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 |  The beauty and horror of what I have seen and felt in 11 years of teaching ESL in Japan. |
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After 11 years of teaching English conversation in Japan for the biggest money-grubbing school, which went bankrupt through very corrupt business practices, I feel the time has come to either share what the beauty and horror of this experience, or sink further into the desperate frustration of the misunderstood. What will follow are descriptions of the students I have taught, my observations and thoughts of them, and tidbits of their conversations with me. Names will of course be changed to protect identities. It is my hope that through reading these descriptions, people interested in learning about Japan and its culture will find new, unexpected insights into its people. So, without further ado, I need to start. But who to start with? The good or the bad? |
| Certain people in the U.S. when I was growing up and at university, engaged in earnest but ultimately false debates about whether it was Nature or Nurture that ultimately decided an individual’s success (whatever that might’ve meant). If there is one thing I can thank an early interest in post-modernism and deconstruction for, it is my long-running suspicion of or dis-ease about binary oppositions; oppositions which never survived concerned and concerted examination; oppositions which revealed more about those who maintained them than the nature of elements in discussion; particularly the Judeo-Christian Biblical grounding of their thinking, with its emphasis on something vs. nothing, day vs. night, right vs. wrong, man vs. woman, us vs. them, etc. (I am aware of the use of semicolons in that paragraph, and my probable incorrect use of them, but the recent vogue, hopelessly closed off masculine in its inclinations, of avoiding semicolons, and of simplifying punctuation and sentence structure in general, is really starting to annoy me, actually. If you had to speak in nothing but simple sentences all day, every day—or avoided TV the way I do—you would probably feel the same.) Recent findings in neuroscience have put the whole Nature vs. Nurture debate to rest (or at least cast exposed its black and white colors, under intense lighting, as grays) by showing it is neither Nature nor Nurture which acts wholly upon an organism, but an infinitely complex, infinitely regressive, continually iterating milieu of factors attributable to both simultaneously: the kind of ideas which excite me about the human condition. In this context I present to you my first description of children I have taught English, let’s call them Ko and Mo. Now, to be fair, let me explain that I had avoiding teaching kids English for MOVA by maintaining that 1) I did not want to teach kids, 2) I had did not believe teaching English to kids in this manner was effective, 3) I hated teaching kids, and 4) I would, therefore, be a horrible kids teacher. MOVA listened to my protests for about two minutes and then thrust me into the classroom with kids. They care a lot. It shows. There I met Mo, Ko’s younger sister. Ko took lessons at a different level, and with a different teacher, when I started. Mo struck me as a shy, quiet five-year-old, sweet natured and polite, looking very much in the face and manner like her older sister. She picked up the language quickly, and she could use it, forming full sentences every time, avoiding one-word responses as urged by the staff, with good pronunciation and some ability to create her own responses in different situations, but she did all of this so quietly I would have to lean forward, my own head scant inches from hers, just to catch a whisper, and from that, many times, guess the rest of what she’d said. I could judge her ability based only a few, but strong, examples of her speaking in class, just as well or better than the other students. Back up a bit: I’ve forgotten to describe their mother. She came in to drop off and pick up her daughters and kept to herself for the most part, even if she decided to sit in the lounge and wait for the lessons to finish. She kept her head down, spoke looking at the floor, in a halting, quiet voice. She never spoke to me directly, so it was up to the staff to inform me of the content of the mother’s complaints or requests. When the staff asked her how she felt about the children’s English lessons, she responded that she was cold. When asked if she wanted them to turn up the heater, she apologized profusely and hurried out of the building. The older sister by five years, Ko the same mannerisms as her mother and as Mo, spoke more briefly than the former, more loudly than the later. If memory serves me (and what a strange refrain that is, as if memory could be anything other than a prostitute pandering to one’s own self-image), Ko lasted three lessons with me before quitting. Where Mo used full sentences, Ko used one word. Where Mo could create her own sentence, Ko could and would only repeat what the teacher said. And please don’t misunderstand. She only had three lessons with me because she couldn’t stop crying in my lessons. That sounds bad. Let me clarify: I never wanted to teach kids English. I do not like teaching