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Freedom School
Me and my seagull friend "Liebe", the Noheji School Festival mascot.
BigDaikon.com is a popular forum for people who choose to live in Japan just so that they can endlessly complain about it. I almost never bother to read that site, but sometimes I stumble by chance upon posts there that actually are kind of interesting. This thread about things in Japan that will shock you reminded me a lot of my controversial Memo to Japan post, but less tongue in cheek. It got me thinking about how the grass can often look greener from the other side. I'm sure lots of the newbies joining us in good old Aomori in a few weeks will have many of their fantasies about Japan crushed after a month or two living here. By the 5 or 6 month point they'll probably be writing inflammatory messages on the internet as well.
Today is day two of Noheji's school festival. For the students this means lots of fun times watching movies, cooking yaki-soba, breakdancing, singing karaoke, or watching plays and concerts. For me it means working all weekend and getting constanly hit up for 100yen by the students for their dangerously undercooked food. Tomorrow is the school's sports festival which involves lots of marching, running and games like tug-of-war. The students spent much of last week preparing for both festivals, painting Lilo & Stitch on big bilboards, making papier mache cartoon characters, decorating their classrooms and learning choreography for the big marching/dancing competition. To an outsider like me, all of this seems a little childish for students their age, but then so does just about everything else about high school in Japan.
This past week I taught a class about the differences between Canadian and Japanese high schools. The students were shocked that in Canada teenagers can drive a car to school, don't have to clean the school at the end of the day, take spare classes, have 2 months of vacation in summer (with no over summer homework), and are able to smoke outside of school grounds without fear of being hunted down by teacher/spies. I'd never heard so many "Ehhhhhhh?'s" outside of my TV set before. One student asked me which system I liked better. I was teaching alone, so I'm not sure how much of this sank in, but I tried to explain that I probably wouldn't have liked going to a Japanese-style school when I was a teenager, but that I'm not sure they would like a Canadian style system either. I'm sure nobody understood my explanation about how in Canada students are treated in a more adult manner than in Japan, but that this also means they are expected to behave in a more adult manner. Among other things, I told them about punishments like 'detention' and getting sent to the principal's office, which are completely foreign concepts here.
I surveyed the students and asked for their opinions on such issues as if students should be allowed to dye their hair, wear earrings or drive a car. I found that they mostly all agreed with Canadian-style school rules, especially on the issue of more free time, which they were unanimously in favor of. When I collected their worksheets at the end of class, many students had written things on them such as "I want to go to freedom school!". Looking at all the fun they seem to be having today, and thinking back at what high school was like for me, I'm not sure if they'd really feel that way if they got a taste of what "freedom school" is really like. While some of the more rebellious students would probably be right at home in a Canadian high school, I have a feeling most of my students would wind up just as frustrated as us gaijin often are living here.
8 comments
Abouu Japanese school, i though that here children are teach to be responsible earlier.
5 years old walking alone to school, childrens taking bus alone.
About, cleaning the room and driving, well.
Clean your own mess should be learn everywhere, is a good thing.
And about driving, i thing the problem is more about parking places. You know, japan is has this problem. And so Japan has lots of small streets, i see here in Kisarasu where i live.
Well, i studied in Brazil so theres not many things i think its bad in Japanese school. Only those awfull sailor uniforns girls should wear. Ble =P
bye bye. =)
You just convinced me to sign up for JET.
Incidentally, Japanese youth these days have far more free time and vacation than they used to. In my sports days, everyone did this arcane "warm up" excersize that they all learned as children. Apparently the neighborhood PA system would wake everyone up at 6am during their summer "vacations" to do these excersizes. However evil this sounds, now that the kids have more free time people are clueless as to what to do with it, and there is a rise in aimlessness among youth. You should ask your teachers and friends about "futouko" and "niito", but from my understanding the fomer are primary school students who have an anxiety disorder about social interaction, and the latter are college graduates who refuse to move out or get a job and are supported by parents guilty and ashamed of their absentee parenthood. While there are surely many legitimate neural and psychological disorders that are overlooked in Japan, my guess is that these young people are more the products of an increasing pessimism about the great Japanese promise, that is, if you study hard and never deviate from the path that's set for you, you will gain a place at an invincible company who will support you and your family through the next generation. As we are beginning to see, cultural insularity and increasing economic pressure from other Asian countries is eroding this myth, and it's my guess that the questioning of the beauracracy machine will continue and that sooner or later Japan will face a cultural revolution similar to that of the 60's US. That was one of the reasons I came to Japan in the first place, to witness this transformation (or at least parts of it) first hand, and therefore I believe that the bitching on the daikon is immature but absolutely necessary. Japan DOES need more foreigners living here and needs to recognize the value of them, including their complaints and opinions. JETs and all foreigners should not come here "to fit in" or "obey another culture", we should just be ourselves, as this is the true meaning of internationalization. Isn't that in the JET mission statement?
Today was my school's sports festival and I got to do those 'arcane warm up exercises' you spoke of. It's still quite popular and done regularily from what I can tell. I think the Japanese call them "radio exercises" because the song they always exercise to was in the past played at 6AM every morning on the radio. If I wake up early enough they even have it on TV still at 6.
I had a student come back from college in America, which he loves, but he said that the biggest shock was the fact that he had so much personal responsiblity. He loved the freedom of being able to have the choice to skip a class, but if he failed, it was only his fault.
The Japanese system, he said, is very community oriented, hardly anyone fails (for various reasons), and they all share in your learning responsibility. The teachers really help you along. The change was surprising, but he still likes it a lot in America (Seattle to be specific) and wants to stay there (he wanted to live in America before ever visiting it).
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