Importing Diversity: Inside Japan's JET Program (36 page)

Another relatively unsuccessful attempt to utilize Karen's expertise was
the monthly "study session" instituted during the Wednesday morning
meeting slot for the English teachers. Several times during the semester
she gave short talks on various aspects of the United Kingdom, including
"English Poetry" and "English Food and Drink." But these talks were
sparsely attended, and several were canceled. On one occasion, according to
Karen, "Kitano-sensei told me to go ask Sasaki-sensei to come because
they said if they asked him he wouldn't come, but if I asked him, he would.
So I did and sure enough, he showed up, but when he stuck his head in the
room and saw that it was just me and four female teachers, he said he was
too busy to make it that day."

About halfway through the year Karen became very interested in environmental issues in Japan, and she began weaving environmental themes
into her team-taught classes. Eventually, she decided to begin an informal
campaign against disposable wooden chopsticks on the grounds that their
use was depleting the rain forests. She even got several teachers from Yamagi High School, the school she visited twice a week, to go to a local
tourist venue to pass out leaflets about the perils of wooden chopsticks, and
her efforts were written up in the local newspaper. But for the most part
Nishikawa teachers kept a safe distance from this enterprise. They tolerated it politely, and even praised her for being true to her ideals-but those
teachers to whom she had spoken on the subject told me they felt uncomfortable, as if they were being implicitly criticized, whenever she would
bring out her plastic chopsticks to eat lunch at school. Hayano-sensei explained, "We admire her, but it's not the Japanese way."

Several conclusions can be drawn from Karen's overall experience at
Nishikawa. First, there was certainly some slippage between the ideals and
the actual implementation of the JET Program. Karen's potential to improve the English curriculum was effectively tapped by only one or two
teachers, and JTLs saw little carryover effect on the English classes they
taught by themselves. Only two of the JTLs said they had changed the way
they taught; the majority noted that if anything they had to "make up" for
the time lost to the team-taught class in the remaining two periods a week by focusing even more heavily on grammar. In addition, Karen's integration into the social routines of the high school was minimal, and the confusion and uncertainty over how to use her in class extended to extracurricular activities. Kawakami-sensei reflected:

It seems like just yesterday when we visited a long-term base school to
get advice on hosting an ALT. I remember nodding as they cautioned
that the hard part is getting to the point where the ALT is living comfortably in Japan or the importance of treating them as one of the staff
rather than as a guest. But the reality was different. I didn't know how
to react to her most of the time. For example, even though we said we
should treat her as one of us, I found myself struggling because there
was no clear standard to indicate the extent to which she should participate in after-school clubs, special events, or the many kinds of meetings
we hold during the year.

Murakawa-sensei concurred, "Even though she accommodates our way of
doing things to a certain degree, it's still a real struggle."

Perhaps the larger story of Karen's visit, though, was that despite their
initial reluctance, the JTLs succeeded in providing a positive experience for
the ALT. Karen greatly appreciated the numerous kindnesses extended to
her and the meaningful relationships that she formed with several JTLs.
Both Kitano-sensei and a young, part-time JTL became her female confidantes, and Ueda-sensei became like a father, inviting Karen to his home
and helping guide her through her entire stay. In a letter reflecting on the
two years he mused, "Since August -1989 I have learned a great deal from
Karen not just in English teaching but in life itself. By sharing various activities with her such as talking, teaching, eating, drinking, cycling, hiking
together, I have come to feel Karen is one of my best friends. I've never felt
any foreigner as close to me as Karen. When I am talking with Karen I find
the similarity rather than the difference in her beyond the walls of nationality, race, age, and sex-she lives every minute in this world as I do."
Karen found her experience so positive that she decided to renew for an additional year, and then returned to Japan the following year for a visit.
Eventually, her JET experience ended up shaping her career: she went on
teach English in a secondary school in Britain.

For the Nishikawa faculty, however, such success had a high cost: the
mental and physical fatigue of the JTLs who were largely responsible for
Karen's visit. In 1993 when I revisited Ueda-sensei and Hayano-sensei, I
discovered that they had next requested a married ALT. Ueda-sensei explained: "Hosting Karen was a great chance to improve my English and
learn more about foreign ideas, but it was an awful lot of work, not only in the summer with opening bank accounts and all the preparation for her
visit, but also just looking after her during the year. We asked for a married
couple because we felt that a young single woman was hard to manage. We
guessed that a married ALT would be much more stable, and from an emotional standpoint, much easier. And to a certain extent we were right." This
second ALT turned out to have a very different personality than Karen.
Ueda-sensei continued:

Tracy is very active and enthusiastic. She joined the judo club and she
interacts with students a lot. She even has a group of students that she
supervises during cleaning period. But that assertiveness has its difficult side too. She actually will bad-mouth other teachers right in the
teacher's room while we're talking in English! Once Tracy told me that
English education never changes in Japan, and that made me a little uncomfortable, but she has good relations with everyone so we don't take
offense even though she's out of place (katte ni) criticizing us. After
one open classroom, she got very excited at the discussion session and
talked for a long time, exhorting us to study English and speak in English even during class. At the time I supported her and said we should
all speak English more often, but not much has changed. We agree with
her ideals, but we balance it with the knowledge that it's difficult.