kids English. I have no training and no background for teaching kids English. I do, however, have many years teaching experience, and some strong opinions about the nature and purpose of education, particularly about how education should be more than students repeating verbatim what they are taught in school. As a result of this belief, I am constitutionally unable to view listening and repeating as a adequate method of language instruction. In my first lesson with Ko, we drilled the question and answer form: “What country is this? {hold up flashcard with picture of flag on it} It is Canada. Repeat.” So, she would say the country’s name when instructed to repeat. But—and it’s a huge but—when I showed her the card and asked her what country it was, she wouldn’t answer, even after I checked comprehension. She knew the name of the country, but wouldn’t say it. In fact, she wouldn’t say anything. She just sat there, staring at the card, no emotion on her face, unmoving. I asked her, in Japanese, if she understood. She said nothing. To pass the lesson, a student needs to independently produce the answer. I tried again. Nothing. Long minutes of silence, interrupted by gentle goading on my part, followed each question and card. Then, without any intermediate transition in facial expression, she burst into tears and started wailing. Staff come in and try to console her. Girl says nothing to them, just locks up and stares at the table until her mother arrives to take her home. The staff and I talked about what happened. They talked to her mother. The staff told me that, when asked what she would like to do, the mother became agitated, repeating over and over in a murmur that it was her fault, that she had a mental illness, and her children were going to grow up strange. So, what do you do in that situation? Leave her alone? Assure the mother everything will be okay? Leave the children in that environment with no support and no guidance? You betcha! This is a business, not a social service, and money is money; can’t run a business if you alienate the clientele, can you? Second lesson with Ko: silence, though I did nothing but try to get her to Listen and Repeat for 40 minutes. Third lesson with Ko: silence, as above, but 10 minutes in starts crying. Mother tells staff Ko is quitting. Why? The room is too cold. Ko is difficult. Ko is busy. I am afraid. Mo continued to take regular lessons for another year, and I lauded all the attention on her I could during those brief forty minutes together. Her mother and sister sat outside the school, in the middle of the shopping center, by themselves, hunched over, speaking to no one, waiting. Mo continued to perform well in the lessons, though too quiet. Finally, she just grew quieter and quieter, missed one lesson, then another, and then never returned. I tried everything I could, but nothing worked. I couldn’t break her out of that shell. You can draw whatever conclusions you will, but I feel it is incumbent upon me to offer a brief analysis, if only to put my final comment in context. Ko had spent more time with their mother; Mo, less. In both, traces of their mother’s mental disorder announced themselves loud and clear, though in Ko’s case, more loudly, more clearly, and with more disturbing effect. Mo, growing up in this situation with two such people will likely develop such traits to an even greater extent. And there was nothing I, as a teacher, could do to prevent it. So, I reiterate: I hate teaching kids, not so much because of the kids (though there are a few, of course, that drive me crazy but keep me positive about the human drive against entropy), but because of the parents I see in the kids. I hate teaching kids because I can never do enough. |
| Some people just have big ears—or is it some people have just big ears? The first thing everyone noticed about Kojun was her ears which, taken together with her long, shapely face, reminded me, at least, of Roman amphomor. The second was her smile, which persisted despite her self-professed addiction to sweets, framed in rich, full lips. Don’t make the mistake of assuming that focusing on the size of someone’s ears is an attempt to make fun of them. On the contrary: in Japan, large ears on girls are considered cute. And Kojun was as cute as she was kind and shy. She’d been an office worker when I met her. Recently, though, she’s gotten married and had a couple of kids. They attend a small, private kindergarten near a school I teach at, so I think she must be doing well, at least financially. She seems happy—then again, she always seemed cheerful. Only rarely did cracks appear in that veneer, and then only when she talked about her future: she was a young woman who saw herself as not beautiful, past the “prime” marrying age, rapidly approaching her thirties, without a boyfriend, in a job she didn’t care about, and, seemingly, lacking any means of changing her situation. She’d started as a mid-level English speaker, and progressed nicely. She was attentive during lessons, if a bit shy. Her purpose for studying English was to make traveling easier, though she travelled abroad very rarely—and now, with kids, probably not at all. Like other students, she constantly struggled with the belief that she couldn’t speak English, or that the English she did speak was bad. Japanese culture emphasis self-effacement. Add to this a wide-spread, racist assumption that Japanese people somehow, physically, are unable to speak English fluently, and you’ve got an uphill, Sisyphean struggle to teach English. Kojun never spoke as much, or as well, as she could, a habit which frustrated her teachers no end and left us with almost nothing of substance to write in her file as suggestions for future teachers to help her improve. “Needs to speak more,” was a common refrain; “too shy,” another. |
