Even JET promotional videos began to include critical as well as positive comments from participants. Now that the JET Program had a proven track record, it was in CLAIR's best interest to find ways to screen out candidates with unrealistic expectations.
But the growing confidence on the part of Japanese staff also raises the possibility that insularity may increase. Program coordinators today are less likely to be involved in the big decisions regarding program policy than they were in the early years of the program. Japanese officials have moved to minimize their voice in selecting their own successors, and it is now widely accepted that the job is held for two or three years at most. As CLAIR officials outgrow their initial position of humble apprentices to become "diversity experts," it is becoming clear that the sharing of ideas with program coordinators does not mean granting them equal footing in the arena of decision making.
THE MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND THE REFORM OF ENGLISH EDUCATION: LOW-KEY PERESTROIKA?
CLAIR has achieved some success in fashioning a program that is attractive both to local officials and to foreign participants; what of the Ministry of Education's attempts to disseminate a top-down innovation throughout the entire public secondary school system? The question is intriguing not only because of the ministry's initial ambivalence about the program but also because of its well-entrenched reputation as a bastion of conservatism and rigidity. That image is captured in a political cartoon run in the japan Times as recently as April 1997. Four identical male ministry bureaucrats dressed in dark suits are shown musing, one by one: "Why should we in the Ministry of Education waste taxpayer money funding research on cloning humans when we've already developed a perfectly good system for producing clones in the classroom?"29
The ministry's record of engagement with the JET Program over the past decade suggests that the picture is a good deal more complex than this cartoon implies. First of all, the official guidelines and rhetoric emanating from national-level officials are clearly consistent with the goal of making English education more communication-oriented. For example, the ministry's Handbook for Team Teaching, published in 1994, stresses the idea that the team-teaching classroom involves a substantial departure from traditional methods. Its demonstration videos highlight this point as well: one team-taught class features a lively session in which an ALT uses a make-believe bottle of "natto juice" (natto is fermented soybeans) to teach a lesson on likes and dislikes.
Consider, too, the following statement of the goals of the program by Wada Minoru at a midyear block seminar in 1989:
First, we should try to develop students' communicative competence and performance and their awareness of different cultures. Up to this moment, the majority of Japanese students cannot communicate in English, and they don't know about different customs, values, and lifestyles. In order to internationalize, we must work toward these ends. Second, we must develop the above skills in JTLs. There is a big gap between what Japanese teachers are doing and what the Mombusho wants to accomplish, and in order to bridge this gap we need ALTs. All 35,000 JTLs throughout Japan follow almost the same teaching procedure, one that focuses on linguistic competence-grammar, sentence patterns, and pronunciation of new words. These teaching methods have been firmly established through a long history, and JTLs are very stubborn, though not entirely wrong, in sticking to them. I believe we need to change them, and if JTLs become more receptive to the ideas of communicative competence, then they have become more "internationalized."
Wada went on to assess JTLs' receptivity to change critically: "The biggest problem with JTLs is that they are not accustomed to accepting new ideas. They also get upset about the new ideas the ALTs suggest. I strongly urge them to be more attentive to new ideas.... I say to those who are hesitant that this is a good chance to break the vicious circle of teachers not wanting to team-teach because they don't want to use English because they can't speak it because they won't try. . . . I believe some of the Japanese here are becoming angry with me."30 After this speech the ALT sitting next to me turned with a skeptical look. "I don't know," he said. "His speech sounded good, but maybe he was just telling us what he thought we wanted to hear."
The question of what the Ministry of Education has done for the JET Program, beyond making speeches, is worth exploring further. As we will see, the ministry unmistakably (albeit slowly) has taken concrete steps to help realize what it perceives to be the program's goals.
The First Foreigner in the Ministry of Education
Arguably, one of the ministry's most revolutionary moves came in 1990 when the Upper Secondary School Division hired a former ALT and AJET chair from Chiba-ken to serve as an ALT consultant. When Robert Juppe, Jr., moved into his cramped quarters in the High School Education Section, he became the first foreigner the Ministry of Education had ever em- ployed.3" Bureaucratic rivalry with CLAIR and the Ministry of Home Affairs played a part in the hiring. Wada informed me that the Upper Secondary School Division believed CLAIR to be primarily concerned with the CIR component of the JET Program, and they questioned CLAIR's ability to provide effective guidelines to ALTs about team teaching.
