A Letter to the PTA
I was recently approached by the local chapter of the PTA to write an article to be placed in their newsletter about the state of English education in Japan as I see it. I was torn about writing what they wanted to hear and what they needed to hear. In the end, I ended up not turning anything in, because I just couldn’t give them the harsh truth. Here’s the article that I wrote for them though. See if you agree…
It was in the Killing Fields in Cambodia where I realized what ESL was really about. I was on holiday, and met a teacher at the Killing Fields who asked me to come and teach his students while I was in the country. I agreed to do so. The students were so eager to learn, and hung on my every word. It wasn’t only English they wanted to learn, but Japanese, French, and nearly any language they could use to speak to the people coming to their country.
That kind of enthusiasm for language learning is what I thought I would get when I moved to Japan nearly three years ago. I was counting on it. Sadly, the reality was quite the opposite: students, babied by their teachers, unwilling to even try; teachers citing the fact that they have to teach only what’s on the entrance exams; everybody exclaiming that they have no chance to speak English. Everywhere I go, I run into a wall of excuses.
These excuses are baseless, and only serve as an insult to the ALTs brought here at great monetary expense to the Japanese taxpayers. With all the tax money that is spent on providing schools with ALTs, if I were a parent with sons/daughters in the Japanese school system, I would be more than a little upset if my child couldn’t answer a simple question like “How are you?” in English after six (usually more) years of education.
I’m not going to offer solutions, as I’ve already done that on numerous occasions to no effect. Rather, I’m going to offer you the choice of either throwing your money away, or demanding solutions and change by MEXT and the government. It seems like an obvious one to me.
Do you think I’m full of shit, or does this have merit to any of the four of you reading this? Of course, the original letter was to be written in Japanese, because none of the people reading the newsletter could read English…
It was in the Killing Fields in Cambodia where I realized what ESL was really about. I was on holiday, and met a teacher at the Killing Fields who asked me to come and teach his students while I was in the country. I agreed to do so. The students were so eager to learn, and hung on my every word. It wasn’t only English they wanted to learn, but Japanese, French, and nearly any language they could use to speak to the people coming to their country.
That kind of enthusiasm for language learning is what I thought I would get when I moved to Japan nearly three years ago. I was counting on it. Sadly, the reality was quite the opposite: students, babied by their teachers, unwilling to even try; teachers citing the fact that they have to teach only what’s on the entrance exams; everybody exclaiming that they have no chance to speak English. Everywhere I go, I run into a wall of excuses.
These excuses are baseless, and only serve as an insult to the ALTs brought here at great monetary expense to the Japanese taxpayers. With all the tax money that is spent on providing schools with ALTs, if I were a parent with sons/daughters in the Japanese school system, I would be more than a little upset if my child couldn’t answer a simple question like “How are you?” in English after six (usually more) years of education.
I’m not going to offer solutions, as I’ve already done that on numerous occasions to no effect. Rather, I’m going to offer you the choice of either throwing your money away, or demanding solutions and change by MEXT and the government. It seems like an obvious one to me.
Do you think I’m full of shit, or does this have merit to any of the four of you reading this? Of course, the original letter was to be written in Japanese, because none of the people reading the newsletter could read English…
posted by spookydonkey at 10:24 AM
1 Comments:
PUSSY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Since when does The Donkey hold back?
The shroud of the dark side has fallen. Into hiding I must go.
-The Tsar
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