| Japan still follows the Confusion ideal of the teacher being the font of wisdom at which students should gladly kneel and lap up knowledge. The ramifications of this approach to pedagogy are not only multifarious but also, in my opinion, nefarious, robbing students of chances at critical inquiry while simultaneously entrenching opinions in the mind of teachers who, lacking feedback, rot on the vine, like grapes robbed of sap, good only for the production of vinegar. Of course, not every teacher awaits this fate. Some few manage, somehow, to stay vibrant. Most others, it seems, get trapped in a rut, out of which it is very hard to climb—a train of thought which leads me to wonder if my destiny is some tactless vingarette. One who didn’t, and so serves as a classic example, was George. Well, I called him George. Why? It’s just the name I associate with any gormless fellow. You know? George. George. Geeeooorge. Keep saying it to yourself. You’ll get it. George, George, George of the Jungle, except without all that amiable, good-natured charm and wide smile. George had a wild head of black hair, thick glasses, a splotchy complexion, and a nervous stutter….no, that’s not right. That’s Stinky Grandma, another teacher I’ve known, one in serious need of medication or is already seriously into medication, and I’ll get back to him later. George was well dressed, and kept his hair tall and trim: both him and his hair. Dapper, you could’ve called him. A model for his students to follow, I expect. He didn't smile so much as pull the corners of his lips back without exposing his teeth. We often had lessons together in my first year of teaching, and we’d met in the Voice Room occasionally, usually later in the evening, after he’d gone home and had dinner with his family. He’d talk about the Japanese education system, and ask questions about the one in America. He had great questions, being already pretty, and unfortunately, knowledgeable on the subject. He’d answer my questions about Japan and Japanese culture, which got me onto the subject of Japanese hot springs, called onsen, specifically the barring of people with tattoos. I asked him why that was. “Because people with tattoos are criminals,” he said. “What do you mean?” “Yakuza have tattoos. Other Japanese don’t. So, it is easy to see who is criminal, and onsen have duty to keep out criminal. They make other customer nervous. Sometimes they cause problem.” “But,” I asked, “how do you know people with tattoos are Yakuza? Is it the style of tattoo?” He looked at me like he didn’t understand the question. He didn’t. “I mean,” I ventured, “it’s obvious that not everyone who has tattoos can be Yakuza. I have tattoos, for example.” “You’re foreign. Foreign people have tattoo culture, but not Japanese.” “But I was at a show last night—” “Show?” “Um…you know, band, music, singer?” “Oh, a Live.” “Yeah, that. Anyway, there were quite a few Japanese people with tattoos.” “No. They must’ve been from other country.” “No…I’m pretty sure they were Japanese. They spoke Japanese.” “But they had tattoos. Japanese people never get tattoos because people would think they are criminals.” “Well, these guys had tattoos.” “I don’t think so. You made mistake.” “I really don’t think so. They were Japanese, and they had tattoos.” “I think you did. They must be Yakuza.” “They didn’t look like Yakuza.” “How would you know what Yakuza look like?” “Ah…good point. But, I’m pretty sure these were just kids having a good time.” “No. They had tattoos. They were criminal.” So it went. On and on, circling each other. Never agreeing. Two teachers set in their ways. This was back in 2000. Things have changed a lot in Japan in the last 11 years. Tattoos are a lot more common, for one thing, though onsen still bar entry to those with tattoos, or require customers to keep them covered. I’ve asked around, and the covering up is just a sop to the older clientele who, like George, can’t accommodate their thinking to the fact that anyone other than Yakuza might have tattoos. |