Once inside the ministry, Juppe gained an insider's view of the making of ALT and team-teaching policy, and the portrait that he paints is of an office of very competent individuals, many of whom have progressive ideas but are also extremely conservative in administering change. Juppe recalled his first reaction to being summoned for the pro forma "job interview": "At the time Mombusho had a horrible image among JETs. They were called the faceless blue suits. Like the politburo up there-these white shirts, similar neckties, and I thought, good heavens, I'm going to go into this. The worst thing that could happen is to fall over into their camp and start representing their interests." Over the next three years, however, Juppe developed a close working relationship with the officials in his office, where he was widely respected for his work ethic and for his ability to generate creative, cutting edge proposals while maintaining a healthy respect for protocol.32 In addition to fielding calls and complaints from ALTs, he was often sent out to conduct training sessions on team teaching for JTLs, and he participated in the ministry-sponsored intensive one-month study programs (shidosha koza) for select JTLs. Most important, in the eyes of ALTs Juppe gave the Ministry of Education a human face, and his reputation and accessibility helped it immeasurably in forestalling their criticism. Juppe became known among ALTs as the "team-teaching guru" for his dedication to improving the classroom dimensions of the program; when he moved on in the spring of 1996, after giving the keynote speech at the renewers' conference and receiving a standing ovation, many commented that it felt like the passing of an era.
Yet by the end of his tenure, even Juppe's contagious optimism had become tempered by the administrative conservatism in his office. He recalled that when he first came to the job, brimming with enthusiasm, he would write detailed summaries of each confidential ALT call that came into the office and painstakingly translate them into Japanese for the benefit of his co-workers. Only later did he realize that no one ever read them: his boss was primarily interested in the number of calls that came in. In order to facilitate communication among incoming ALTs with teaching experience, he asked that asterisks be placed by the names of Tokyo orientation workshop presenters who had teaching credentials. But when ministry officials heard of his idea they immediately overruled it, arguing that all JET participants must be treated equally. Juppe found early on that most of his proposals to reform the structure of the three national-level conferences were politely, but routinely, ignored. He finally came to accept that, like the program coordinators, his main role was to serve as a buffering agent.
Team-Teaching Laboratory Schools
At roughly the same time that they hired an ALT advisor, the Ministry of Education embarked on a long-term project to conduct research on team teaching and to create centers of local expertise in the method. Under the plan, each prefecture selected one school to model team teaching on a twoyear cycle.
At the end of the two years, the model school conducted an open house (consisting of demonstration classes, discussion groups, and research reports) and published a record of its accomplishments; these were gathered by the ministry and used in making policy and in advising local boards of education. The ministry compiled summaries of the results from each of the twenty-four junior high schools and twenty-three senior high schools that participated in the first cycle and published them in a special "teamteaching" edition of its journal Curriculum Materials for Secondary Education, thus making the results available to all teachers.33 By the year 1997, the fourth and final two-year cycle had been completed: in each prefecture, four junior or senior high schools had been designated as "special research schools" (kenkyu shiteiko).
The schools usually found that being chosen to serve as prefectural model was a mixed blessing. The amount of extra work was considerable, with the added pressure of having to make a highly visible public presentation at the end. Moreover, there was some question about the program's utility; ALTs often complained that the model classes presented were so far removed from real classrooms as to be virtually pointless. Yet many JTLs did report significant professional growth, crediting the concerted focus on improving team teaching over an extended period and the opportunity to conduct mini-research projects on team teaching in their schools.
In addition, Ministry of Education curriculum specialists spend a large part of their time traveling to prefectures all over Japan to give advice on team teaching to ETCs and JTLs. These frequent interactions both keep officials apprised of local developments and foster a hands-on relationship that is helpful when implementing top-down reforms. The entire system thus represents a useful model for in-service training.
The success of any top-down innovation depends in part on the extent to which those at the lower levels, who are directly responsible for its implementation, are involved in the planning stages and have the same understanding of the project as those at the upper levels, who are making policy. This is especially true of interventions that are ambitious in scope and require radical change. In this case, however, the Ministry of Education could not involve JTLs at all in the initial phase, because planning had to be coordinated with other ministries. Thus, the success of the JET Program ultimately hinged on whether the capacity and willpower to adapt could be generated among local teachers: in-service training efforts were directed toward this end.
The New Course of Study and Textbook Revision
In -1994 the Ministry of Education put in place new curriculum guidelines (shido yoryo) that gave junior high schools the option to have English classes meet four days a week instead of three and authorized new high school classes emphasizing listening and speaking skills. Under the new oral communication guidelines, high schools can now choose from Oral Communication A, a conversation course; Oral Communication B, a listening course; and Oral Communication C, a course focusing on formal thinking and speaking. So far very few schools have adopted the C course, as its goals are unclear, but Oral Communication A and B have proven to be quite popular. According to the head of a ministry committee formed in the early 199os to assess trends and prospects for foreign language education in Japan, the JET Program provided an important impetus for these changes.;
Yet these new guidelines by no means implied that Ministry of Education officials were willing to entertain the possibility of using materials other than the approved textbooks for communication-oriented language learning. Wada explained to ALTs: "The textbooks are not always useful for communication and we need to rewrite them, but Japanese teachers like to teach textbooks. You need to use the texts indirectly. If ALTs continue to reject textbooks, I'm afraid Japanese teachers don't want to invite you to their schools, so try to compromise." Part plea and part threat, his comment highlights the delicate line that the ministry has had to walk between acknowledging the ALTs' complaints about the drawbacks of the textbooks and appeasing JTLs who insist on the grammar translation method (either because they prefer it or because they believe it essential to prepare their students for the entrance exams).
