It's May. Seems I barely blinked and April was over.
May brings good things. The warmer weather is a boon to any and everyone. Golden Week, a week with 5 consecutive national holidays, starts in just half an hour from the time of me writing this. My sister will be coming tomorrow, and for once without one of our parents slowing us down or holding us back from enjoying time together in Japan. Travel, good food, and a bit of craziness surely await.
May is also coming with some foreboding this year though. Now is the time for me to start getting ready to leave. I'm sending winter clothes home with my sister. Debating what else I should weigh her down with to save me the shipping...my scanner? My guitar? What will go back and what will stay here? What things should I be preparing to part with? The answer to that, of course, is everything. My home, my work, my friends, my LIFE for the past three years...it's all going to change.
The opposite side of separation anxiety is the re-entry anxiety. Where will I live? What will I do for money? Will I still have any friends stateside?
May is here, full of golden glory but with a cold panic at the edges, slowly beginning to seep in. I'm uncertain how much attention I should pay those two opposing feelings. I want desperately to ignore the panic, but I know that will make it grow that much faster. Yet, I don't want it taking over the final times I have to enjoy what I have here.
Current coping strategy:
One day at a time.
Breathe.
Repeat.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Okay, time for another rant about the Japanese education system. Skip over this one if you don't care about how infuriating it can be.
The Ministry of Education has started making English textbooks for elementary school 5th and 6th graders. While they won't be mandatory for a couple more years, my town's elementary schools have elected to start using them. Sounds good, right? Getting the kids to get into English officially earlier on in their education should be a good thing, right? It would be, except that the textbook is an absolute total fucking disaster.
How bad can it be? Let me illuminate you.
Problem 1: The text has no appropriate target teacher.
Almost the entire teacher's manual is written in Japanese. This is great, if you can READ JAPANESE. Many ALTs (Assistant Language Teachers, read: native speaker) can't easily read large textbook passages in Japanese, even those who speak Japanese well. Meanwhile, the Japanese homeroom teacher (JHT) sees the tiny bit of English in the textbook and flips out at the thought of having to try and teach it. So the instructions for the activities are useless for both the ALT who isn't fluent in Japanese and the JHT who utterly terrified at teaching a subject they can't understand themselves.
Katie has been trying to say this to the teachers at her schools. Without Japanese, she can't read the textbook explinations or understand when the Japanese teachers read it to her. They respond by showing her all the flashcards and things that have English writing on them, but no context. So far they have gotten nowhere, and have been unable to start using the textbook.
Problem 2: It's totally disorganized.
This is a problem with most Japanese textbooks that I've encountered. The set up makes no sense from the perspective of a native speaker, or hell, anyone who can speak some English. The first lesson for 6th graders is upper case letters of the alphabet. Okay, not so bad. The second lesson is about counting. THEN, it goes back to lower case letters for the third lesson. I'm sorry, what? We can't do the sections on the alphabet together because...?? This is just one example.
Problem 3: It's below the students' ability level.
I've been upset with the first year Jr. High textbooks for years because they have been undoing the progress in English my elementary students had been making. They come in with the ability to answer questions like "What's your hobby?" or "What's your favorite ~?", and these things are striped out by the Jr. High textbooks and teachers. This takes the degredation of their English ability one step further. What I would normally be teaching to my 1st and 2nd graders is now the topic for my 5th and 6th graders. Not only that, but each lesson is broken down into 3 or 4 classes for material I know they could learn in 1, maybe 2 max. The Japanese teachers even agree with me looking through the book that it is "簡単すぎる"--too easy. The target grammar? Too easy. The textbooks activities? Too easy. And if that's not enough, they're boring too. My teachers have already asked me what activity I would choose instead, because the ones the book comes with are dull. They point to what the textbook calls a "game" and say "ゲームと言うよりクイズ。面白くない。" "Rather than a game, this is like a quiz. It's not fun". I have to agree with them. They are belittling and uninteresting activities.
Problem 4: It's racist.
This is my biggest problem with the textbook, obviously. It irritates me all the more because it's racist under the guise of "internationalization". The first lesson for the 5th graders is Greetings from Around the World. This is where I, the foreigner, am supposed to speak Russian, Chinese, Korean, Portugese, Hindi, etc. I cannot read Russian or Chinese, I can't pronounce words written in Cyrillic or Chinese kanji, and I don't want to katakana my way through them. There isn't even a Western alphabetic spelling of these words...it's the native language or katakana. I don't feel comfortable talking about cultures that are not my own without great amounts of study. I do not want to misrepresent any other country or any other language. Other lessons are things like "Look what people wear in other countries! Look what people in other countries eat!" I know the text is aiming for "Internationalization", but I only come from one country, America. I only speak English, Japanese, and a little Spanish (which, by the way, is the one language the textbook seems to have skipped; not like it's one of the most widely spoken in the world or anything). Mine is the only language/culture I feel comfortable representing. Expecting a single ALT to be the world is unrealistic. It's just as racist and isolationist to think anyone from a single foreign country can do all this as not having us at all...it's still "us Japanese as opposed to those crazy foreigners". I won't stand for it. I'm going to ask at the next meeting that we minimize this aspect of the textbook as much as possible.
