My students are good kids, albeit not very good students, and they could have turned out much differently had they been raised in a better system and given more attention to their personal needs. They have been raised as part of the same kumi (group) for most of their life, and brought up in misguided social environment where the needs of the individual are neglected by the educational institution which instead grades and labels the groups much like eggs in the supermarket. In this school, any spark of interest that they may have had in all of their subjects has been mostly extinguished and coated with fire retardant. They have a belief that they can’t accomplish even the simplest of tasks because that’s the way it has been for many of them for most of their school lives. Many of them come from broken homes and have emotional problems and learning disabilities.
No, they are not purely victims of society. If they had studied harder, then they would have been able to go to a better high school. As a collective, they are the symptoms of a vicious social disease that has been festering for a long time, but is hidden with shame.
Enter the life of a modern low-level high school teacher. Many of them have been in this same school for years, and they face pressures different for those experienced by teachers back home. They are expected to help raise the students (parents are too busy for this, I am told), to motivate them in their studies and extracurricular activities, and most importantly to impose societal values upon them (on a side note, at this school the emphasis is to keep them off the streets and to shuttle them into low-level employment after they graduate).
Unlike chugakko and shogakko teachers in Kumamoto, the teachers in Osaka stay put for a long chunk of time. Teachers deal with this in different ways:
One of my teachers is a very cheerful person, but she suggested that I don’t stress too much about class and just take it easy and concentrate on the good students- advice that I am trying to follow and adjust my teaching style to.
Another teacher gets stressed when she sees the students reading comics, sleeping, chatting, or texting on their phones. Since the first day, I have saved myself the stress by choosing the path of least resistance instead of being the bad cop.
The other teacher that I teach with tells me that he wants my lessons to be very interesting, but also has made it clear that he has no interest in suggesting lesson material or developing lessons with me. His hobbies are sleeping and watching TV. I have decided to just use him to translate my directions into Japanese when I can’t manage it myself, and you can see the relief on his face.
I worry about the future of Japan. I look at this system, this vicious cycle that is spurning it’s youth and turning them into a society that is trained to think the same as what’s being said by people on TV, to always want the newest things that they see advertised in commercials, and that have either unattainable goals (roughly 50 percent of my students want to be a celebrity, professional athlete, or pro-racer) or set their goals very low with no hopes of improving their lot in life (to jobs that they are certain to get, but probably don’t want to do). There is no “The Little Engine That Could” mindset over here. It’s kind of like “1984” and “Animal Farm”, and it may well be heading toward ” Fahrenheit 451″.
The population is shrinking over here, and the old generation and their values are being replaced by consecutively newer generations with different values. I look at the kids that I’m teaching today and I can just see a massive mess, steadily growing larger before my eyes.
I feel like I’m on a huge battleship that has an appearance of technological superiority with ample fire power and spiffy counter-measures, like tomahawk missiles, vulcan machine guns to shoot down any incoming missiles, and a nuclear-powered propulsion system. Unfortunately, the crew is turning a blind eye to the foundation upon which this technology sits. Under the waterline, the hull is being ignored and has rusted almost to the point of structural failure, being held together by duct tape and other improvised, haphazardly implemented maintenance operations. What will happen when the barnacles chew through the rust, and the hull starts to slowly give way to the sea? Will it make it back to port, and be repaired in a timely fashion, or will they just continue to slap pitch into the holes and pray for the best?
I have also met some really talented, interesting, and motivated people who think differently and have the drive to accomplish things. Their creativity, will to succeed, and happiness are truly inspiring, but they are merely the most visible segment of society over here. What I’m worried about is that the proportion of unmotivated youth that live a life devoted to instant gratification is getting bigger. This is going to make the big problems that Japanese society is facing even more difficult to deal with.
Ah, thinking on a macro-societal level can be so depressing. But screw it. You know what? It’s nice weather out today, and I haven’t even begun to explore around Northern Osaka. I’m going to finish my day here, go out in the sun, and enjoy all of the everyday wonders that I come across. And I will use those images to try and think of ways to help individual students think differently, develop their interests, and have fun.
