to adopt the idea of the person who gave a good opinion. I've thought that Japanese people are not good at building up ideas with some people as we've not had such an education from a younger age.

The education methods in Japan might be changing these days as many western ways of thinking have been adopted. However, it seems that there are no easy ways to change the attitude and it will take time to change it.