I'm up to my neck in work as it is, having to teach Japanese teachers how to do their job is not exactly high on my list of things I want to do. Teaching a textbook I greatly dislike isn't helping either. Venting helps a little though, so if you made it this far, thanks for easing my burden a little.
The Ministry of Education has started making English textbooks for elementary school 5th and 6th graders. While they won't be mandatory for a couple more years, my town's elementary schools have elected to start using them. Sounds good, right? Getting the kids to get into English officially earlier on in their education should be a good thing, right? It would be, except that the textbook is an absolute total fucking disaster.
How bad can it be? Let me illuminate you.
Problem 1: The text has no appropriate target teacher.
Almost the entire teacher's manual is written in Japanese. This is great, if you can READ JAPANESE. Many ALTs (Assistant Language Teachers, read: native speaker) can't easily read large textbook passages in Japanese, even those who speak Japanese well. Meanwhile, the Japanese homeroom teacher (JHT) sees the tiny bit of English in the textbook and flips out at the thought of having to try and teach it. So the instructions for the activities are useless for both the ALT who isn't fluent in Japanese and the JHT who utterly terrified at teaching a subject they can't understand themselves.
Katie has been trying to say this to the teachers at her schools. Without Japanese, she can't read the textbook explinations or understand when the Japanese teachers read it to her. They respond by showing her all the flashcards and things that have English writing on them, but no context. So far they have gotten nowhere, and have been unable to start using the textbook.
Problem 2: It's totally disorganized.
This is a problem with most Japanese textbooks that I've encountered. The set up makes no sense from the perspective of a native speaker, or hell, anyone who can speak some English. The first lesson for 6th graders is upper case letters of the alphabet. Okay, not so bad. The second lesson is about counting. THEN, it goes back to lower case letters for the third lesson. I'm sorry, what? We can't do the sections on the alphabet together because...?? This is just one example.
Problem 3: It's below the students' ability level.
I've been upset with the first year Jr. High textbooks for years because they have been undoing the progress in English my elementary students had been making. They come in with the ability to answer questions like "What's your hobby?" or "What's your favorite ~?", and these things are striped out by the Jr. High textbooks and teachers. This takes the degredation of their English ability one step further. What I would normally be teaching to my 1st and 2nd graders is now the topic for my 5th and 6th graders. Not only that, but each lesson is broken down into 3 or 4 classes for material I know they could learn in 1, maybe 2 max. The Japanese teachers even agree with me looking through the book that it is "簡単すぎる"--too easy. The target grammar? Too easy. The textbooks activities? Too easy. And if that's not enough, they're boring too. My teachers have already asked me what activity I would choose instead, because the ones the book comes with are dull. They point to what the textbook calls a "game" and say "ゲームと言うよりクイズ。面白くない。" "Rather than a game, this is like a quiz. It's not fun". I have to agree with them. They are belittling and uninteresting activities.
Problem 4: It's racist.
This is my biggest problem with the textbook, obviously. It irritates me all the more because it's racist under the guise of "internationalization". The first lesson for the 5th graders is Greetings from Around the World. This is where I, the foreigner, am supposed to speak Russian, Chinese, Korean, Portugese, Hindi, etc. I cannot read Russian or Chinese, I can't pronounce words written in Cyrillic or Chinese kanji, and I don't want to katakana my way through them. There isn't even a Western alphabetic spelling of these words...it's the native language or katakana. I don't feel comfortable talking about cultures that are not my own without great amounts of study. I do not want to misrepresent any other country or any other language. Other lessons are things like "Look what people wear in other countries! Look what people in other countries eat!" I know the text is aiming for "Internationalization", but I only come from one country, America. I only speak English, Japanese, and a little Spanish (which, by the way, is the one language the textbook seems to have skipped; not like it's one of the most widely spoken in the world or anything). Mine is the only language/culture I feel comfortable representing. Expecting a single ALT to be the world is unrealistic. It's just as racist and isolationist to think anyone from a single foreign country can do all this as not having us at all...it's still "us Japanese as opposed to those crazy foreigners". I won't stand for it. I'm going to ask at the next meeting that we minimize this aspect of the textbook as much as possible.
I'm up to my neck in work as it is, having to teach Japanese teachers how to do their job is not exactly high on my list of things I want to do. Teaching a textbook I greatly dislike isn't helping either. Venting helps a little though, so if you made it this far, thanks for easing my burden a little.
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