Importing Diversity: Inside Japan's JET Program
Page 17
Sato-sensei: The first trying moment (taihen na koto) was when we had the reception and signing of contracts for the new ALTs in the prefecture and the superintendent had to make a speech. Of course, he asked me, the person below him, to write the whole thing-one hundred percent. So I wrote it in Japanese and took it to him and he said, "Fine." But then when he gave the speech and I had to interpret for him, he went and said something entirely different. I was sweating up a storm and my heart was beating so fast all I could think was, "I hope he's going to end quickly."
DM: Why would he do something like that?
Sato-sensei: You know, he'd been abroad on a Fulbright grant for a year. But actually the main reason he could do this was because [the ALTs] were so far below him in status that he could deal with them lightly. On serious occasions, like when he's talking to the assembly (kyoiku iinkai), he never deviates from his planned speech-he reads everything word for word! ... Anyway after the second time I learned that I didn't have to translate all of it exactly-so I'd only translate about half of what he said.
Tanabe-san: At least you know enough to improvise. My worst fear is when the phone rings and you aren't in the office. If it's an ALT, my mind immediately focuses on all the other people in the office who are listening to me. After "How are you?" it's useless. I can't say anything else.
During the course of the evening the talk turned to the placement system for ALTs, critical incidents in the prefectural administration of the JET Program, and the pros and cons of team teaching. Tanabe-san even brought up Emperor Hirohito's death:
When I was listening to reports from Britain and other countries on reactions to the emperor's death, it really struck home that even though Japan was a leading economic nation, we weren't admitted into the social group (nakama) of the world. A big red flag went up in my mind. Why is that the case, when other nations have had wars just like us? I'll bet when Queen Elizabeth dies, she'll be revered without any of the criticism our emperor received. This is why we must work harder on internationalization through programs like JET, to teach people from other countries about Japan.
I was immediately struck by how clearly Tanabe-san's words resonated with the notion of a "misunderstood Japan" that I had already encountered at the national level. As the night wore on, the theme recurred: the imperative of internationalization was juxtaposed to stories of the difficulties of working with foreigners who didn't follow the cultural standards of behavior in Japanese schools and society.
I also discovered more about their respective backgrounds. A native of Mie Prefecture, Sato-sensei had graduated from Sophia University, where he had been active in the English Speaking Society (ESS) and debating clubs. He had taught for ten years at several area schools and had chaired the High School English Teachers Study Group in the prefecture before taking the supplementary courses in educational administration that would allow him to qualify for an administrative position. He had been appointed to the board of education in April 1988 from his position as an English teacher at one of the premier academic high schools in the prefecture. His overseas experience was limited to a short "educational tour" to the United States, though he had team-taught with several participants in the Mombusho English Fellows (MEF) Program at his earlier schools. Later I would learn that his English skills were quite good at a textbook level; his understanding of colloquial expressions was more limited.
Tanabe-san's background was quite different. He had no special training in educational matters and his English skills were negligible. He had joined the prefectural office as a career civil servant on graduating from a local four-year college. Because he had just been transferred to the board of education from the personnel division, he had very good contacts in other parts of the prefectural office. His main job was to handle the budgetary and administrative aspects of high school education, including the JET Program. Sato-sensei later confided that Tanabe-san was on the track to be coming a section chief. Extremely dedicated to his job, he faced a daily twohour commute from the neighboring prefecture and rarely returned home before io:oo P.m.
Like the majority of those assigned to coordinate the JET Program in their respective locales, neither Tanabe-san nor Sato-sensei had much prior personal contact with foreigners. I learned that administering the JET Program made up only about one-third of their job; they also supervised "returnee children" and the other educational exchanges in the prefecture. Yet judging from the dinner conversation, they seemed quite willing to share their perceptions of the JET experiment with me. Returning home on the late train that evening, I determined that I would do my best to let them be my eyes and ears in understanding Japanese prefectural responses to the JET Program.
PREFECTURAL AND MUNICIPAL RECEPTIVITY
The widespread image of Japan as an insular society might lead us to guess that there would be considerable resistance among local governments to hiring large numbers of ALTs. But just the opposite seems to be the case. Judged strictly by the numbers of JET participants officially requested by local governments, the receptivity has been astounding. Even in the first year of the program, every one of Japan's forty-seven prefectures and eleven designated cities (i.e., large cities with populations over one million) requested ALTs. Moreover, not a single prefecture has reduced their number in subsequent years; by the program's twelfth anniversary in 1999, over half of Japan's forty-seven prefectures employed at least one hundred JET participants. Cities and prefectures that had previously hired foreigners with their own funds began to replace them with those supplied through the JET Program, in some cases severing or weakening ties that had been developed over the years with universities or cities abroad. In fact, local government requests for JET participants have been so high that CLAIR quickly found itself in the unexpected position of being unable to grant the entire number of JET participants requested.