| (A brief change of topic, but appropriate. I apologize for slowing down the rate of my posts, but I am deep into a major writing project, and falling deeper. This blog and my first novel-length writing deal with some of the same time periods, but I don't want them to bleed together, so I have had to devote less time to this blog. In the future, expect one or two posts per week, instead of the previous five. Sorry.) Today's post involves a major character in MOVA: the classroom. This, from Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish: ...an architecture that is no longer built simply to be seen..., or to observe the external space..., but to permit an internal, articulated and detailed control--to render visible those who are inside it; in more general terms, an architecture that would operate to transform individuals: to act on those it shelters, to provide a hold on their conduct, to carry the effects of power right to them, to make it possible to know them, to alter them. (172) Lesson rooms are always open: either the lesson space is enclosed by four walls with plastic windows stretching from hip-height to the ceiling, or the lesson space is without walls, in a large room, each class at separate tables and chairs. Thus, the lessons are always observable; indeed, always observed, for lessons almost never take place without another lesson being conducted nearby. In the rare event that a lesson is conducted on its own, the "trainers" are instructed to take that opportunity to "listen in" or watch the lesson, in order to provide the instructor with useful feedback, feedback which can mold them closer to the company's desired and projected product: a smiling, courteous, soft and never scary, foreigner, preferably blond-haired and blue eyed, but, hey, female and fairly attractive will do, too. |
| Why do some ESL teachers burn out so quickly? Why is this job not for everyone? Read the following teachers' comments--pay attention to the dates. 2001: English sounds are completely foreign to her. Needs serious attention in this category. Very nervous. Some frustration. 2002: Jesus! Tried very hard...understands simple context...but couldn't grasp the lesson in structured Q&A format. Needs time and encouragement. She actually tries very, very hard! 2003: Oh man. Hard work. Needs lots of written notes. Doesn't really understand the grammar. Comp low. Go back to basics and do low lessons. 2005: Could order take-out food. She can't read very well. Struggles over similar sounding words. Check listening comprehension (be specific). From an absolute beginner to being able to order take-out food in just over 4 years of weekly lessons. Consider that. Consider what it takes to walk into a McDonald's and order a meal, and, possibly, even making a special request. What degree of repetition did this student go through; what repetition did the teachers go through? How much frustration? Why did she have to try so hard? |
| Satchi was an absolute beginner, and so ended each lesson with profuse apologies, in Japanese, to her classmates, begging them to forgive her poor English. She was so skinny, I feared anorexia, tight jeans on long legs with green and yellow Pikachu socks peeking out from under the table ("Lucky!"). Nice smile, but when she opened her mouth, you could see she was missing three or four of her bottom left teeth. She was married and had one child. I saw them walking together once: her husband must have been fifty, her son six, she looking twenty-five at most. They all wore matching track suits: the hallmarks of pachinko/gangster/hipster style among Japan's white-trash. Why did she study English? "Fun!" |
| To listen to the staff, she’d been quite intelligent before the car accident. So I look out for the bright curiosity which might at any moment peak out from behind her vaguely worried smile, and I try to catch the eloquence encrypted by her nervous stutter and heavy breathing. She is, she was, kind, meek; a hunched over, dumpy woman in worn, drab clothing, on whose bent shoulders far more than thirty years seems to weigh. She seeks the solace of routine. Variation reduces her utterances to awkward one-word phrases. When asked to invent, she panic-stricken, and rifles through her notes for a life line. “How are you today?” “Iamfine, andyou?” “I am good. What are you doing today?” I ask as if I didn’t know the answer. “In morning I read newspaper and drink Japanese tea. After MOVA, I go home and make dinner together mother.” She says the same thing each week. She comes in on the same day, at the same time, always early, and talks to herself, her voice rising and falling with excitement, until a classmate arrives. I watch her. She doesn’t seem to mind. I try my best to be kind to her. I know it is not her fault. “What are you going to make for dinner?” “I don’t know. Mother decide.” The staff once asked her if she just wanted to chat during lessons. I could have killed them. She has nothing to talk about; or, if she does, she lacks the skills to do so. She knows her limits. During lessons, we drill and practice context-dependent English, almost all of which she struggles over, scribbling copious notes in the margins of her newest textbook, the previous one being same in all respects save her mix of Japanese and English notes, most of the notes nothing more than what I have explained the meaning of a word to be, or katakana pronunciation guides, written in a faint No. 2 pencil, more often than not subject to summary erasure only to be written again. She’s done every lesson countless times—literally. Before we switched to a computer filing system, we would write the date students took a lesson, attaching another sheet should it be necessary, on top of the first, to keep track of lessons repeated more than three times. When I re-joined MOVA in 2008, I say her file was thick with such papers. I didn’t bother to count them, and when we switched to the computers, all old paper