Importing Diversity: Inside Japan's JET Program

by David L. McConnell

  To return to the case at hand, Richard's ideas about discipline fit neither with Yamada-sensei's educational values nor with the larger structure and rationale of middle school education in Japan. Because there is no tracking or ability grouping in most Japanese public junior high schools, disruptive students cannot be relegated to special classes or groups. Nor can students be removed from class or suspended from school at this age-teachers maintain that the constitutional guarantee of equal educational opportunity prohibits such action. Thus, as Fukuzawa reminds us, academic instruction and discipline are inseparable at this stage: "the quality and quantity of instruction for the most highly motivated students are directly related to the behavior of the most problematic students."9 Yamada-sensei was not yet prepared to give up on the offending students in the interest of the academic progress of the rest of the class.

  Moreover, Yamada-sensei saw Richard as contributing to the problem with the eighth-grade class at Kamo. First, he argued that students know that a JTL will not use severe punishment in a class with an ALT so they act up because it is a "class oriented toward the outside (yosoyuki jugyo)." Second, he took issue with Richard's attempts to become the disciplinarian himself, particularly when physical contact was involved: "It makes a huge difference who touches the student. For it to be accepted, it must be an ingroup member-for example, a homeroom teacher with whom a relationship has been built up. If an outsider touches him, it's a loss of face for that student." Finally, he felt that in several instances Richard had not exhibited sensitivity toward "protecting" students who were weak in English, a sentiment with which other JTLs agreed:

  The ALTs don't know anything about students' situations-whether they're bad, violent, and so on. We are very careful in how we handle students because we don't want to make them feel ashamed, but ALTs can't know in what situations students feel ashamed. I remember once Richard taught many new words and then gave a test, but one student had low ability and a stammer, and he answered in a small voice. Then Richard raised his voice at him, "Why didn't you listen to me?" and the boy cringed. So I think ALTs don't worry enough about how students feel. We are very careful not to hurt the students' feelings (kizu wo tsukenai yo ni).

  Yamada-sensei continues to be an active supporter of the JET Program, but his experience with Richard impressed on him the depths of some cultural gulfs between ALTs and JTLs. He concluded, "The problem is that most ALTs are too independent. We want them to depend on us, but they never ask our opinions in a serious way or say sumimasen (I'm sorry) and apologize for the inconveniences they create."

  Kawaguchi Junior High School

  Even the special treatment afforded Karen at Nishikawa paled next to Kristin's celebrity reception at a small, rural junior high school in the southwestern corner of the prefecture. A California native, Kristin was posted to a small district board of education where no one spoke any English at all. At first it seemed as if Kristin's year in Japan was headed for disaster. Before she left the United States, the board of education had written to ask if she wanted to rent furniture for the year. Kristin replied "yes"; but on arrival, she decided that it was all too expensive. She instructed the board of education to have all the furniture removed, informing them that she would instead buy the things she needed at a second-hand shop. Komori-sensei, a JTL called in to serve as a liaison with the board of education, told me: "Well, it turns out that Kristin's predecessor wrote and said, 'Don't accept any expensive things because Japanese are soft toward foreigners (gaijin ni yowai) and will give you everything you need.' Sure enough, I ended up giving her my guest futon (sleeping mat)! Can you believe that? Even if it was expensive, if it was the board of education that had arranged it, we couldn't refuse it." She continued:

  Kristin had bad manners when she first arrived, too. Her nails were too long and her earrings too big and flashy. When I first met her, she was sitting in the board of education waving a fan, chewing gum, and wearing a T-shirt with no sleeves and a miniskirt. I was both depressed and shocked at the same time. The board of education officials asked me to advise her to cut her nails and not use so much makeup and big earrings, but when I brought it to her attention, she said, "Oh, don't worry about that. The Ministry of Education said that we're here to demonstrate American culture, not to become Japanese." I thought that answer was really self-serving. When I told the board of education officials what she said, they just decided to give up, saying she was too young to understand. But, you know, gradually she changed her behavior. I think it was experience more than my advice.

  Kristin's board of education decided to dispatch her to three rural junior schools for one semester each. This, they speculated, would allow for a more concentrated and meaningful school experience. Her first school, Kawaguchi, with a student population of only 230, proved to be a perfect match for Kristin's temperament and outlook. The principal treated Kristin like his own daughter, and he even agreed to let the head English teacher temporarily forgo her duties as homeroom teacher in order to concentrate on team teaching. The JTLs as a group decided to completely suspend use of the textbook for team-taught classes during the three months Kristin was present.

