-The book makes for interesting and informative reading, especially since it reflects Japanese concerns about their own society. Recommended for informed general readers as well as specialists. —Library Journal

-The superiority of Japan's education system is a myth credibly exploded in this first-person account by an American who taught in colleges there for five years. In contrast to the American perception of a monolithic structure of excellence in Japanese schools, the author's classrooms were comprised of students in general dissarray and uninterested in education, given to cheating and influence peddling. Schoolland buttresses his observation of an 'educational system under attack from all corners of Japanese society' with critiques from parents whose children have suffered from teachers who use physical punishment, and reports of student deaths from abuse of power. The author, who now teaches in Hawaii, sounds a warning to U.S. educators who would establish a school system based on the Japanese model." Publishers Weekly "An expose of the brutality inherent in the Japanese school system, by an American who taught college in Japan in the mid-80s. Schoolland . . . . was appalled to learn, shortly after his arrival in Japan, that a high-school student had been "killed over a hair dryer." The student had broken a rule forbidding use of such appliances, and as punishment he received a beating from his teacher--the son of a Buddhist priest--so severe that he died of head injuries. Most other students, Schoolland discovered, suffered only verbal abuse in school: "I advise you to take out a life insurance policy--an imbecile like you is better off dead," one teacher screamed at a child. So it was no real surprise to Schoolland when one student committed suicide after being beaten and harassed by bullies and three teachers, who capped their humiliation of the student by staging his mock funeral during class. Nor is it surprising, says Schoolland, that one fifth of all Japanese high-school students display the same symptoms as patients hospitalized with clinical anxiety neurosis. . . . Nonetheless, Schoolland strives to be fair in his reporting. He finds that similar problems (and an even higher suicide rate) exist in some American and European schools, and that in Japan teacher brutality is often a product of ferocious pressures unwittingly exerted on faculty as well as on students by a relentlessly ambitious society. A graphic yet balanced indictment, convincingly based on firsthand observations. —Kirkus Reviews