Importing Diversity: Inside Japan's JET Program (49 page)

And once again, cultural difference compounded the difficulties. In Japan, it
is not uncommon for married men to go off to various parts of the country
for long periods of time to work, leaving their families behind (tanshin
funin). While it was relatively rare for a husband and wife both to be accepted to the program, CLAIR officials initially had little sympathy for the
argument that the two absolutely had to be placed close to one another.
When only one partner was in the program, he or she would arrive with
spouse (and sometimes children) often to find no reservations for the family members at the hotel for the Tokyo orientation and none on the train
or bus to the hosting prefecture; much bad feeling would ensue. The program coordinators worked hard to convince CLAIR officials to place married JETs as early in the process as possible so there would be time to clarify procedures and temper expectations. One recommendation was that
married JETs leave their dependents at home for the first two weeks, but
this advice was sometimes resented and even ignored, leaving the program
coordinators scrambling to secure additional accommodations.

Each of these improvements had only a slight impact; but taken together over the years, they markedly increased administrative efficiency
and certainly contributed to the high morale among new participants that
is so noticeable today. Another cumulative effect has been a new openness
among CLAIR officials in discussing the strengths and weaknesses of program policy. Consider, for example, this striking disclaimer about the CIR
position that appeared in application materials in 1995:

The Japanese concept of "coordinator" differs from the Western perspective. As a result of a different contractual status, the CIR is essentially outside the body of mainstream employees. Advice, suggestions,
and assistance offered by the CIR may in fact be viewed as the contribution of an outsider. While on the one hand this seems restrictive, on the other hand it provides for considerable leeway in the decisionmaking process. In all fairness to applicants, employers and the success
of the programme, it may well be more realistic to describe the CIR as
"Assistant, International Division."28

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.;