files were shredded, all records lost. As I said, this is her second copy of the same textbook, the old one having become worn under years of scribbles, pages thin, even torn, in numerous places, its binding plump, almost breaking, with masses of small, soft nodules, the sad, discarded offspring of chemically induced, mold-injected erasers, separate but the same, separate and never again to join, to have no purpose, to be trapped between worn pages, to dry and crumble with age. “Iamfine,andyou?” “I am tired today. What are you doing today?” “In morning I read newspaper and drink Japanese tea. After MOVA, I go home and make dinner together mother.” I search her face for some sign of the bright intelligence that once shone there, just a glimmer that might flash forth, brightening her freckle-covered face, illuminating her dull, brown eyes, but always my attention moves up, to her hair, to see the strands of gray peaking out here and there, and the flecks of dandruff clinging, to the angry, white scar running from the top of her head towards her left ear, all shinny and clean, filling my mind with bloody scenes in the twisted aftermath of hurtling hulks of plastic and steel failing to yield, failing to join, failing to protect the soft lumps of flesh, blood, bile, and brains sloshing about inside. And I look about the room, as she struggles to respond to some innocent, meaningless question, at the white walls decorated by hopeful salespeople red and pink and blue and yellow, with caricatures of smiling faces, frowning faces, mild faces; of impossibly red, shiny apples; of frighteningly cute purple octopi; of a molted red carpet that on bad days puts me in mind that I am sitting atop a giant’s tongue. “How are you today?” “Iamfine, andyou?” Some days she is more articulate, makes eye contact, and is able to string words together into fairly comprehensible sentences. Most days, though, she’s not so good. And so the years have carried us forward. Sometimes she disappears for months. For the past three months, she’s attended lessons each week without fail. We get through the lessons in part because she has done them all before and knows what is coming, and so does not really need to understand my instructions in-depth; so, too, I do not need to find new ways to present the material. She never tires of doing these lessons. She only regrets her English is not improving. Sometimes, as she is reading a passage, I wonder if she really understands why she doesn’t advance, if she understands the way the damage has impaired her mind. I wonder, too, looking at her, at her dry, flaking skin and straight, lifeless hair, her sweaters with their tiny holes, her chapped lips, and above all that scar, what she sees when she looks at me, what her mind allows her to see. Does she see how the years are starting to wear on me? Does she how tired beyond caring I am some days? Can she see such things? They are, after all, out there for the world to see, though with her I make an extra effort to conceal. How did we two wind up here, in this God awful room, with Japanese pop music blaring in, as we muddle our way through lines well-rehearsed, ticking off minutes of the day, every week, for months, for years. How long can we continue to do this? The answer, for her, is in her shiny new textbook. Is the answer for me really so much more complicated? |
| Nothing that interesting today. It happens. Live with it. Just a pair of students remarkably similar in appearance and vocation, but very separate in terms of age, time of study, and geographic location. Both had strangely shaped heads. Kesuke's dome was pointed. Musashi's skull has a odd lump on the right side. Both of them were going bald in the same way: hair retreating from the forehead, but entrenching to the sides. Both repaired or built computers for a living, and were awkward nerds to the core. Both smiled a lot and were friendly as hell. Kesuke didn't wear glasses but squinted a lot. Musashi wore glasses but squinted often. Both were level 6 (low mid level), and studied English for work. Kesuke was old enough to be Musashi's father. Maybe he was, but I doubt it. Musashi came from Tokyo; Kesuke'd lived in Yamaguchi all his life. |
| "Ramrod": his posture, from the moment he entered the room, invariably late, uttering apologies, through the lesson, all the way until he slipped on his shoes and left. "Engineer": a title he undoubtedly looked up in a dictionary and went to pains to memorize, because "engineer" is the longest word I've heard him utter, and it's the only topic about which he seemed inclined to speak. "Nervous": he started and stopped speaking frequently, sometimes repeating the same word five times, and slowly. He would look at other students out of the corner of his eye, not daring, seemingly, to look them in the eye. "Safety goggles": those glasses he wore: nature's prophylactic. "Strange": the word used by female staff members to warn teachers about him; apt given the way his eyes widened in horror whenever a female student would speak to him. "Tired": he worked from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. 5 or 6 days a week. "Clipped": each utterance ended precisely after no more than three words. There were no pauses, there were no thinking devices, no hems, no haws. "Pianist": he took piano lessons twice a week. "Twitch": he had a small tick in the corner of his mouth while focusing on instructions so intently, instructors sometimes trailed off into self-conscious silence. "Black": the color of his hair, his glasses, his pants, and his shoes. "White": the color of his shirt, his socks, and the eraser he never used. |
