education (Page 15)

English language education in Japan: Are native speakers essential?

Like so many foreigners living in Japan, I first entered the country as an eigo shidou joshu, more commonly known as an Assistant Language Teacher, or ALT for short. Although terms like “grass-roots internationalisation” and “globalisation” are uttered during ALT training seminars and by boards of education across the country with such frequency that you’d swear they’re being sponsored to use them, in reality an ALT’s role at a Japanese junior high school (where the majority in Japan are employed) is to go along to class with a non-native Japanese teacher of English (or JTE) and, as their job title implies, assist in teaching. The idea is that students, particularly those from rural areas, will benefit from the presence of and instruction from a native English speaker.

But are native speakers entirely vital to English language education in Japan? And should native English speakers, rather than Japanese teachers of English, be the ones taking the lead role in the classroom?

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Back when I was applying for my first Japanese work visa, there was a thick stack of paperwork I had to submit. Most of the items made sense, but one that struck me as weird, though, was my college diploma. I knew that Japanese law required a college education for the visa I was applying for, but wouldn’t sealed, authenticated transcripts make more sense than a personal diploma, which could be easily forged for 20 bucks at any print shop, or even with a high quality home-use printer?

Nope, I was informed, it had to be the diploma. That’s the paperwork they give you when you graduate, right? After all, from the standpoint of honest and by-the-book Japanese society, who would be so dishonest as to provide false educational credentials?

How about a man in Osaka, who taught junior high school for 15 years without ever obtaining his teaching credential.

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Is Japan overworking its teachers? One exhausted educator says, “YES!”

Japan has a reputation for overworking its employees, though it’s hardly the only country! But when it comes to education, you’d expect Japanese teachers, whose students often score among the top in the world on standardized tests, to be solely focused on their classroom materials. But you might be wrong!

One public middle school teacher has recently gotten a ton of attention online for a blog post about her impossible-to-manage duties as a “club leader” and her desire to actually change occupations due to the intense schedule. Read about her experience and the intense reactions below.

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Report on lousy schools in Japan spurs debate on who’s to blame

A report last week from the Japanese Ministry of Education about the sorry state of some low-ranked universities, lovingly called “F-rank,” sent ripples through the country and reignited a debate about how to properly prepare students for “life in the real world.” While the Japanese government’s announcement sparked renewed interest in higher education reform, these low-level schools (and their terrible textbooks) have been the butt of jokes on the Internet for years. F-rank universities are notorious for their extremely lax entrance requirements, high student-to-teacher ratio and producing graduates who simply aren’t ready to enter the real world and join a company. Education advocates and people tired of dealing with incompetent co-workers all wanted to share their ideas about how to change the system to avoid a generation of poorly trained workers.

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Korean high schools allow “anything goes” yearbook photos, with hilarious results

I remember when I was a senior in high school and hung out with a sort of goofy crowd, we all spent several weeks wracking our brains trying to find a way to inject some kind of originality into our senior photos. We knew anything too outrageous or offensive would get stopped by yearbook censors, so about the only thing we could come up with was growing some dirty-looking caterpillar mustaches.

If only we’d been in Korea, where some high schools – realizing that senior year is the last time in their lives that youths really get to act like kids – allow nearly any kind of wacky individual and group photos the kids see fit to take:

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Students go nearly a year without textbooks after teacher forgets to hand them out

It would seem a small case of absentmindedness has been breaking out in educational institutes around Japan recently. One such case in Japan’s Kumamoto Prefecture saw a handful of students go nearly an entire year without ever receiving some of their “required reading material.”

However, in this and another similar case, it’s hard to say who’s at fault, the teachers who failed to give the proper references out, or the students who neglected to say anything about it.

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Teacher hides touching message to departing students in final test

Even though the Japanese kind of have a reputation as stoic individuals reluctant to express emotion, we’ve shown you time and again that the Japanese are suckers for a good heart string-tugging story as much as the people of the next country.

Still, it’s safe to say there’s more than an average amount of social pressure to keep your feelings to yourself in Japan, especially for authority figure types like teachers. Which might explain why the teacher in this next story went to extraordinary lengths to pass on one final message to his recent graduating class.

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School kids in Japan learn about bugs, terrifying miniature horse-beasts and baby Ohmus

Back when I was a kid growing up in Liverpool, we studied only the subjects that were essential for daily life: namely Numbers, Words, Throwing, and of course a selection of moves from the 1983 romantic drama Flashdance. There was no time for art or creativity, and we were only ever allowed outdoors to collect firewood or when the time came to offer up a sacrifice to The Beast.

So it’s great to see that school kids in Japan are given a chance to learn the things that really matter, like identifying a Japanese rhinoceros beetle from a lineup of frightening, hopefully imaginary, creatures.

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The vocaloid classroom: Where music class meets the 21st century

Music class can be pretty hit or miss. Some people really enjoy it and find a life-long passion–other fumble hopelessly with the drumsticks and just wish it were time to start math class. Either way, we all had to sit through it, right?

But as important as learning an instrument may be, it kind of seems like music class is still stuck in the 20th century–or even the 19th century. After all, the music industry today relies as much on Pro Tools as it does on an expert bass player. So while we’ll always need skilled musicians, it does seem prudent to introduce the more technologically advanced aspects of music to the classroom, doesn’t it?

