95% of native English speakers wouldn't be able to pass a 4th grade English exam in Japan

A while back I went on a business trip to Japan and had to stay there for a few months, and while there I dated a Japanese woman. Her sister was a teacher, and I was wondering how the teaching style was in Japan. She showed me a notebook she took from one of her students because he was failing, and she wanted to work with him over the summer. She asked me to see if I could compare his handwriting to that of a typical Japanese student (she gave me some examples).<br><br>After about 3 weeks of comparing his handwriting to the examples, I found that the thing that separated the two the most, aside from pencil pressure, was the choppiness of the handwriting. It was mostly his stroke order.<br><br>This was interesting to me, so I decided to do my own research. What I found baffled me. Japanese students learn a lot more about grammar and sentence structure in elementary school than a native English speaker would in high school, assuming they didn't take any AP courses in English.<br><br>My Japanese girlfriend agreed that this was true, but she said it would be a good idea to get someone else's opinion. She had a friend who taught English at a primary school in Tokyo, which is where Cheju Island is. She asked me if I could take a 4th grade English exam for one of the students she teaches, and compare my answers to that of a native Japanese student.<br><br>When she gave me the test, I laughed. All the answers were either True/False or short answers, mostly in the form of "Is this grammatically correct?" answers, with the occasional multiple choice.<br><br>When I finished, I looked at it again. I realized that for almost half of the questions, I didn't even know what the right answers were. She told me to give her the test and she would tell me the answers. When she gave me back my test, I had a 6 correct out of 20. I asked her "Is this really for 4th graders in the US? I know they learn this stuff in middle school or high school." She laughed at me and said no. She said "you may want to take it again if you didn't do so well the first time."<br><br>I did, and got a 4/20. I asked her if that was the average score for the students in her class, she told me that I did slightly better than most of them. I thought that was very odd and didn't think much more of it until I got back to the United States.<br><br>I told a friend of mine about that experience and she told me that she was currently doing student teaching for high school students. She asked me if I wanted to see a high school English exam, I said sure, why not. She gave me a copy of the exam for-Level 1 English I think it was, and I took it.<br><br>I want to preface that by saying that I have a Bachelor's and two Master's in two separate fields, so I'm no slouch when it comes to English proficiency. What I found out when I got the test back was that I didn't even get half of the questions correct. I asked her to give me another exam, she did. I got a failing grade again.<br><br>I started reading the questions I got wrong, and realized that I had no idea what they meant. They were asking for definitions of words that I had never heard of, and questions that I had to infer the answer from the question alone.<br><br>I saw another post on this sub that claimed 50% of native English speakers couldn't pass a 3rd grade English exam in Japan. While I don't think that's quite true, I know that I, who am a highly educated native English speaker, would have a hard time passing a 4th grade English exam in Japan.<br><br>What I'm asking is- why does Japan have such high standards for their students? Is there another country that is like this?<br><br>Edit: I'm surprised that this blew up so fast. I figured it would die in new. Thanks for the support. I'm not going to answer questions about the test because I think a lot of you are getting the wrong idea. It was so much more than just grammar. I'm not going to lie, I wish I was recording my friend when she told me that I got a 6. I know she didn't mean to, but it was pretty funny in my opinion