Despite the fact that students in the East Asian nations achieved high performance in international testing, including "problem solving skills" test in PISA, curriculum and pedagogical reform plans in those countries tend to seek for the Western "child-centered ideals" to change their education. Why do we, i.e. East Asian educators, like the Western ideas and ideals of learning so much? What presumptions lead us to have such preference of pedagogies and curriculum? What kinds of understanding or misunderstanding are there behind our perspectives to look down on our educational realities and look up to the Western pedagogical ideals? Finally, what unintended results are produced in classrooms and society by our (mis-) understanding of our educational realities and the Western ideals? In this paper, using the 1990s and early 2000s Japanese case as an example of the East Asian education reforms, we will attempt to answer the above questions. At the end, we will argue how and why the attractiveness of child-centered ideals causes inequality issues to emergein education hidden behind reformers' and educators' views, and point out what implications such "unintended results" of reforms have on our arguments of education in the East Asian Regions.