Tokyo's school board adopts text omitting Japan atrocities

Yes, the Education Ministry, and the local school board are reprehensible for approving the book for use. Simply by omitting facts won't make the issue dissappear, and there are lots of people out there who are willing to help jog Japan's collective memories. What I want to know is who is making the decision to send their kids there?
USATODAY.com - Tokyo's school board adopts text omitting Japan atrocities

Typhoon comes aground in Kyushu

The weather channel link on my university site says that it's 28 degrees Celsius, but feels like 32. It doesn't tell you that there is a typhoon coming aground in Kyushu and that the wind is picking up here. There was an interesting bit of news on the radio that said that when a typhoon swirls in a counterclockwise direction, as this one is, it slams the east coast with wind and rain. That would be us. Of course, we are not in the area of maximum influence yet, but we soon will be I guess.

People in low lying areas around the coast are being evacuated to secure places. I don't live in a low lying area, nor do I work in one, but other people need to be careful now. Apparently the tide is very high. I guess the annual cycle makes the tide high right now, and so we have annual high tides mixed with a typhoon, a powerful low pressure system, and high winds that could put lots of coastal areas underwater.

For some cool satellite photos and mpegs of the typhoon, go to the Kochi University Weather pages.

Junior and Senior High School Debate

I have taught, and will be teaching from September 14th, a class in Debate in English. My experiences with the class last semester have led me to believe that using debate with a class of students who are speakers of English as a second or foreign language is nearly impossible, even with a group of enthusiastic, adult, advanced speakers. It was like pulling teeth to get them to say much, and when they said anything, for which I was thankful, I didn't have the heart to tell them that what they had said was off topic, immaterial, spurious, incorrect, which was often. I will have to offer much more structure in this class from next month.

Today I worked with a group of teachers from various junior and senior high schools around who are trying to prepare students to compete in Japanese debate events. It was a great experience for me, because I got a chance to debate in Japanese, something I've never done before. I could get out what I wanted to say, and I don't think it was off topic or anything, but I was surprised by how much better Japanese people's language skills are than mine. Wow, they could speak really well. Of course their skills are going to be better than mine, but today, I got a chance to experience just how much better they were. My understanding of the process and framework for debate are at least as good as the other participants'. So in that we were at least equal. But as for language... they were really smooth. I was really choppy and lacked finesse. Great experience.

How and why of primary school English Mulled

The Japan Association of Language Teaching held a conference in Nagano on the seventh and eighth of the month to discuss how English education should be handled in primary schools. There are three main opinions discussed in this article.

The Japanese Language - Kern's Japan 'blog

Kern writes his English synopsis of a Japanese book, which gives a very complete and accessible description of Japanese. It is great for learners of the language or people who are just interestedThe Japanese Language - Kern's Japan 'blog

More changes

In an effort to make my web site at the university more useful to students, I have reorganized it a little. I have put up nearly all of the quizzes I plan to give thos next semester. I hope that this transperancy makes it easier for students to see where we are going, and give them more control over their learning. Having these quizzes online will do several things:
1. show students how the course will progress;
2. give them control over their grades (They have the quizzes. They can take them anytime they want to and can clip them out and paste them into an email message if they want take web-based quizzes.)
3. give prospective Yokkaichi University students an idea of what they can expect if they attend this school;
4. put me way ahead in the planning stage.

I made some other updates. Put on a Google search tool, and a weather report for Yokkaichi from the Weather Chanel.

Changes

Two big changes here. Some you can see and one you can't.

This morning I changed some things here. As you can see I added a search bar at the top. You can use this to find stuff in my blog. I also took out extra coding that put two trackback buttons on each entry.

I am a Mac user and I have changed my OS to 10.3.5. So far so good. It was easy to change, that's for sure. Didn't lose any of my preferences.

Korean ex-leprosy patients to sue Japan for rejecting claims

Korean ex-leprosy patients to sue Japan for rejecting claims

a message from a teacher in Korea

I got a letter from a Korean teacher back in July. I was up to my eyeballs in work, and knew that the response would be long. I wrote him back today. Here is a copy of what he wrote and how I answered his questions.

