Nor were such criticisms restricted to isolated prefectures or municipalities. After the start-up of the JET Program, it was only a matter of months before the Association of JET Participants (AJET) and the program coordinators at CLAIR took up the cause. In response, the JET Program orientation manual regularly includes a cautionary note designed to temper unrealistic expectations: "The one-shot's duties can produce more culture shock and demands than those facing many world travelers and may result in isolation if the ALT doesn't seek out a network of support and friendship. The rush of autograph signing, hand-shaking and drinking parties on some days can seem as unreal as behind-the-hand giggling and terror-stricken teachers seem on others! "9 Japanese critics of the government were also quick to echo the complaints of the ALTs. In a 1988 newsletter of the leftleaning Institute for Research on Language Teaching (IRLT, also known as Goken), a university professor commented:
The ALTs look for satisfaction and meaning (ikigai) in their jobs. In the classroom they want to be treated like people, not machines, and they want to interact with students with some continuity. But what repeats itself every month is ... a "show-your-face" entertainment industry. The ALTs who came with the desire to reform the educational environment realize that the realities of Japan will not change so easily. As a result, they begin to think, "only a few more months till my contract expires ... ," and they go through the remaining school visits with indigestion. An ALT I met told me this: "If we can find some meaning in our work, then it's easy to renew our contracts. But most of us don't and so we leave quietly after a year. The biggest reason is that we can't find any significance in our work." Is this acceptable? To put it another way, doesn't this amount to throwing away the foreigners? ... The reality of English education in Japan is that we are creating people who more or less lack a sense of purpose and meaning in life (shitsuboshita ningen).1°
Such criticisms make the question of why the one-shot system was initially so appealing to board of education officials even more pressing. Satosensei and other prefectural ETCs I interviewed offered two rationales. First, posting ALTs to district offices of education made it possible to ensure that the participation of schools in team teaching would be voluntary. We must remember that teachers and principals were never consulted about the start-up of the JET Program despite being the ones most directly affected by it. Each district board of education would typically have fifteen to twenty-five junior high schools under its jurisdiction, so the likelihood of finding schools enthusiastic about an ALT's visit was quite high. When one district office notified fifteen junior high school principals under its jurisdiction that it was accepting requests to host an ALT for three months, six of the fifteen applied. The matter was decided by lottery, and the winning principal returned to his school boasting that he was responsible for getting the foreigner. In this way, the integrity of those schools that did not wish to participate could also be preserved. Among the nine who refused to participate was a small rural junior high school; one of its middle-aged JTLs recalled:
The board of education asked the Principal's Association who wanted an ALT this year. Then the principal asked me because I'm the head English teacher. I asked the other two English teachers, but they are very nervous because their English is not good and they're afraid students might notice their lack of English ability. One is a real introvert and doesn't want to get in touch with foreigners. Anyway, they told me, "Of course," but I knew it was only because they were deferring to me as their superior. I have to be considerate to them. So when I said, "Let's not have an ALT this year," I could see the relief in their faces.
Second, defenders of the one-shot system argued that because the ALTs were a valuable asset, they should be spread as broadly and as equitably as possible. Indeed, Tanabe-san noted that he had felt subtle pressure from the budget section of the prefectural office, aware that taxpayers' money was funding the program. The board of education did not want to be accused of favoritism; by posting ALTs to each of the district boards of education, they were in theory making the ALT available to every junior high school in the prefecture.
Some disillusioned ALTs had a less benign interpretation of the motives of prefectural administrators: they saw the initial placement system as a means of spatial segregation and of diluting the impact of a required but threatening commodity. The one-shot system allows schools to "do internationalization" and to participate in the campaign to promote conversational English without seriously disrupting exam preparation and without putting the burden of prolonged face-to-face contact with foreigners on a small set of schools. In this view, the dehumanizing quality of the one-shot visit is evidence of the prefectural officials' lack of empathy. Indeed, the entire structure of the one-shot visitation system is predicated on the notion of foreigners as oddities.