ALTs outside the Classroom
In addition to overtly intervening to improve the team-teaching classroom, Ministry of Education officials have also encouraged host institutions and schools to use ALTs to change the climate of English education in more subtle ways. ALTs are increasingly used by prefectural boards of education to help conduct job interviews for prospective JTLs, and both ETCs and JTLs report that the perception that conversational ability counts is markedly affecting new hires. One veteran JTL recalled: "Last semester we had two teachers for teacher training. The first one had been in Britain for a year, and she had beautiful pronunciation and the students evaluated her really highly. But the second one didn't. I think new English teachers in Japan are increasingly going to be judged by a higher standard because of ALTs." ALTs are also being asked more frequently to serve as judges at English speech contests, which are ubiquitous at the secondary school level in Japan. In many cases the criteria used by ALTs to assess students' delivery differ from those used by the Japanese judges.35 How and whether the Japanese approach will survive in the face of the communication-oriented criteria of the ALTs is an interesting question for the future.
Another unintended effect of the JET Program may be the gradual eradication of so-called Janglish, English that doesn't make sense to a native speaker. Now that the "English police" are scattered through every community in Japan, there is scarcely a T-shirt or sign that can escape their watchful eyes.
Progressive Ideas, Conservative Administration
Taken together, the above efforts suggest that the JET Program may have produced low-key perestroika at the Ministry of Education: officials there are now irrevocably committed to promoting conversational skills in foreign language education. Two developments in the late 199os provide a hint of where reform efforts may be directed in the coming years. The first was the arrival of two assistant Korean teachers (AKTs) and three assistant Chinese teachers (ACTs) in August -1998. Previously, China and Korea had been involved solely on the CIR side of the JET Program; but as economic and political ties with Asian countries have strengthened in recent years, there has been growing pressure to offer Korean and Chinese as foreign language electives in public schools. In fact, in 1997 the most popular non-English foreign language studied in high school was Chinese, with 15,390 students studying at 303 schools (201 public and 102 private).36
The second development is that Ministry of Education officials now talk openly about the possibility of introducing English classes in public elementary schools. In 1996 a high-profile ministry task force recommended that the teaching of English at elementary schools be seriously considered, and several pilot projects in this area have been completed. Ministry surveys also revealed that in 1998 roughly one-half of all ALTs had conducted some form of English or "international understanding" class at an elementary school. Though formalizing this arrangement would involve surmounting formidable legal and logistical barriers as well as resistance from some elementary school teachers, the new course of study in 2002 at the elementary level will see a new addition to the curriculum-general studies (sogo gakushft). It will be up to each school to develop its own integrated study course covering areas of international understanding, the environment, information technologies, and social welfare.
Skeptics will undoubtedly argue that even if such efforts are sincere, they will bear little fruit so long as the current entrance exams and textbook-screening process remain in place. Certainly most ministry officials see the entrance exams as a powerful motivators of student achievement, and that system is unlikely to be overhauled in the foreseeable future-particularly since it is largely controlled by university officials who make up exams for their department. But the content of entrance exams may be changing. For example, in what was widely hailed as a major step forward, Tokyo University decided to include a listening component on their entrance exam in English; and as JTLs have
become more comfortable with the practice of team teaching itself, they have more forcefully questioned how to evaluate oral communication classes effectively. As Wada remarked, "ALTs are one part of the process of changing English education. We must change the textbooks, teacher training, guidelines. But we can't change the whole education system so quickly. If we compare with ten years ago, we've made lots of progress."
To many observers, however, that "progress" seems painfully slow. Given that methods of assessment play a powerful role in shaping teaching strategies, the inclusion of a listening component on entrance exams could be viewed as an important marker of change in Japanese foreign language education. Yet in 1996, while 41.4 percent of national universities reported that at least one department in the university required such a listening component, the figure at private universities was only 18 percent, and for local public universities (operated by prefectural or municipal governments) it was even lower (9.6 percent)." Moreover, the consensus among virtually all the major players in the JET Program is that the Ministry of Education has been the most resistant to change: in spite of ringing public endorsements of communication-oriented language teaching, ministry officials and their spokespersons at the prefectural level, the ETCs, seem determined to find a way to wedge the team-taught class into the existing system without making any major structural changes. We should also remember that foreigners are still prohibited from becoming certified to teach in public schools; and though recently more high schools have begun to offer German, French, Korean, and Chinese, English continues to be the foreign language of choice at all levels. In short, the JET Program, while important, hardly compares with the other two major transformations in Japanese education, which took place during the early Meiji period and during the Allied Occupation.
Importing Diversity: Inside Japan's JET Program Page 34