J wrote:

I'm interested in knowing about the level of training and ability that non-Japanese (foreign) EFL instructors have in Japan. Are they mostly experienced? Or is the profession characterized by a yearly turnover, with many amateur EFL instructors filling positions for a short time then moving on?

In Korea, most programs have fairly amateur instructors and very high turnover, with the biggest universities being the only ones that can attract experienced instructors with a few years under their belt and a degree in EFL education.

I also get the impression that Japan and Korea are very similar in their struggle with large class sizes, the lack of Japanese/Korean teachers who are able to speak English well enough to use it in their English class (classroom English), and the system of student evaluation that emphasizes grammar, vocabulary and reading comprehension, not communicative ability. ...not to mention the extreme work culture and focus on worldly success

What can you tell me about that?

I replied:

This is how I would characterize English language education in Japan. I'll follow it up in the order that you asked about it.

As for non-Japanese teachers' training, I would guess, and this is purely a guess, that something like a third of them come from teaching backgrounds. This is the reason I say that. Many of the teachers who are teaching in universities and professional schools have degrees in education and several years of experience in the field. Some of course do not. A few teaches who teach in conversation schools probably do too, but my guess is that a majority of them do not. There is also the Japanese English Teachers (JET) scheme that hires about 2,500 teachers every year for two to three-year appointments assisting English teachers in public schools. My guess is that a minority of those teachers are professional English teachers.

Now why would that be, J? I don't want to be too long winded here, because I want to get back to your original questions, but there may be several reasons. Some teachers want to come to Japan/Korea for an extended paid vacation. They want to experience these exotic places, and who can blame them? Japanese schools/companies pay them a salary to do it. Some of these jobs give them that opportunity without having to commit huge somes of money and time to the effort. But as you might have seen in my blog from time to time, there is another force at work here, at least in Japan. It is the  "Kokusaika" (internationalization) force versus the "Nihonjin ron" (the nationalistic Japanese) force. Yes, there is a voice in this collective that says, "Resistance is futile. We must be assimilated with the rest of the world." The other voice says, "We are special. We cannot be understood. We do not trust the outside." People who listen to the xenophobic voice hire teachers on one year contracts, because they don't really care if people learn English or not, and they don't want outsiders to stay here very long. English learning is not the goal. People who hire teachers who are committed to Japan and their profession are listening to the first voice.

As for your impression that Japan and Korea are similar in their struggles with large class sizes, you are exactly right. As the Japanese population of school aged children shrinks dramatically, the state is busy closing schools and cutting teaching staff. Instead of offering a better situation for children so that they grow up with pleasant school experiences that they want their own kids to have, they keep up with the dwindling population by maintaining class sizes of 40 or more in fewer and fewer schools, which also means that children have to travel further to get to school. The case for small class sizes leading to higher test scores has not been made. But I have not seen numbers showing that large class sizes lead to a better quality of education in other ways. Unfortunately legislators and tax payers want to see numbers, and testing seems to be the quick and dirty way to give it to them.

English teachers' language ability, focus off of communicative ability, focus on worldly success... wow, big topics. I think it is time to point out that the emperor has no clothes. If school English programs were about teaching young people to communicate in English, then schools would historically have been a huge failure. I have heard that confession from a former curriculum developer for the Education Ministry. I have seen it in my classrooms, and I have heard it from countless parents. They are not, and my conclusion is that formal education in this country or maybe any other, cannot help the huge majority of young people to communicate in English. If formal English education were actually Formal English Education, Inc., the board of directors would have been fired along with the CEO, and the stockholders would be in revolt. Unfortunately, the stockholders in this case are the average Joe who has been told all their lives that they know nothing about education, and that only people with degrees in the subject can know anything. Children aren't getting what they need to become happy and well educated, because that is not what the agenda seems to be. The message that I hear/see in formal education here is, "Shut up. Obey, and do the things we tell you to. If you do, maybe you can have a privileged position in society (doctor, lawyer, public servant, politician). Sacrifice huge chunks of your childhood to the almost futile task of achieving 'good grades,' so that you can get into a 'good school,' and get into a 'good job.'"

