You are correct that almost everybody is familiar with English, but that's not speaking it, let alone being fluent. To a degree, English already is part of the Japanese culture and language. But it's a different English. Some of it is compatible, but native speakers are the one's graciously degrading (to use a web programming term) to meet their level, and not them meeting you at a level you're accustomed to speaking.

Of course general familiarity is not a bad thing but is to be expected when they're taking classes everyday. The goal is for fluency, competency, and the capacity to be competitive at a global level. They're far from it, and that is why the system has yet to succeed.

Japan is a strange case. On one hand, if you ask an average person a simple question in English, something like "What did you do yesterday?" they won't be able to parse the question let alone produce a response. On the other hand, if you ask them to translate a bunch of tricky words from English to Japanese or Japanese to English they will happily churn through them. "Politician", "weapon", "credit", no problem.

It's all an artifact of their teaching methods and tests.

> You are correct that almost everybody is familiar with English, but that's not speaking it, let alone being fluent.

Compare with a hypothetical Japan where the program would not be put in place and all those people "merely" familiar with English were not at all. It'd be ridiculous to suppose such a plan would lead to 100% (or even 50%) of people being fluent.

> The goal is for fluency,

How many would have not been fluent were it not for the program?

> competency, and the capacity to be competitive at a global level.

Now many (and certainly much more than before) people will have both sufficient English comprehension and sufficient programming exposure to be able to read through foreign code, open issues in open source projects, and possibly even contribute back at some point, nurturing a virtuous feedback loop. Have you ever read core ruby devs? No offense meant but they're hardly "fluent" in English, yet they're able to exchange and contribute with the global community at large.

This is all about raising the bar and giving people more of a chance to stand in a global economy/ecosystem.

You underestimate how introverted and isolationist Japanese default culture still can be. Those devs aren't contributing because they feel competent or fluent. They're contributing despite not being. They have the capacity to take initiative and not be shy. This is a separate trait altogether, which isn't even being discussed let alone being made mandatory.

And ultimately, these devs speak code, which provides a common objective baseline for exchanging substance (which everyone certainly refers to if they can't decode their English). Their confidence likely stems for them objectively knowing how good their code is.

This is the case with science and mathematics, and with the bilingual students also. The best Japanese talent are all competitive at a global level. They aren't the issue. Them being rare is the issue. And though they should become assets to Japan, they quickly assimilate to the global community, at which point, the global community tends to appreciate and reward these people more. Many, if not most, end up in Silicon Valley or Hollywood or just working for a foreign company. Overachievers have a hard time in seniority based bureaucracies which most of Japan still is.

As marak830 commented here,

> I teach high school student part time (so I can work on my side project), and the

> teachers over the age of 40ish have pretty terrible English(these are English

> teachers), but all of the newer ones have pretty good levels.

That wouldn't be that big of a problem in a meritocracy. And it's going to be far worse with a modern skill like programming.

Personal experience doesn't always reflect averages: According to the EPI Japan is #30: http://www.ef.edu/epi