Compulsory English and you!

Today is not exactly promising to be a gem of a day, so I apologize in advance if this entry gets even more bitter than I originally intended. It started this morning with my mercilessly loud alarm clock waking me after not nearly enough sleep – I had promised myself I’d do a better job at this, but the book I’m currently reading* thwarted my best efforts to put it down and get a good night’s rest. Then I discovered that I was dreadfully low on provisions, and would be surviving sans a proper meal until lunchtime. And then I dumped half of the grape juice I intended for my stomach on my wall, floor, and (miraculously still functioning) cell phone. Sigh.

*The Harsh Cry of the Heron: The Last Tale of the Otori. Think 1600s Japanese historical fiction, with a bit of fantasy element thrown in for flavor. I highly recommend it; the author clearly has a deep understanding of the Japanese language and culture that pervades his writing (he is not Japanese and the book has only been published in English, to my knowledge).

Today I’m back to the School in the Sky, which is a good thing, but is also part of the inspiration for this (rather touchy) subject. As you may be aware, the Japanese education system requires students here to study English for the equivalent of 7th through 12th grade. Many elementary schools are even pushing their kids to start it earlier, beginning with the alphabet and basic vocabulary around 4th grade. Mind you, it takes until 6th grade for the Japanese to completely learn the 2000+ characters they need to know to read their own language, so foreign language instruction at that early level is pretty rudimentary.

Anyway, students study English for a minimum of six years here, whether they like it or not. They study very specific, standardized English, though, through which the one goal is preparing them for high school and college entrance exams. Any of you who have made a serious effort at learning a foreign language before may have an idea of how much this sucks. What happens when your knowledge base has grown to the point where you start becoming curious about grammar and vocabulary not covered by the government-stamped-and-approved textbook? Here…well, not much, unless you’re lucky enough to study somewhere that has an after school English club (not so much the case around my area, but it’s a goal of mine to get one started). So, we have pretty much every student in Japan doing the same dry, boring-ass New Horizon P.O.S. for 6+ years…does it shock you that they aren’t all chomping at the bit with excitement?
The obvious result of this system is that not all students want to learn English. And they certainly don’t all plan on going into English-related fields in the future (if they’re even considering that sort of thing at age 14), so they don’t even have a reason to learn it (aside from those bloody entrance exams, of course). We shouldn’t, then, be at all surprised when we encounter students who couldn’t be arsed to study English even if they were being paid for it. Especially because…

In Japan, one does not fail classes. This is not because they are necessarily a country of geniuses, or because of any sort of societal pressure to study one’s ass off. They don’t fail classes because teachers simply will not fail them. And regardless of what they say, students know this. The students who don’t care (fortunately the minority) know that they do not have to try, that they can sail through junior high school and they’ll still be handed a diploma at the end of 9th grade. They may or may not go on to high school, but that’s hardly a concern of theirs – no, the law does not require them to. These students (hereafter referred to as Coat-racks) can usually blend in well in an average classroom of 30-40, but take them outside that sort of camouflage zone and they stick out like proverbial sore thumbs.

This gets back to part of the inspiration for this entry, the School in the Sky. Most of the kids here are great; they put forth a serious effort (at least, in the English classes that I’m part of) and the teachers all seem proud of them. There are currently only 11 students in this entire little school, though, and the average class size is 2, so there’s nowhere for Coat-racks to hide. When I first walked into one sannensei class here and discovered within ten minutes that my ichinenseis could pwn them without even trying, it was a tad depressing. I asked a little about this and got rather nebulous responses: so-and-so isn’t good at studying, they are often truant, they aren’t interested in going to school, etc. Umm…why? The teachers either honestly don’t know or are saying so to cover for some sort of situation they don’t want to talk about. One can see how this seriously hampers my goal of turning would be Coat-racks into productive, almost-English-speaking members of society.
I don’t really feel angry with these kids, though; they are part of a system that utterly fails to instill in them any desire to succeed. And that’s where I ideally come in.

My role as an English teacher here is one of both instructor and motivator, and the latter is infinitely more complicated than the former. Surely, I have the option of taking the easy way out, of spending my time with the kids who do give a shit and who want to make something of themselves instead of slipping through the cracks of society and working in a factory or McD’s for the rest of their lives. But if I do that, I fail in what is easily at least half of my job here. This doesn’t by any stretch of the imagination mean that I’ve got this motivation thing figured out, though. Humor and general self-degradation are fun and will make (most) students pay attention for at least a bit, but I’m not always the font of clownish idiocy that I strive to be. And there is always that first part of the job, teaching. Ah, what a balancing act this is turning out to be.
In the long run, I know I’ll be fine. I also know that I can’t “save” everyone, that some students are happy where they are and don’t want my help. It still hurts to see them fall, though, especially since I’m fair certain that no one else will pick them up.