Is that different elsewhere? I don't think so. Give a look at John Holt's work.

So how do I feel about people who end up being English teachers? This is a group of very hardworking, sincere, brilliant people who are really out to help their students. If any of the young people come out of this education system with anything like an understanding of English, it is due to their hard work and care. These teachers fulfill all kinds of rolls. They are coaches, personal secretaries, nurses, psychologists, counselors, baby sitters, cops, and teachers. They work at least six days each week, and get paid crap. Society puts on a front of respecting them, but how can they respect people who have gotten themselves involved with Formal Education, Inc. Face it. If someone told you they were at Enron, what would you think? And if some of them are English teachers who can't utter a sentence, so what? No one in the Education Ministry cares if anyone can speak English or not. Are there some unsavory types in the bunch? You bet, but they are everywhere.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to get some of these ideas on screen, J.

On Fahrenheit 9/11

Yesterday my son, his friend and I went to see Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11." It was a very effective documentary on the bush administration, though it didn't really effect the way that I think about W and his performance to date. It also did a great job of putting together some themes that have, to date, gone unconnected. One thing the movie did not do is to address foreign opinions and feelings about America after W got in the White House. That was beyond its scope. It also did a disservice to the soldiers who willingly forfeit their lives to protect our country.

The bush regime has lied to the nation and the world. It used faulty evidence to bait the American people into believing that Iraq was a threat to their lives and their freedom. G. Tennent has left as CIA chief to take the blame for such an oversight, but the man who bears the ultimate responsibility for the errors is W. He is where the buck stops. If he didn't know, why didn't he? Will he make the same kinds of mistakes again? Likely, because it was never about American security.

The bush regime, instead of protecting our freedoms in a war with Iraq, has gradually eroded them at home. All in the name of security and freedom, he takes ours away to stifle us, to rob us our liberties to support the rich. The "War on Terrorism" will go on indefinitely, because it serves the purposes of the rich.

These are not new ideas, but M. Moore has done a terrific job of presenting them in a digestible way.

Unfortunately Moore insults soldiers while at the same time defends them as victims. I approve of the latter. I have written before about how W and the rich old men who support him squander the lives our soldiers, brave men and women ready to die to protect our country and the flag. They make a mockery of their bravery and sacrifice. At the same time, Moore paints individual soldiers as homicidal half-wits. For example when he shows one soldier singing the lyrics to the song that suggests that we let someone die in a fire. I am sorry that there are people who are in that position, but my guess is that there are psychological methods of dealing with a very messy business that is soldiering. A very good friend of mine, a veteran of the Viet Nam war, said that a soldier's job is, "killing people and breaking things." We send our young people, as humans have for millennia, to kill people and break things. That is their job. The toll it takes on these people is enormous. We hear about the physical toll, but rarely hear about the psychological havoc it wreaks. These young people signed up to protect America, to protect the flag, and the rights that we hold so dear. They fight to protect my rights to write and publish this, and they die to protect Moore's right to make films or write books. If they say and do things that are a little odd, let them go. Tell us what it is like.

Finally, Moore doesn't address America's image in the world. It's well beyond the scope and intent of the movie, so I don't blame him, but there is a big world out there, and hardly anyone is happy about America right now. After 9/11 everyone was an American at heart. A great nation had been attacked, and the victims were innocents. People make connections between this horror and Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor was an attack by a military on a military. This butchery was not. I was in the US on the day of the attacks. I had to stay on afterward, but when I returned to Japan, all of my friends and colleagues were worried about my safety and concerned about my emotional state. America and what it stood for was awesome to people abroad then. America had everyone's attention and concern. America had all the shock and awe it needed to do anything then. It did not need to kill 10,000 Iraqi civilians.

No Japanese person I have spoken to within the last month has said anything positive about America. No Canadian person I have spoken to within the last month has said anything positive about America. No Iranian person I have spoken to within the last month has said anything positive about America. No American I have spoken to within the last month has said anything positive about America.