In reflecting on Nishikawa's handling of Karen's visit, I was strongly reminded of Harumi Befu's classic description of a foreigner who is invited to
a Japanese dinner party. Befu argues that the foreigner often goes into the
situation without knowledge of crucial ground rules concerning reciprocity, modesty, and so forth and without the practice of improvising lines and
behaviors in the way appropriate to the Japanese social scene. The result, he
claims, resembles Fred Astaire trying to dance gracefully with a Zoo-pound
woman who has never danced before. Because the Japanese hosts are too
polite to tell their guests they are clumsy people, guests leave the scene believing they have played their part according to the script; but in reality,
the hosts have strained themselves to make up for the guests' deficiencies
by making their cues excessively obvious, covering up the mistakes made
by the guests, and even trying to make mistakes look like charming improvisations on the correct script.'

NISHIKAWA IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

Karen and the Japanese teachers and students at Nishikawa interacted in
ways shaped by a variety of factors: school type, school size, composition of
the school's faculty and administration, the level of enthusiasm of the JLTs, students' demeanor, and the motivations and personality of the ALT. Variation in any of these can produce strikingly different patterns of interaction, as the following examples make clear.

Minami: An "International" High School

Minami High School is a public "international" high school located in a
new bedroom community just thirty minutes by train from the major
metropolitan center in the prefecture. Only ten years old, it offers expanded selections in foreign language education, and many of its female
students (roughly 70 percent of the total student body) go on to colleges
specializing in foreign languages. Minami's teachers of English are the
most competent in the prefecture; at the time of my fieldwork, even the
vice-principal was a former English teacher. Many of the JTLs have lived or
traveled abroad, and most are comfortable in speaking English. In addition
to regularly hosting AFS (American Field Service) students and accommodating "returnee children," Minami also actively engages in other activities with an international focus over the course of a school year. Shortly
before I visited Minami in the spring of 1988, for example, a UNESCO delegation had visited the school. Approached by the prefectural board of education in 1987, Minami's English faculty enthusiastically requested two
full-time ALTs.

Because of the school's international theme, Sato-sensei took special
care in assigning its two ALTs. Roger, a twenty-eight-year-old native of
Rochester, New York, was chosen for his teaching experience and his degree in international studies. Tammy, twenty-three, a native of Chicago,
was selected because of her cheerful disposition and love of children. According to Tanabe-san, the match was perfect. Six months into the assignment, Tammy concurred: "It's like a dream come true." In addition to holding a morning meeting in English, the JTLs actively solicited Roger's and
Tammy's input about improving English classes in a variety of ways.

In part because of their own English skills and in part because of the
generous time allotted to English classes (twice that required by the Ministry of Education), most JTLs were willing to experiment with new and innovative teaching strategies. English classes usually based on translation
and memorization were filled instead with an assortment of skits, cooking
lessons, and other communication-oriented activities that turned the
teacher-centered model of learning on its head. Students even experimented with diaries and critical essays in English, on which they received
feedback from their new teachers. For the annual English Recitation Con test, students wrote their own essays rather than reciting one from the
textbook. Both ALTS complained that far from being underutilized, their
main problem was meeting the many commitments they had made.

Extensive efforts were made to integrate Roger and Tammy into school
life beyond their three team-taught classes each day. They took full part in
the series of parties and workshops held by the English faculty throughout
the school year, and their relationship with most JTLs was lighthearted and
collegial. In addition, students were noticeably more comfortable with the
ALTS at Minami than at other schools I visited, and this only served to encourage Roger and Tammy to get involved in school activities. Roger joined
the judo club, while Tammy coordinated the ESS club. A music fan herself,
she was thrilled to find that the ESS students loved to learn and sing the
lyrics of popular American songs. Each was assigned to help a group of students during after-school cleaning, and each attended all school events
even when they were held on Saturdays. Having forged meaningful relationships with both JTLs and students, both enthusiastically renewed for
an additional year's assignment in the JET Program.

Karoo Junior High

Nishikawa and Minami seem like a paradise compared with Kamo Junior
High School, located in the heart of a largely Korean working-class district
in a major urban center. While many ALTs expect that all Japanese students are highly disciplined, schools with high concentrations of Korean
students often reflect the economic, social, and political marginalization of
Koreans within Japanese society as a whole. In 1989 the school of loo-plus
had a reputation for some of the worst discipline problems in the city. On
my first visit to the school to watch a baseball game I was shocked to hear
firecrackers exploding at regular intervals from within the school building,
and by the time the game was over the air had been let out of the tires of
the car belonging to the head English teacher, Yamada-sensei. He explained
that while he had succeeded in getting half of the "problem students" to
join the baseball team, the other half were jealous that he was paying attention to those who had joined the team: the prank was one way of getting even.

Kamo had reached its low point with discipline problems shortly before
my string of visits in 1989, and the principal asked the board of education
to transfer several young male teachers to the school. Yamada-sensei was
one: at age thirty-two, he would normally have been far too young to assume the position of ninth-grade head of student guidance, but difficult times called for drastic measures. When he arrived, he found that teachers
were being routinely intimidated by a core group of students, who were divided into two main factions. These two gangs also regularly extorted
money from other students. To make matters worse, the school's language
lab had been taken over by one faction and converted into their hangout.
At one point the situation became so desperate that in a complete reversal
of societal conventions, the authorities opened the school up to parents to
show the extent of the problems.

What impressed me the most about this school, though, was the utter
dedication of its teachers, who refused to give up on their students. Viewing the students' misbehavior as a cry for love, they deliberately refrained
from exerting authority and spent innumerable hours counseling students
and trying to repair the social fabric without resorting to heavy-handed
correction. Yamada-sensei established a close relationship with the father
of one of the gang members in order to gain leverage. One teacher spent
the night in the teachers' room every night of the week. Yamada-sensei explained, "Even if students are bad now, we believe they'll be good in the future. If we punish them too harshly, then students won't trust us. We usually give them lots of lectures so that they will realize their mistake."