TOKYO, March 2 (UPI) -- Japanese high school students have less interest in their grades or in higher education than their U.S., Chinese and South Korean peers, a survey showed.
The survey was conducted by the Japan Youth Research Institute from October to December last year on 1,000 to 3,000 randomly chosen high school students in each country, the Asahi Shimbun reported Thursday.
When asked what mattered most to them, more than 70 percent of the respondents in the United States, China and South Korea said they hoped to improve their academic performance, while the figure for Japan stood at 33 percent.
More than 75 percent of South Korean and Chinese students, and 53 percent of those in the United States, said they hoped to enter the college of their choice. However, only 29 percent of Japanese had the same aspiration.
Compared with students in the United States, China and South Korea, who are future-oriented, Japanese high school students are very reality-oriented, the general manager of the institute said. He said the students understood that studying hard was no guarantee of a happy life.