Great documentary, with a few minor drawbacks. Says in a very easy to digest way everything I would have said.

Unsustainable.org

Interesting site on trade and economics. "Unsustainable.org." The
blurb on it's author, Eamonn Fingleton, is below. Good stuff on
Japan/American economics.

Eamonn Fingleton is a Tokyo-based author and economic commentator
whose latest book is Unsustainable: How Economic Dogma Is Destroying
American Prosperity (Nation Books, 2003).

Boycott the Olympics

Am I missing something? Has anyone out there started a credible
movement to boycott the Olympics? I recall another time when the US
boycotted the Olympics because the USSR had invaded Afganistan in a
doomed act of blind agression. The US and Japan are engaged in a
similar act, not just in Afganistan this time, but in Iraq, too.

I personally vowed to leave my TV off for the entire time, and to
avoid any product that advertises that is supports the Olympics. Not
that I have really changed my lifestyle much. I almost never watch TV
anyway, and I haven't gone near a soft drink now for a long time. My
feeling is that I don't need to be sitting at home rooting for the
Americans or the Japanese while they are in Iraq getting shot for
elected officials in the US and Japan. I can't watch athletes
participating in games while Iraqi people die for cheaper American
and Japanese oil. (Even though oil just keeps getting more
expensive.) I am concerned that the most powerful and formerly most
respected country in the world is being led by the nose by a pack of
criminals against humanity. It's like America has gone to Greece to
fight a war with all that war lingo that crops up in sports, and is
winning it there. Unlike all the rest of W's miserable failures.

My film debut: a teacher with advise

Last week I worked with a group of students who refuse traditional
schooling to make a film that they wrote. I attended one of the
planning meetings some weeks before. It was really a disaster. Hours
spent with the outcome being that they would return to their original
premise and film that. I lost it with them in filming too for a
similar waste of people's time, mostly mine.

I was supposed to be at the Smile Forever house at 4pm and be ready
for filming. Later the adult leader of the group called and said that
I should get there around 4:30. They were running behind schedule. I
arrived there at the appointed time and waited outside for 1 full
hour. It was a hot August day, hot enough to send a few people home
from the filming after one boy vomited from to much exposure to the
heat. By the time we got inside it was 5:45 and I had an appointment
with my family at 7. It would take 35 minutes from the house to my
home. By the time we got ready to film, it was after 6. My part was
admittedly very short, and I did not memorize my lines. They were in
Japanese; I got them the night before, and I was not told to memorize
them. So when one of the young people told me to memorize them before
we started to shoot, I was ballistic. I almost walked out, but
thought that was too much, but I did say that even if I could
memorize them in time to be home by 7, I was not emotionally inclined
to cooperate. That was the end of that story.

If I am ever asked to return, I will suggest that anyone with
creative intentions should be encouraged to pursue them with the
group. That person should be in charge of the project, and in
addition to the successful completion of the project, these
objectives should also be considered:
1. development of leadership skills,
2. development of communication skills,
3. development of organizational and logistical skills.

These projects should be planned, executed, published and evaluated
by the group in a way that benefits everyone in the group, everyone
associated with it, and the community at large, since it is thanks in
large part to support by the community that these projects can happen
at all.

Facility for exceptional children

Recently a group of parents and volunteers asked me to work with them
on a facility for exceptional children in the community called "Smile
Forever." (SF) The facility would be one that would help train
children with learning disabilities to earn a decent wage. I was
asked to participate, mostly because of my views on education, I
expect.

Wednesday was the first meeting of the group. There were 8 people
there, two parents of children who would participate at SF, two of
the instructors, two members of the local community group who would
serve finally as a kind of sanctioning body, one of the young people
who would be working at the facility, and me. We went over the
paperwork that has to be sumitted to the city for approval. There are
some funds available for these kinds of small businesses for
exceptional people. The necessary paperwork included goals, a
description of the physical working environment, proposed number of
participants (around 8 exceptional kids), and proposed expenditures.
There were few problems with the documents, and they will be
submitted soon.