  When Kristen first visited her school, she was greeted by students staring, waving, and even venturing a bold, "Hello! Hello!" Her shoes were placed in the shoe box reserved for guests. There was a schoolwide assembly to introduce her to the student body. The English teachers held a welcome party for her and later gave her a present on her birthday (not a common practice in Japan). She was called on to give a speech to the PTA and to write an article for the local newspaper. One night she was interviewed on the local television news. She had a fan club among the boy students, and toward the end of her visit, many students approached her for an autograph or a handshake. Finally, there was a farewell party, which the Japanese teacher of English described to me:

  For the students she was nothing less than a celebrity. All she had to do was say something and everyone would marvel at her beautiful pronunciation. For her farewell party the student council planned for weeks. They conducted a survey of all the students and then we made up a song to the tune of "You Are My Sunshine." Except we sang "You are my teacher, my wonderful teacher, please don't take my wonderful teacher away." They gave her paper cranes they had made, and there were speeches from student representatives and from Kristin. Then they gave her roses, and she paraded out of the gym to the music of "Let It Be." It was an incredibly touching occasion.

  The only trying moment for the teachers was Kristen's reaction to the annual English recitation contest. She had helped students practice for it and was invited to come see the performances. One JTL remembered:

  We had the kids do Martin Luther King's speech at the English Recitation Contest. The kids tried hard. We should have told them to do it in a more interesting way, but we had them memorize the speech. Anyway, we invited Kristin to the speech contest, but she suddenly got up and left without any explanation after a few minutes. We couldn't figure out what was wrong. One of the other teachers wondered if it might have something to do with the lack of emotion in the students' recitation. So later I called her at home and that was it-she was really upset because they seemed so insensitive to the real meaning of that historic speech. I never realized her feelings about blacks until she left the gym that day. You know, our students, they'll just scribble on pictures of blacks in their text without thinking. But because of this incident we've had a chance to reflect on the mistakes we're making, and next time we'll know to prevent this kind of thing from happening. Kristin understood that we should have done more to teach the students. Anyway, that was the biggest shock for me. Kristin always showed how she was feeling. We Japanese smile without showing our feelings.

  In talking further with this teacher, I was struck that at least as strong as her desire to better understand African American history was a determination to learn the practical steps to take in order not to offend an ALT the next time.

  DIVERSITY AMONG JTLS

/>   If nothing else, the above vignettes all demonstrate beyond dispute the tremendous range in how JTLs and other school staff react to their encounter with the ALT. Such variety undermines the simplistic view that all Japanese respond to foreigners solely on the basis of a deep-seated cultural preference for keeping them at arm's length. No one better recognizes this diversity than the ALTs themselves, who, in the course of a year on the JET Program, will normally visit a handful of different schools and team-teach with dozens of JTLs. Though typologies-which tend to pigeonhole complex responses and to minimize change over time-have their limitations, they nevertheless are useful as a heuristic device to sketch out the varying stances taken by JTLs toward the ALTs.10

  The Enthusiasts

  Likening the JET participants to Commodore Perry's "black ships" opening a reluctant Japan to the Western world is not necessarily a negative metaphor; there are a small handful of teachers, quite competent in English conversation, who view the ALTs as much-needed medicine for what they consider to be the ailments of an outdated and insular system of education. These JTLs see the foreigners as providing a breath of fresh air-exactly what Japanese education and society need to bring the country into the twenty-first century. Historically, they point out, it is only through outside intervention and external pressure that Japan has been able to change. They must therefore rely on the ALTs to do what they themselves cannot, and thus they openly welcome the JET participants. Most larger schools can count on having one or two of these enthusiastic teachers, and not surprisingly the bulk of the supervision of the ALT falls on their shoulders. Of the fifty-four JLTs I interviewed, eleven shared this view of the ALTs.

  Within this category there at least two subgroups. On the one hand are the "teachers turned social critics" who, as a result of their political views and more confrontational interpersonal styles, are already somewhat marginalized within the school. They may use the ALT as a sounding board for their critique of Japanese society, in many cases confirming the ALT's own superficial assessments of the "problems" with Japan. As we saw in the case of Ikuno-sensei at Nishikawa, the team-taught class becomes a fertile ground for developing not only oral communication skills but also a critical quality of mind about all manner of injustices in the contemporary world.

  On the other hand are a group of "cautious enthusiasts," such as Uedasensei and Yamada-sensei, who embrace the ALTs but attempt to channel the positive energy of the visit in ways that are acceptable to the school culture. While by no means hiding their support for the program, they nevertheless recognize the imperative of maintaining goodwill with other teachers. As they are often expected to serve as the ALTs' liaison, they may face the challenging task of toning down ALTs' views or requests that challenge the status quo. In general, they bring imagination and creativity to the task of team teaching; they become true partners in planning and implementing lessons.

  As a whole, the enthusiasts feel that the JET Program has been a great step forward, no matter what the current difficulties might be, because it has undeniably provided more Japanese teachers and students the opportunity to communicate with native speakers of English and, to a lesser extent, French, German, Korean, and Chinese. In addition, because Japanese teachers are rotated to a variety of schools over the course of their careers, ALTS are almost as likely to meet an avid supporter of team teaching in a remote mountain village as in a large metropolis. Even the enthusiasts, however, take the risk that team teaching will be blamed if their students' test scores should decline while they are embracing communicationoriented teaching techniques.