| Some time ago, early in this blog, I described the Lobotomy Twins. Now it is time to meet their cousins, the Vacuous Twins. The VT shared with the LT the latter’s occupation (office worker), free time activities (watching TV), and fashion (lots of pink, knit skirts, and cardigan sweaters) They joined together, took lessons together, giggled together, and spoke mostly Japanese to each other, even when directed to speak English—especially when directed to speak English, because most of the time, they seemed to have no idea what to say, or what had been said to them, so they consulted each other, in Japanese, to see if the other had caught what was said or what was expected of them by way of reply. Because, really, for them, the lessons were little more than scripted sessions of entertainment, times to “speak” English only when told to and how to, with no more active, creative thought than most people employ sitting through a movie or spacing on a TV show. They never took notes and didn’t ask for clarification. The textbook was as impenetrable a mystery to them as the Black Forest must’ve seemed to Hansel and Gretel, yet time and again they’d wander in, but, unlike the more thoughtful, younger, more adorable and tastier pair, the VT never thought to leave a trail of bread crumbs behind. Each lesson seemed to leave them more lost than the one before. They sat hip-to-hip. No matter how many times the instructors would ask them not speak Japanese in class, they’d soon be whispering to one another in their native tongue. What really got to me was that they were whispering questions about the material, having not understood what the instructor said. “Ask me,” I would prompt them each time I overhead such exchanges. They’d giggle, not realizing I’d understood what they been saying to each other. “Ask me,” I would say again. More giggling as hands covered mouths in mock embarrassment, more hurried whispering. No English, though, and no questions forthcoming. They were single—at least, I assumed so. They never mentioned husbands or children. Of course, that didn’t prove anything. Many women actually never talked about their lives outside of MOVA: English was their private world, their private space, a place to escape the spirit-crushing, prosaic lives that drove so many housewives to Prozac dependencies. As I said, they said that in their free time, they watched TV. They certainly never studied. They’d giggle, not understanding, whispering to one another throughout the lessons. They’d speak English when instructed to do so, and they could handle the more structured aspects of the lessons adequately after the third or fourth repetition; but, put them in a role-play situation where they had to resolve a problem, deal with a complication, or show any ability whatsoever to adapt the language they’d studied for the previous thirty minutes, and they’d never fail to stop, giggle, whisper, giggle some more, and then, if you were lucky, stare blankly at you, expecting you to provide the answers. They liked to be pandered to. They took English lessons for the entertainment value. So what? That didn’t make them bad people. In fact, in the range of possible ways to spend money and free time, taking language lessons is actually not a bad choice. However, they didn’t seem at all interested in actually learning anything—they just liked to tell people they were taking lessons at the big MOVA. It was status. It was pride. But it was more than that. For example: “Please repeat: ‘The dog is sitting under a tree.’” “Dog treeing under?” “The dog is sitting under a tree.” “The dog is … is …tree?” Or, again: “This is a pencil. These are pencils.” “This is pencil. These is pencil.” “One more time: This is a pencil. These are pencils.” “This is pencil. These is pencil.” “No. This is a pencil. These is …argh!…these are pencils!” Giggle, giggle. Whisper, whisper. Just like the Lobotomy Twins, when one of the Vacuous Twins leveled up before the other, it was only a matter of weeks before they both quit. If they couldn’t take lessons together, they couldn’t see the point of studying English. The staff knew this very well, and did everything they could, shy of directly ordering us, to get us to level the other one up—but she wasn’t ready. It would’ve made every lesson a train wreck, especially for any other students who happened to be in the room. You’ve probably guessed by now that what really drove me round the bend about these two was their giggling. They couldn’t ask a question without giggling half-way through, couldn’t answer a question without giggling first, and then starting and stopping a reply half a dozen times. Worse yet: the Lobotomy Twins clocked in around twenty-one or twenty-two, while the Vacuous Twins stood solidly in their dumpy, middle- to late-fifties. Giggle, giggle. Whisper, whisper. Shudder. |
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