The organizers of SF have been working on ways of generating income
while at the same time giving the participants real life skills.
There are facilities that are organized just to earn money for the
participants. That is a good thing, because they can have a place
where they can gather, socialize and build a little self esteem. Many
of those facilties do piece work, put together small car parts or
electronic components. That kind of work doesn't build skills that
will come in handy if they every can or must live on their own,
though. The group I'm working with at SF is thinking about doing some
cooking, maybe cookies and drinks for a small cafe, some sewing of
clothes and other fabric items, and some other sales of crafts, Free
Trade goods, and art made by a few local crafts people. That way they
get some experience in dealing with customers and exchanging money.

It is a great way to organize these kinds of efforts. It is very
local and can address the needs of the neighborhood in a way that
benefits everyone. I was very pleased with the kind of unconditional
support that the community group offered. The two leaders of the
community group who were there had some suggestions about how to
better use the channels of authority more efficiently, but otherwise,
they were very generous with their promises of long-term support. I
was actually kind of surprised by that, because usually those kinds
of bodies are a "well, we'll see how it goes after a year," but they
were very enthusiastic about making sure that the facility was
started on time with everything that they needed to be successful.

Boy Scout Camp

Sorry for the recent absences. Several things have crept up to make
blogging take a back seat. First was getting my son all registered as
an American. Boy Scout Camp was in there, and finally there is a real
need to study and write something for publication this summer.

As an American living abroad, and my son having been born in Japan,
has made the process of registration, getting a passport and Social
Security number something of a bother. More on that process in
another post.

Boy Scout camp this year was great. I am an assistant Scout Master,
and my older son is in the troop. As a boy, I was a Scout, too. Our
camp was always at the same place every year. Our troop here doesn't
have that luxury, or isn't tied to the same place every year,
depending on how you look at it. This year we were going to kayak the
Miya River. We were off on August 5th. However, the weather had other
plans.

Typhoon 10 blew through around the 31st of July and brought alot of
rain with it. We were happy for that, because the river would be up
enough to make it exciting. Then Typhoon 11 blew through. It blew
through fast, but the tail end of it brought alot more rain on the
3rd, 4th, and 5th of August. The Miya River was a torrent, and out
campsite was under water. No way were we going to float that river.
We were gathered at the Scout room, wondering if that was where we
were to camp, and calling around to find other options. Fortunately
the guy who was going to teach us about kayaking and rent us the
boats knew of a place on the coast where we could camp and kayak. It
is in Ise City, on a small island called "Oo Minato Machi." We got
there around 2 o'clock and set up camp. Beautiful spot under the pine
trees and with the ocean just a few meters away.

The next day we got the kayaks, had a little instruction on land
about kayaking, and then headed out into the small bay nearby. The
kids dumped a couple of the boats over, but the water was very
shallow, only a meter or a meter and a half at most, and we had life
vests on. Great fun.

The next day we paddled out and south of our camp, stopping at a
couple of public beaches on the way. We had lunch at a beach and then
headed home. The fish were jumping. I'm not sure what the fish are
called in English. In Japanese there are "suzuki" and "bora." Having
grown up in the mountains of West Virginia, my knowledge of the ocean
is limited, and much of it comes from my experiences in Japan, so
much of what I know is only in Japanese.

There are very few coastal areas that could be called "beautiful"
anymore. Much of it has become concrete, and there is more garbage
floating up around than I ever saw in my limited experiences with
American coastal areas. People rip down mountains and dump them into
the sea to make land for airports, factories and warehouses. Mr.
Iwasaki, the guy who lead our group, said that all of the coral that
used to live around the Kii Peninsula, much of which has recently
been made a World Heritage Site, died about 10 years ago. We saw some
nice places, but none of them were what one might call "expansive."

The kids are young, sixth, seventh, and eighth graders, so they
aren't up for great adventure, but we had adventures that most kids
here never have, ever. Scouting is a great program. In this posting I
focused on the kayaking part, but there is so much for them to learn
in Scouting. I'm happy to be part of it again.