About reforming school in East Asian countries

[CBT1979]

East Asian countries and regions like Japan, HK, SouthKorea, Taiwan, Singapore are usually among those who have pretty good results at school evaluation. But there are still sections where it could be improved.
Nowhere is the suicide rate of pupils/students that high like in those countries and regions mentioned above. The social pressure, including society, parents and maybe even teachers, are sometimes too much for the young students who spend usually between 2-4 hours with homeworks each day, and sometimes even more.
There is a proverb that high quantity is not always high quality.
The learn material the schools in East Asian schools are in many cases too much for the students to save it in their longterm memory. So what is it good if you teach them so much stuff although over 50% of the content you cannot remember anymore?
In HK for instance, most pupils need extra private teachers to keep up with the stuff from the school. They leave school at late afternoon and do homeworks until 9 pm or so.
This is longterm stress and affects the mentality of the kids.
I admit that in many European countries the school lacks in teaching discipline etc. but it is still possible to get good graduations.

I remember how I usually only had homeworks for 1-2 hours each day and about 6-8 hours lessons each day from monday to friday only.