Rob's Thoughts: Dealing with Japan's All-Inclusive Education System
The following are my thoughts on how to avoid becoming a bitter cynic due to working in an Education System that you neither fully understand nor are fully compatible with. Take them for what they are worth.
You will notice from the schedules provided over at A day in a Japanese junior high school how long Junior High School students and teachers spend at school. Before passing judgement on this fact, I think one needs to consider that, in Japan, the compulsory education system really strives to be all-inclusive.
For an American like myself (Rob in Ani), it often seems that the school has taken over the realm of the family. This can be, and, for me, has been, disturbing. And yet for all that the Japanese School System has its flaws, it also has certain aspects that are both unique to Japan and incredibly wonderful.
Because all the aspects of the Japanese School System are woven together into a comprehensive whole, its important to look at every aspect from a dual perspective. Even though change is possible, it is likely that in most cases, it is not within an ALT's power to make those changes. For us, the good comes with the bad. Our job isn't to pass judgement on things we can't change. Instead, our job as members of a cultural exchange program is to get a well-balanced perspective of an education system different from our own. I find in my own struggles to gain a well-balanced perspective that it is often good to list out the cons for every pro I see as well as the pros for every con.
For example, here are some thoughts I have had:
- Students spend a lot of time at school:
- Pro: students from less than ideal family situations get a great deal of support from the school.
- Con: students sometimes come to expect parenting from teachers, and as such they might not acquire good parenting skills (this last, of course, is speculation).
- Students always work in groups.
- Pro: Students learn to work responsibly as a group.
- Con: Individual creativity sometimes takes a hit.
- Learning is based on studying for tests.
- Pro: Students acquire good life- and study-organization skills.
- Con: Once students run out of tests to take, they sometimes feel at a loss for how to learn.
- School culture is high-context (this means everyone shares the same experience)
- Pro: Sharing the same experience fosters a good sense of community.
- Con: Students don't have as many opportunities to learn from one another, everybody has the same experiences, and knows the same things.
Of course, I have to constantly remind myself that the above statements are not facts. I (Rob in Ani) am constantly amazed by how wrong I am. What once seemed like a Con becomes a Pro. What once seemed like a Pro becomes a Con. What once seemed to have a strong connection turns out to be unrelated.
The point of coming up with Con for every Pro and a Pro for every Con is to keep oneself from getting stuck in wrong thoughts. If you can see something from two perspectives, you have a better understanding of it and your mind becomes more nimble and adaptable; hence pros and cons.
I (again Rob in Ani) am not saying that I think the Japanese Education System is good or bad. I have opinions, to be sure and they become more and more complicated the longer I stay in Japan. The more complicated my opinions become, the more reticent I am to talk about them publicly.
I think it is my job as a member of the JET Program to understand the system and I try to limit my stated opinions about what is good and what is bad to those areas in which I have the power to promote goodness (and this is a very small area, indeed). Beyond that, publicly at least, I simply make decisions about which aspects of the Japanese Education System are compatible with me, and which are incompatible with me.
The beautiful thing about the job of an ALT is that, while me may have no power to impose our idea of goodness on the Japanese Education System, we do have the power to involve ourselves in areas of the Japanese School Day that we are compatible with and to disinvolve ourselves in the areas of the Japanese School Day that we are incompatible with.
If one keeps in mind that it is important to discover what one is compatible with and what one is not compatible with, and once this is discovered, to then devote all ones energies to promoting goodness in areas of compatibility. In this way, perhaps we can avoid cynicism.
