Survival of the nanni nanni

This morning Robin and I were discussing the homework we each set for our students, and which subjects have got good responses (i.e. more than three lines per student) and which have not. We realized that the similarities between all the students’ answers begs the question: do they meet beforehand to decide the line that they as a group are going to take? I think they do – the commonality of their answers, and their reasoning, reflects the nature of Japanese society to think en masse and stick to the agreed opinion. It's no wonder that they’re having a problem with the birth-rate – somebody somewhere decided that having babies was rubbish. Now they’re stuck on the mobius loop of extinction.