The most common explanation I encountered for the desirability of JET participants was that the program represented a chance for mayors and governors across the country to gain political brownie points. Tanabe-san noted, "When it comes down to the numbers of ALTS, the bottom line is whether it could help the governor at election time. All they're really interested in is creating an appearance." Indeed, each year there are complaints from assistant language teachers and coordinators for international relations who arrive in municipalities only to find no viable plan for how to use them.
But a very strong grain of pragmatism was involved as well. In the short term, it was hard to turn down an attractive offer from Tokyo that was "low cost" (because of the way it was funded) and "low maintenance" (in that selection was handled at the national level). Also, many mayors and governors, genuinely concerned about the future of their locality in an increasingly global economy, felt that their schools had done a poor job of preparing young people to play a productive role in a global society. In addition to being good public relations, the JET Program thus offered an opportunity both for the next generation of leaders to chip away at the language barrier and even for current officials to improve their communication skills.
Japan's long history of local receptivity to top-down government initiatives undoubtedly was a factor in the enthusiastic response of local leaders as well. To some extent, this reflects a power differential; Jackson Bailey, for instance, has argued that "the combined fiscal power of the three ministries responsible for [the JET Program] is so great that local boards of education can do little to resist when this power is applied to them."5 Yet while Nose Kuniyuki, who drafted the original proposal for the new program, himself called every governor in Japan to urge their participation, I found little in the way of overt coercion on the part of the Ministry of Home Affairs. Rather, prefectural officials seemed anxious that they might be left out of a major government initiative.
Finally, the importance of precedents-the MEF Program and British English Teaching (BET) Scheme-cannot be underestimated. By 1986 virtually every prefecture in Japan employed at least a handful of foreign teaching assista
nts: the basic mechanism for implementation was thus already in place.' Had most boards of education not already been participating in these programs, it is doubtful that the politicians could have so easily persuaded superintendents of education (who are political appointees) to participate.
To this overall picture of local enthusiasm for the JET Program, however, several qualifications must be added. First, and most important, the ETCs are rarely as enthusiastic about raising the numbers of JET participants as are governors and mayors, who find the JET Program attractive precisely because it allows them to be "international" without having to worry about face-to-face interactions. Second, there were significant differences among the prefectures. For instance, in 1987 Fukui-ken ranked third in number of ALTs invited but forty-ninth in number of public sec ondary schools; conversely, Aichi-ken ranked forty-fourth in the number of ALTs but fourth in public secondary schools. This variation was caused by a broad combination of factors: the history of English reform efforts, experiences with the MEF and BET programs, the strength of the teachers' union, and especially the attitude of the governor and the superintendent of education. All of this means that the responses of prefectures have changed from year to year, reflecting new leadership and new priorities (see table 5). For example, in 1987 Hokkaido had the greatest number of public schools but was well back in the middle of the pack in numbers of ALTs; by 1998, however, as a result of an aggressive attempt to place ALTs in all municipalities, it had leapfrogged to sixth place with 163 ALTs, putting it behind Saitama-ken (324), Hyogo-ken (234), Chiba-ken (179), Nagano-ken (167), and Shizuoka-ken (164).
Many of the above themes can be traced in the experiences of Satosensei and Tanabe-san. As luck would have it, their governor happened to be a former Ministry of Home Affairs official; as Sato-sensei noted ruefully, the ministry therefore saw their prefecture as "easy to ask favors of." The governor felt strongly that the prefecture ought to do its part in supporting the program. But it would not be easy to raise the number of participants dramatically from the nine MEFers employed in 1986. The prefecture was campaigning intensely to make their public high schools students more competitive on the university entrance exams. English test scores had been targeted for major improvement, and there was concern that too much emphasis on conversational English would undermine this effort. In addition, the prefecture's strong history of unionism caused some worry about how receptive certain high schools would be to hosting an ALT. After consulting with the superintendent of education, the governor agreed to settle for a modest initial request of sixteen ALTs.
The responsibility for seeking subsequent increases fell largely to the superintendent of education, who relied on Sato-sensei and Tanabe-san's recommendation. Each year before suggesting a number to the superintendent, Sato-sensei called all the neighboring prefectures; "We want to make sure that our prefecture isn't out of step," he said. Sato-sensei told me that his predecessor had hoped to stay at sixteen because even that low number was such hard work for him. But the superintendent decided that there should be twenty-two in 1988. Tanabe-san recalled that for the following year, "We proposed a relatively small increase in numbers in order to keep our workload down, but the superintendent asked us,'Are you sure that's enough?' So we had no choice but to increase the numbers. We ended up with twenty-seven in 1989." In 1990 the superintendent recommended thirty-four ALTs, but to the board of education's dismay the governor announced to the general assembly the hiring of that number well before CLAIR had approved the prefecture's request. Sato-sensei made a special trip to Tokyo to ask CLAIR officials to meet their request, but he returned home with the news that local governments sought 2,400 ALTs and CLAIR could only guarantee a total of 1,9oo. In the end, only thirty-one were approved. To match the number already officially announced, Sato-sensei spent a considerable amount of time using his own connections to find three additional ALTs who were hired privately. Tanabe-san reflected, "CLAIR is always telling us to get tough with renewers, but we can't tell someone to go home as long as CLAIR doesn't give us the number we request."
