[gaijin]

For him, it's back to the crappy public schools with the mold and the tumbledown bricks,

Schools are no more bricks than countries are "magic dirt". Schools are KIDS and countries are PEOPLE.

You know what was drilled into me by Japanese teachers in Japan? That the quality of the school is actually just the quality of the student body after the losers have been filtered out, and yes, there is TONS and tons of student tracking/testing in Japan.

If you are a loser in middle school in Japan you end up at the high school for losers, and if you're a brainiac or simply worked your butt off, well then you'll be surrounded by those in high school.

I've seen PLENTY of excellent Japanese high schools that resemble prisons, and then lots of fancy ones well known in their areas as being no good.

And to return to my country example since immigration matters are of concern:

If you swapped the populations of Haiti and Switzerland I submit that in 5 years the Matterhorn could be covered in trash and chicken heads and Port au Prince would be swaying with palms and humming with cuckoo clock assembly.

Countries are PEOPLE, not magic dirt.

[reed13k]

Japan also has no requirement to attend high school, has plenty of trade schools and apprenticeships, and is an intensive meritocracy based on test scores.

Plus since they rooted out a lot of those who didn’t want to go to HS anyway those scores aren’t included in the “national average” that the US is always compared to.

Of course there is still a way to “buy” your way into a lot of the more select schools.

[Albion Wilde]

If you swapped the populations of Haiti and Switzerland I submit that in 5 years the Matterhorn could be covered in trash and chicken heads and Port au Prince would be swaying with palms and humming with cuckoo clock assembly.

What brilliant turn of phrase, gaijin! I truly laughed out loud!

[rdcbn]

Was on a train in the Alps on the Italian-Swiss border. The due to the mountains, the train’s tracks wound tin and out of Switzerland and Italy on a random basis.

You could always tell which side of the border you were by the condition of the farms houses and farms.
The farms and houses in Switzerland were nicely landscaped , immaculately maintained, freshly painted in attractive paint schemes, and all the farm equipment was well organized, properly stored and in good condition.

The farms and houses in Italy were very run down, the landscaping haphazard, the houses had had stucco peeling off the walls with faded, dirty paint and decaying wood with faded paint peeling off , all the farm equipment was strewn about and in poor, rusty condition.

Even if the houses were a few hundred feet of each other and separated by an invisible border