Well, one Japanese school did just that by offering a vocaloid composition trial lesson to their curriculum!

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Freshman facepalms: Japanese college students struggle to answer basic astronomy questions

While the Japanese education system is often highly praised by people in the West, many Japanese folks aren’t so keen on it these days. Yutori kyouiku, or “pressure-free education system,” a phrase used to describe what many see as an education system whose standards are too lax, has skyrocketed in use. Every time a young person does something stupid, it’s followed by sighs of “yutori kyouiku” by observers, who went through much harder schooling in their youth.

Although we often think people are really exaggerating when they say that the “kids of today” don’t know a thing, a recent study carried out by a professor at Tokai University has us wondering if today’s youth are lacking a little common sense…

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Elementary school teacher arrested and suspended after entering women’s restroom

On 22 November a 35-year-old man who taught at an Otsu City elementary school resigned after it came to light that he unlawfully entered the women’s restroom of Shiga University. However, according to the scant details of this case it appears this might just be a case of being in the absolute worst place at the wrong time.

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Japanese elementary school teachers may tell you “5 x 100 = 500” is wrong

Here’s an elementary school math question for you all:
Apples are sold for 100 yen each. If you buy 5 what is the total amount?

If you said “5 × 100 = 500” then I’m sorry but you just flunked second grade math in Japan… if there were only one question all year.

The reason is an old teaching method that is employed in elementary and middle schools throughout the country. It’s also a method that many, such as a blogger by the name of Uncorrelated, want stopped as it leads to strange logic where six times seven does not always equal 42 and five times 100 might not equal 500.

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Reading books makes you aware we live in the Matrix, artist depicts

We were all pretty sure we live in the Matrix anyway. Doesn’t that explain deja vu and rainbows or whatever?

Now we have definitive artistic proof that the Matrix is real, and only those that read tons of books ever get it. As this artist rendition shows, reading books makes you more knowledgeable about the world around you in the form of a giant book ladder that lets you climb up and see the real world outside of our digitized quasi-reality.

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These one-minute sex ed videos are proving to be a big hit in China 【Videos】

Every parent would agree that kids ask the toughest questions, albeit purely out of curiosity. The all-time-favorite question, “Where do babies come from?” can instantly send a mother into panic mode. She of course knows the answer, but the challenge lies in providing one that can satisfy the little tot’s thirst for knowledge, while censoring the details they simply aren’t ready for.

Nutcracker Studio, a creative team hailing from Beijing, China, produced three one-minute videos that could very well be a lifesaver for first-time parents. The three clips addressing sex education issues such as “Where do babies come from?”, “Why are boys and girls different?”, and “How minors can prevent sexual harassment”, instantly rocketed to fame, getting over a million views on Youku, China’s version of YouTube, and ranking in 2nd among hot queries on Baidu, China’s largest search engine.

All three videos after the jump!

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Poor Shimane Prefecture doesn’t exactly get a lot of respect. Despite being home to cultural sites like Izumo Shrine and Matsue Castle, ironically one of the prefecture’s biggest claims to fame is that many people living elsewhere in Japan mix up Shimane and Tottori, its neighbor to the east, when looking at a map of the country.

Recently, though, Shimane is getting some much needed attention, thanks to a group of amazing students at its Ota Dai-san Junior High School. Like many middle schools in Japan, Ota Dai-san has an orchestra. And like a few schools, its orchestra has won awards. But what makes Ota Dai-san’s orchestra completely unique is that it has only eight members, who rotate between instruments in mid-performance.

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Prestigious Japanese university to hold “National Pokémon Summit”

Ah, Japan. Just when I thought you couldn’t be any sillier, you throw me a gem like this. Apparently, Meiji University, a very well-known and well-respected educational institution is Japan, has announced that it will host a National Pokémon Summit next month.

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Chinese netizens call for education reform after seeing Japanese test question

The above question allegedly taken from a children’s test in Japan was posted on Chinese social networks recently. It’s a question that not only teaches us the proper way to use a scale but also a little something about the way we educate our youth.

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Let’s say you’re looking for a job, and someone offers you a position as the vice president of human resources in a global logistics services company. That’s a pretty plum position, and most of us would jump at the chance.

However, offer a nine-year-old kid the same job, and he’s likely to turn it down and say he’d rather be an ice cream salesman instead. The point is kids don’t always have the most concrete handle on what professions entail, so if you ask them what they want to do for a living someday, you might not get the most sensible answers. This was definitely the case when a number of elementary school boys in Japan recently said that when they grow up, they want to become anime characters.

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Like many people who grew up in America, when I hear the word “Asahi,” the first thing I think of is beer. Of course, beer also happens to be the first thing I think of when I hear “breakfast,” but that’s a story for another time.

However, there’s also an Asashi Newspaper in Japan. And while the news outlet has no connection to the identically named brewer, that didn’t stop it from recently handing out the kind of parenting advice you’d normally expect from a dad who’s also a violent problem drinker, suggesting that parents “accidentally” smash their kids’ video game consoles in order to keep them focused on their studies.

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Elementary school principal resigns after responding to knife threat with a heavy smack

The principal of an elementary school in Osaka recently resigned under pressure from the city’s board of education after using physical violence as a disciplinary measure against seven of the school’s students for enacting and concealing the event of a knife threat within the school.

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