SOURCES: The JET Program(me): Five Years and Beyond (Tokyo: Council of Local Authorities for International Relations, 1992), 169-278; JET Programme: Ten Years and Beyond (Tokyo: Council of Local Authorities for International Relations, 1997), 360; advertising brochure, The Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme, 1998-1999 (Tokyo: Council of Local Authorities for International Relations, 1998), p. 3.
Prefectural and municipal receptivity to the JET Program was perhaps most striking in its mirroring of patterns on the national level. Just as Ministry of Home Affairs officials forged ahead with plans for the JET Program despite foot-dragging by Ministry of Education officials, so too at the local level did politicians and their political appointees largely set the tone for requests of JET participants regardless of the desires of local educational administrators. Those administrators privately expressed reservations about the rate of increase and complained frequently about the stress of dealing with the ALTs, all the while striving to fulfill the expectations of their superiors and to maintain the public image of the program.
DOWNWARD LINKAGES: SCHOOL VISITATION SYSTEMS
In talking about their dealings with the JET Program, prefectural officials frequently compared the process of hosting ALTs to an arranged marriage. "The first time I went to meet the new ALTs in Tokyo," confessed Satosensei, "it was like going to meet my prospective wife at the omiai (arranged meeting of possible marriage partners)." The metaphor is particularly apt because it captures the standard reactions: competing emotions of excitement and anticipation, on the one hand, and fear of the unknown and the unpredictable, on the other. One perceptive ALT marveled, "They're more nervous about us coming than I could have ever imagined!" On the whole, however, JET participants failed to appreciate the level of anxiety and the extent of prearrival preparations caused by their visits. Between the time CLAIR notified prefectures of placements in April and the face-to-face meeting with the ALTs at the Tokyo orientation in early August, Sato-sensei and Tanabe-san were constantly scrambling to get ready.
At the outset, their most challenging task was arranging and coordinating the school visitation system. With 45 public high schools and 104 public junior high schools under one prefecture's jurisdiction, there would seem to be ample room to absorb several dozen ALTs. Yet according to Sato-sensei, the path to smooth placement was filled with potential pitfalls. An examination of the process by which the ALTs are assigned to schools thus reveals much about the management of diversity at the prefectural level.
Spreading the Wealth: The One-Shot System
The most prominent, and ultimately the most controversial, school visitation pattern in the first year of the JET Program was what came to be known as the "one-shot" system. ALTs were given a desk in a district board of education, and from this administrative office, they were sent out to area junior high schools for irregular visits. The duration of these visits varied-a day, a week, or a month-but even when they went back repeatedly, the ALT rarely taught the same group of students twice. The school could be a five-minute walk from the ALT's office or a two-hour boat trip to a secluded school.
In 1987 Sato-sensei and Tanabe-san placed about 70 percent of their prefectural ALTs (ii out of 16) in this manner, with each of the seven district boards of education prefecture receiving one or two; this pattern was typical of the first year of the program. For instance, Laura was assigned to a district board of education with jurisdiction over twenty-one junior high schools. In 1987 she made 151 visits to thirteen different schools, rarely visiting a single school for more than three consecutive days. Typically, the JTL (Japanese teacher of language) assigned to teach with her would send a tentative lesson plan to Laura at the board of education before her school visit. It indicated the grade, period, and atmosphere of the class, as well as a breakdown of how the fifty-minute team-teaching period would be spent. The JTL usually saw such a class as a special event and thus reserved a substantial part of th
e allotted time for the ALT's self-introduction and for conversation practice.
Unfortunately, the emphasis on bureaucratic efficiency underlying this method ran directly contrary to the ALTs' expectations of a deep and meaningful encounter with students and teachers, and they wasted no time in conveying to Sato-sensei their utter disdain for the one-shot system. Because there was no continuity over time, they argued, the school visit became far more effective as entertainment than as pedagogy.' It thus perpetuated the notion of the foreign teacher as a curiosity, a "living globe" wheeled out on special occasions. Moreover, the grueling travel schedule and the necessity of constantly repeating the same lesson made burnout extremely likely. One ALT compared himself to a tea bag, dipped in cup after cup of tea. "And that," he concluded, "makes for one weak cup of tea!" Another complained to me, "One-shots are the desert of human relationships. Smile. Smile. Smile. I think they're dehumanizing and totally humiliating. It's basically utter strangers asking me rude and insensitive questions. I don't give a damn about my one-shot schools. But the fault is with the system not the Japanese people. It would be better to expose us to a few people that we could get to know warmly." Still another elaborated: "For me, the JET Program fails because I have to change schools frequently. Although I only have six schools, I feel I'm here for a 'gaijin' show-not for teaching. I feel no challenge in my work and very little reward."'