  The Detractors

  At the other end of the spectrum are a minority of teachers who view the ALTs with a great deal of skepticism and the JET Program as illustrating the problems created when Japanese leaders bow to foreign pressure. To these JTLs, the ALTs are a virus whose potential for harm must be controlled and contained as much as possible. They see Japanese education as in no way outdated but instead as a striking success precisely because of its emphasis on rigor, standardization, and homogenization. Not surprisingly, these JTLs talk at length about keeping ALTs in their proper place and have little tolerance for activities designed to liven up the English classroom. One female JTL, thirty-six, expressed her frustration with the JET Program in some detail:

  What I want to know is why the Ministry of Education hired so many people. I've heard it's because of the trade imbalance. But they can't even speak English in the ministry. What do they think they're doing? Which are they aiming for, ability (noryoku) or individuality (kosei)? It's a terrible dilemma I face between choosing a fun class or raising students' abilities. Of course, I have to choose ability and exam preparation because that's what will help them more in the future, even though the questions on exams are ones that bright native speakers can't answer...

  We don't know how to handle ALTs. We Japanese are all of one race and we understand each other. We disregard contracts. Maybe I'm a workaholic to Americans, but I don't care. Our prosperity is because of our hard work; it's because of education that we have today's standard. If we educate like Americans, then our students will become lazy and idle. Nurturing students with individuality (kosei yutakana seito) really means producing overly frank and arrogant students (jishin mo- chitsugi). To understand the Japanese heart you have to understand a Noh play and the idea of modesty. This is a virtue in Japan. The merits of internationalization are that we'll learn to speak frankly and lose our inferiority complex. The demerits are that we risk losing the Japanese heart.

  When we have ALTs at school, we fall behind in the textbook and then parents complain because many of them are kyoiku mama (mothers preoccupied with their children's education). When Katherine came to our school, she was very sensational and brought an international atmosphere, but nothing was gained in terms of ability. Her lesson was just an amusement. Of course, I didn't tell her, but inside I was thinking, "She's just a young girl, this is such a waste of time." So I'm against ALTs.

  Though it is almost unheard of for Japanese teachers to speak in this way directly to the ALT, nine of the JLTs I interviewed expressed similar views to me.

  Most JLTs in this category have little interest in interacting with foreigners in general and are likely to try to avoid team teaching. They usually have little skill in conversational English, and if forced to team-teach, they are likely to reduce the ALT to the status of a human tape recorder. Without question these teachers receive the harshest criticism from ALTs. One recalled:

  I had one teacher, a head teacher actually, who would only speak to me in Japanese and I'd ask him, a week ahead of time, "What are we going to do for class?" and he'd just smile and say, "Don't worry," and wander away. And so I'd keep trying to get information out of him but he'd either avoid me or profess ignorance all the way up to the lesson. He would send two students to bring me to class; he wouldn't even walk there with me! And all he ever did was follow the book. Completely book-centered, and the entire class was conducted in Japanese. After one class he'd tell the class monitor to mark page 17, and then the next class he'd check with the monitor and say, "We're picking up right here at the bottom of page 17." He'd put a big chair at the back for me, and I wouldn't have to do a thing, except read a few new vocabulary words. So I'd sit there in this chair while he taught and he'd do pair reading and choral reading and then ask them some true-false [questions], and then class was over.

  The danger of such an approach, of course, is that the ALT may not accept it; thus the likelihood of conflict escalates. ALTs love to tell war stories when they get together socially, and an entire genre is dedicated to creative ways of sending a message to JTLs who, as one ALT put it, have their "heads in the sand." In addition to telling the JTL point-blank that "I don't do tape-recorder classes," these methods include taking out a novel to read in class or wadding up the lesson plan and depositing it in the trash in full view of the JTL and students.

  The Ambivalent JTLs

  Between these two attention-getti
ng extremes lie the majority of JTLs, who are quite ambivalent about the JET Program and view the ALTs as a mixed blessing. These teachers acutely feel the difficulties created by the insertion of reform-minded native speakers into an exam-oriented school environment. They recognize both the limitations of their own training and the need to prepare students for an international age, yet by force of habit if not by conviction they are wedded to teaching English by the grammar translation method. Not only are they faced with losing precious class time to conversational activities and games, which they perceive as having little relevance to the entrance exams, but they feel at a severe disadvantage: because many of them were schooled via rote memorization with an emphasis on grammar, their own conversational skills are limited. As a result, many genuinely fear the prospect of interacting with an unpredictable ALT who may cause them to lose face (kao wo tsubusu) in front of colleagues or students by asking a question that they cannot answer. Indeed, the stress of working with an ALT can manifest itself in physical symptoms.n

  Moreover, given the cultural imperative of treating the foreigner as a guest, the amount of extra work associated with hosting an ALT is considerable. One veteran high school teacher tried to put a positive spin on their situation, again using the black ship metaphor: