Importing Diversity: Inside Japan's JET Program
Page 7
Viewed from a long-term perspective, however, the impact of Nakasone's educational reform appears to be more substantial than Schoppa allows, particularly in areas such as international education.18 The JET Program represented a chance to implement Nakasone's will in a small but symbolically important manner. By leapfrogging the reluctant ministry's decision-making apparatus, the administration could administer shock therapy to English language education. Better yet, it could be covered by the excuse of foreign pressure.
THE MINISTRY OF EDUCATION PUTS ON THE BRAKES
Under the proposed plan, over go percent of JET participants would be placed in public schools. Technically, this was the turf of the Ministry of Education, and to work effectively the proposal needed its support. This was the final, and most difficult, hurdle for Ministry of Home Affairs officials-securing the cooperation of their counterparts just down the street in the Kasumigaseki section of Tokyo. In marked contrast to the reaction of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Prime Minister's Office, the initial response was decidedly negative. The issue was not so much that the Min istry of Education was opposed to internationalization in principle; it had endorsed most of the general proposals offered in this area by Nakasone's ad hoc council. Rather, its reluctance centered on the twin issues of control and scope of change.
The "New, Improved" JET Program
Though the fanfare surrounding the arrival of the first wave of JET participants in 1987 would seem to testify to its novelty, the Ministry of Education saw the JET Program as simply the "new, improved" version of a long history of attempts to reform English education. In fact, ever since the grammar and translation method had established hegemony in the late Meiji period, there had been periodic attempts to move the public school system back toward a more communication-oriented focus. The JET Program had a number of postwar antecedents.
In the early 195os a small group of American reformers had formed the English Language Exploratory Committee (ELEC); sponsored by John D. Rockefeller III, they had enthusiastically launched a campaign to promote the oral approach of Charles Fries in Japan. ELEC, however, refused to establish formal ties with any Japanese groups, and after ten years of heavy expense and intense effort, even Rockefeller's staff recognized that "ELEC had failed to achieve its main objective. . . . ELEC was not able to change the grand strategy of English-language teaching in Japan or to bring overall improvement in teaching methods."19
The next effort was a joint enterprise in the late 196os between the Japan Association of College English Teachers (JACET) and the JapanUnited States Educational Commission (JUSEC) of the Fulbright Program. Their collaborative effort to bring over from the United States specialists trained in English as a second language (ESL) also failed miserably. The intense conflict that erupted when ESL specialists, wedded to their particular techniques and goals, were placed in the public school system forced speedy abandonment of the idea of recruiting foreign specialists. Japanese public school teachers simply felt too threatened by Americans who thought they knew all about language teaching.
This failure set the stage for the first direct precursor of the JET Program. American college graduates with no special training in ESL theory and pedagogy were hired by the Fulbright Commission and then placed in prefectural boards of education by the Ministry of Education. In 1969 the first four assistant teachers' consultants (ATCs) arrived in Tokyo for orientation. Richard Rubinger was among them, and his recollections provide a sense of the time:
When we first came, this program was explained to us as the continuation of years of attempts by the Fulbright Commission to improve English teaching in Japan. They had already tried many other things; they had hired academics to give courses at teacher training colleges, and they were giving lectures on linguistics and direct method, that kind of stuff. In those days, direct method, practice drills, that was the thing, exactly what everyone is trying to get away from now.... Anyway this had gone on for some time and they had failed in everything. So now the idea was to hire people as assistants to the shidoshuji (English teachers' consultants) who would actually get into the public schools on a regular basis. They had never done that before. The point is, behind this program was a conscious, articulated effort to revolutionize English teaching in Japan. That was clearly the goal and that was the term they used, "revolutionize the teaching of English in Japan."
[DM: "But you never team-taught with a Japanese teacher?"] No, never. We would be invited as guests for the day to a certain school, and we would actually walk into the classroom and the class would be handed over to us. And I would teach the lesson for the day, using the textbook, using the direct method, with no recourse to grammatical explanation at all. And the Japanese teachers would sit in the back of the class and there would be a seminar afterwards where we would explain what we had done, and the idea was that the teachers would run home immediately and adopt this, but of course this never happened. And we were under some pressure to write monthly reports to the Fulbright Commission to convince them that things were changing, that we were useful. And this always involved some chicanery on our part. It soon became quite obvious that the Japanese weren't interested in revolutionizing anything.21
Nevertheless, by 1976 the number of ATCs had risen to fifteen, and the Fulbright Commission had contracted with the New York-based Council on International Education Exchange (CIEE) to handle recruiting. But that year the Fulbright Commission informed the Ministry of Education that because of budgetary constraints, it could no longer support the program. Caroline Yang, the executive director of the Fulbright Commission at the time, explained that "it was a very difficult decision to give up the program, but we simply couldn't afford its cost. We approached Mombusho, which canvassed prefectures, and there was enough interest that they decided to take over the program. Mombusho agreed to provide a subsidy from 1977 on and to require participating prefectures to cover the remainder of the cost."21 Thus was born the Mombusho English Fellows (MEF) Program for American college graduates to teach English in Japan. CIEE was kept on to recruit in the United States and to coordinate orientation and counseling in Japan.
At the same time that the Fulbright Commission had been working to bring American youth to teach English in Japan, the British Council had been actively promoting the same idea in Britain. A few years after the startup of the MEF Program, the British English Teaching (BET) scheme was initiated. The latter, unlike the MEF Program, was administered by the Ministry of Education in cooperation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; it also had somewhat broader goals, including the promotion of foreign understanding of Japan. In any event, by 1986, the last year of both, over two hundred British and American youth were teaching English in Japan. This precedent has particular importance because that year virtually every one of Japan's forty-seven prefectural boards of education employed at least one or two American or British teachers. The JET Program thus involved not starting totally fresh but largely reorganizing and expanding two existing programs. Yet Ministry of Education officials continued to drag their feet.
First of all, they were upset at the prospect of losing control of these smaller English teaching programs that they administered. Relations with the Prime Minister's Office were already strained, and now it seemed as if larger, more powerful ministries, with Nakasone's backing, were attempting to go over their heads to radically change English education. In addition, the trained pedagogues and educators employed in the Upper Secondary School Division of the ministry worried that they would be forced to implement decisions made by politicians and bureaucrats who were untrained in educational matters. "The bureaucrats in the Ministry of Home Affairs don't have the power to judge educational ideas," one curriculum specialist noted. "They like to have festivals and go out in flowery parades and be in the newspapers." Second, in the context of the Ministry of Home Affairs' initial target of 3,000 JET participants, the MEF and BET programs suddenly seemed insignificant. Efforts to teach English conversation had always been peripheral t
o exam-oriented English instruction, and Ministry of Education officials were understandably worried that there would be considerable resistance among Japanese teachers if the numbers of foreign participants increased dramatically. The proposal forced the ministry to confront the result of decades of relative inflexibility in foreign language education policy and the complete lack of major reforms in the system since the 1950s.22
At the same time, there were several arguments to be made in favor of the proposal. The Ministry of Education had already committed itself in principle to internationalization. In the report of Nakasone's ad hoc committee on educational reform, it had endorsed the call for education compatible with a new era of closer international relations. Having caught up with other advanced industrialized nations technologically, the report argued, Japan could not survive in cultural and educational isolation but would have to interact in those spheres as well. Among the report's concrete proposals were calls for more exchanges of educational personnel, greater acceptance of Japanese students returning from abroad, and more emphasis on Japanese students mastering English as a tool for communication. In addition, growing local demand for native speakers in the public schools was coupled with the prospect of no more than incremental increases in the budgets for the MEF and BET programs. If the Ministry of Education could keep the numbers of JET participants from increasing too rapidly, some argued, this was an opportunity to continue a fundamentally sound program without having to foot the bill. A further complication was the feeling on the part of ministry officials that by the time the proposal had been brought to them, it was a virtual fait accompli. If they refused to cooperate, the Ministry of Home Affairs would in all likelihood go ahead with the plan with the backing of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Prime Minister's Office. Even at the local level, superintendents of education are political appointees: given the leverage of Home Affairs with governors and mayors, it was not inconceivable that officials could implement the program without Ministry of Education support.
The ministry's point man at this time was Wada Minoru, a senior curriculum specialist in the high school education section (kotogakkoky(5iku ka). Fluent in English and holding a master's degree in teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL), he had served as the Ministry of Education's coordinator for the MEF Program. Shortly after Wada retired from the ministry in 1993, I was able to talk with him about the behind-the-scenes negotiations when the program was being formed:
I remember the new idea was discussed by a very limited number of Ministry of Education officials-fewer than five. The kacho (section chief) of the section in charge of MEF, a few other persons in the section, and myself. At the early stage of the discussion we didn't like the idea because we were afraid that the Ministry of Home Affairs would take control of the program and the educational purpose would be lost. If we participated in the new program, we thought it would be impossible to keep our influence in the field of teaching English. But we knew that it would be impossible to increase the budget, and local prefectures and cities and towns wanted to have more native speakers of English. The Ministry of Education couldn't support them financially. So we were in a dilemma.23
While Wada and others in the high school education section were cool to the JET proposal, in the end their superiors agreed to the new plan under which the Ministry of Education would supervise the team-teaching dimensions of the program. I asked Wada whether outside pressure was involved in this decision, and he replied:
We discussed the idea for about three months-is it good to join the new project or is it better to stay with the old? During that time, there was no pressure openly from any other ministries or sources of power. But the final decision in our ministry was made by higher-ranking officials at the kyoku (division) level. I'm not sure, but I guess there was very strong pressure on high-ranking officials of our ministry from the prime minister or from the Ministry of Home Affairs. There were some political and economic reasons that motivated Home Affairs. The prime minister at that time was Mr. Nakasone, and he was very eager to show that he took an interest in relations between Japan and foreign countries. The kyokucho (division chief) must have felt some pressure from Nakasone's office in a very subtle way.
