The big picture

...and the myopic dumbasses who can't be bothered to even take a glance at it.

Heh, welcome to my world. Okay, that's not entirely accurate...the people I work with are, on the whole, motivated and caring individuals who take their jobs seriously and treat their students well. The system we work within, though, has us so absurdly fettered to a draconic, useless, backwards, utterly wrong method that integrating innovative and motivating activities into the curriculum is, at best, a violent struggle. Whew. [/vitriol]

Now that I've gotten that out of my system and taken a few breaths, I'll take a little space here explaining what the hell I'm talking about. First, a question: If you choose to learn a foreign language, what are your reasons for doing so?
I gave this question to 80 of my students in survey format, and got back the following answers:

Understanding foreign languages will increase my understanding of my mother tongue: 9%
Want to communicate better with foreigners: 53%
Speaking foreign languages is sexy/cool: 4%
I want to travel the world: 18%
I can learn expressions that don't exist in Japanese: 1%
If I can't speak foreign languages, nobody will hire me: 3%
It might be useful someday: 8%
Other: 4%

One can see that the majority of answers I received are focused around one thing: communication. I think it's safe to say that one could find answers like this to the same question all over the world. Most people who want to learn another country's tongue want to do it so that they can communicate. Okay, well...shouldn't a mandatory, government-sponsored program for students of a foreign language (in this case, English) be focused around teaching them to communicate using said language, then? Yes, perhaps? You'd like to think so, too. MEXT, the Ministry for Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology, *insert derisive snort here* here in Japan, doesn't feel that way, though. Rather, they feel that the score/grade of a single test is suitable for determining any K-12 student's English abilities.
As a result, classes are supposed to be taught with the only objective of preparing students for a test. Does this sound at all familar to any of my American readership? *cough*...no children left behind...*cough*

To make matters even worse, there is no speaking section at all on the vast majority of these tests. Let me put this in perspective:
The tests I am referring to are the entrance examinations necessary to attend high school and university in Japan. No, you don't get to automatically go to either; you must first score at least a certain number on a test. These tests determine a student's future, period. Why? Because the school that you go to in this country is just as (if not more) important as what you actually do there. Top employers look for graduates of the top universities, and good luck getting most of them to even talk to you if you scored amazing marks and did breakthrough research at the University of Podunk, Nowheresville. So, students from about age 13 are under enormous pressure to succeed. Failure at the junior high level means no good high school, which means inadequate preparation for college entrance exams, which means attending a substandard college, which means the companies that pay the big bucks won't even read your resume. And nowhere in this, in 6 years of mandatory English education, is there actually a requirement to speak a word of English. These students aren't learning to speak a langauge; they are learning to crack a code. That's what the government makes English for them - a "code" that must be deciphered into "real" Japanese so they can understand it and pass a test.
...And yet, all these kids want is to be able to communicate. Gahhh...

I'm not going to end this entry on such a foul note, though, because there is hope. The JET Programme started 20 years ago with the goal of exposing students in Japan to real English in the classroom. My role in this is to motivate students to want to learn English, and then give them a chance to use it in a meaningful fashion. Now, as with any school subject, some students like English and others don't. That's just a reality that I can only affect so much. But for the students who want to learn actual spoken English, there is no concrete reward for their studies, such as better test scores or a bright college future. Classes are getting better, though. My prefecture has strong scores in English use in the classroom, and my JTEs (especially Saint) encourage it well.
Change, a phenomenon that the Japanese seem violently resistant to, is of course taking place slowly. I do still see setbacks. I do hear from parents who oppose the JET Programme because it distracts students from learning English material they will be tested on. I'm on board for at least another eight months, though, and I'm here to teach real English. Try and stop me.