Wednesday, July 23, 2008

ESL in the paper and on the Internet

中日新聞:日本語“厳禁”が好評 四日市大の「ラウンジ」:三重(CHUNICHI Web)

This is a shot of Yokkaichi University's English Support Lounge at a sing along that we had a few days ago. Made the papers it was so much fun!

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi. I am new to your blog. I am a grad student in the US and am currently in Osaka for fieldwork for my dissertation. Throughout my stay, a lot of problems of my country came to my attention. The topic you chose here was one of them. As you said, nurses are not paid well, when it comes to nursing home workers, the situation is even worse. This measure seems just to lower wages and just will work as a bandage if it does.... Given that 95% of the nurses are women in Japan, it will lower women's wages I guess..

Related to this topic, I believe gender equality and allowing women to have chances in society is really necessary to save this country from huge mess (recession and aging and shrinking population). What do you think?

5330 said...

Nanaho,
It is necessary to give all people chances in society. It is necessary to give women the chance to be the wage earner while the man stays in the house if that is what he is good at. It is necessary to give children the opportunity to learn in an environment that is NOT school but instead with their families. It is necessary to give farmers and fishers the chance to make a living wage for their harvests rather than forcing them into wage slavery, leaving only the few old farmers to grow crops, only to cover a meager 40% of the nation's nutritional needs.

I think this country, and many other countries, need to rethink their values to reward those who make real contributions to their societies. The WTO meetings just ended in failure, because they go on about "free trade" rather than "fair trade." If the government started talking about "free trade" deals for Indonesian doctors or soldiers, what do you think would happen? They would be cheaper to hire. There would be an uproar because they don't fit necessary requirements.