Whether there was direct pressure or not, Education officials clearly perceived that their choices were constrained, and they conveyed this sentiment to local educational administrators. One educational administrator in Osaka recalled: "When the decision was made to go ahead with the JET Program, we [English curriculum specialists at the prefectural level] were called to Tokyo by the Ministry of Education for an urgent meeting. They told us that the ministry had not been adequately consulted about the plan and would never have increased the numbers of participants so rapidly. The Ministry of Education was very upset and felt that their program had been taken away from them (torarete shimatta)."
The ministry did set one condition for its support, however. It would go along with the program only if it was made clear that the foreign participants served as assistants to the regular Japanese language teacher: thus Japanese teachers would not feel that their own jobs were either legally or symbolically threatened by the influx of native speakers. The resulting compromise gave rise to what has become one of the most talked about and controversial aspects of the program: team teaching. Wada explained, "I myself thought a lot about that [the issue of Japanese teachers worrying about losing their jobs]. I didn't want Japanese teachers of English to think that I didn't pay attention to that aspect. The idea of team teaching has something to do with that issue. When you look at the situation at private schools, they don't do team teaching because the owners of private schools don't want to spend money on both a native speaker and a Japanese teacher. They think they don't need two teachers."24 It is worth noting that the title initially given to the JET participants-"assistant English teachers" (AETs) and later "assistant language teachers" (ALTs)-symbolized an important lowering of status from "English fellows," the name used throughout most of the MEF Program.2s
It was also striking that the Ministry of Education's approval of the JET Program did not lead to any formal resistance from the Japan Teacher's Union, which has systematically opposed virtually every postwar initiative offered by the ministry. Although some union members did attack the program, the overall response was quite muted. Wada clarified the apparent contradiction: "What is very interesting is that union leaders are against the JET Program on the surface. If they are asked whether they support government efforts to invite JET participants, they say no ... but union teachers like to work with ALTs. So they cannot oppose the JET Program in the same way they oppose other policies promoted by government. Union teachers have been pushing for communication-oriented English and for internationalization for a long time. 1116
Thus, although the Ministry of Education finally acceded to the JET proposal, it is fair to say that those officials who would actually have a hands-on role were at best lukewarm to the idea. Moreover, a surprisingly small number of people were actually involved in the decision. At no time were discussions held with the textbook oversight committees or other groups that shaped the larger structure of English education in Japan. Instead, the JET Program would simply be added on to existing policies, with all the glaring contradictions that would inevitably follow.
SETTING INITIAL PROGRAM POLICY
Once a tenuous alliance between the three sponsoring ministries had been forged, it remained for a planning committee consisting of representatives from each to set initial program policy. What were the decisions about program structure that were explicitly debated, and how were they resolved? What were the "nonissues"-that is, on what aspects of program policy did broad agreement already exist?
The most immediate problem arising from the diverse sponsorship of the new program was to articulate the "official" statement of program goals for the press release on 8 October 1986. The intersectoral nature of the policy meant that program goals had to be worded so as to please all three sponsoring
ministries-the diplomatic goals of Foreign Affairs, the local development goals of Home Affairs, and the foreign language-teaching goals of Education. Insofar as the JET Program was a response to American pressure, the statement of purpose also had to be couched in terms that sat isfied the critique of Japan as a closed society. What emerged after much deliberation was an exceedingly broad statement designed to satisfy each of the above constituencies:
The Japan Exchange and Teaching Program seeks to promote mutual understanding between Japan and other countries including the U.S., the U.K., Australia, and N.Z. and foster international perspectives in Japan by promoting international exchange at local levels as well as intensifying foreign language education in Japan.21
Another major decision regarding program policy was how to structure intergovernmental linkages. Who would be responsible for which aspects? I was quite surprised to find Japanese ministry officials referring to JET as a "grassroots" exchange program, calling up images of ideas and actions bubbling up organically from volunteer networks in local communities. It would seem to be the direct antithesis of governmentsponsored programs.