To be sure, prefectural officials were clearly concerned about the impact ALTs would have on schools; but interpreting the one-shot system as the inevitable outcome of a deep-seated cultural desire to keep foreigners at arm's length oversimplifies matters considerably. For one thing, the system was hardly universal. In 1987 roughly a third of Japan's prefectures sent the large majority of their ALTs to district offices of education, from which they were dispatched to junior high schools; another third sent the majority of ALTs to prefectural high schools; and the remaining third split their ALTs fairly evenly between district offices and senior high schools." Furthermore, in many prefectures the models of school visitation evolved over time. Beginning in 1988, for instance, Sato-sensei and Tanabe-san began placing most of their new ALTs in senior high schools; by 1991 the bulk of prefectural ALTs were based there rather than in district boards of education.
An added complication is that in many prefectures the most curious pattern in the school visitation system was the absence not of base schools but of junior high base schools. Pedagogically, it would appear to make sense to concentrate the efforts of ALTs in seventh and eighth grade classes. Formal study of English begins in the seventh grade, and ALTs and JTLs agree almost unanimously that students just beginning English classes are more eager and uninhibited than their older counterparts. When entrance exams are still three years away, the opportunities for cultivating conversational skills seem most promising. Yet even though public junior high schools (12,000-plus) greatly outnumber senior high schools (4,000-plus), in 1987 only about 6o percent of ALTS were posted to junior high schools-and virtually all were rotated among a number of schools under the one-shot system.12
According to Sato-sensei and other ETCs with whom I talked, this pattern was explained primarily by the greater English proficiency of high school JTLs and high school ETCs. Sato-sensei put it this way: "Since high school teachers have a better command of English, they are the ones who take control. Junior high school teachers, because of their poorer conversational skills, just aren't ready to accept ALTs to the extent that high school teachers are. It's more threatening to them to host an ALT for a long period of time."
Junior high schools teachers are also intimately involved in fostering the social and moral development of their students. Ninth grade marks the end of compulsory education in Japan, and prior to this cutoff point teachers spend enormous amounts of time engaged in informal counseling and advising in addition to their academic responsibilities. Rebecca Erwin Fukuzawa's study of student guidance, for instance, reveals that although nurturance and experiential learning in the elementary grades shift to more lecture- and text-centered methodologies in junior high schools, a personal approach to discipline remains a key constant.13 In this context, the presence of a foreigner is likely to be viewed as a burden. As one teacher explained, the preoccupation with nonacademic concerns in junior high leaves less leeway to accommodate the ALT. But by tenth grade, compulsory education is finished; though approximately 94 percent of students continue their education, they have been sorted into different types of high schools based on their entrance exam scores. Concern for student behavior remains, but there is more emphasis on academic and career gu
idance at the high school level.
Yet some cultural dimension may be present in the one-shot patterning. In numerous interviews, I heard Japanese administrators and teachers complain that the students had come to take the ALT too much for granted. This seemed like a curious comment, and when I asked for clarification, they explained that if the students become too accustomed to the ALT, then the power of the foreigner to motivate the students is lost. The term that Japanese teachers use in describing this phenomenon is tarento koka, or "talent benefits," thus equating the ALTs with the television personalities and pop stars known in Japan as "talent."14 A difference in cultural sensibilities led the Japanese to disparage the very process that the foreign teachers idealize: breaking down the barriers and cultural distance between themselves and the students. Assumptions about the ability of native speakers of English (particularly whites) to motivate, not well-thought-out pedagogy, underlies the one-shot system.
The JET Program is now approaching 6,ooo ALTs annually; and with more municipalities applying to host an ALT directly, junior high schools are increasingly being asked by municipal boards of education to host an ALT. The pool of possible schools to visit is thus shrinking dramatically as municipalities stake a claim to "their" schools for "their" ALTs. Thus, while the number of ALTs posted to senior high schools has gradually increased over the first ten years of the program, postings to district offices of education have actually decreased since the third year of the program-and a few prefectures have dropped the practice altogether. As greater numbers of municipalities get aboard the JET Program it will be interesting to see whether they take up the base school approach at the junior high level or continue to circulate ALTs around to a number of schools.
The Struggle to Find Base Schools
So widespread was the criticism about the one-shot system that the Ministry of Education finally issued a directive to local governments urging them to assign all ALTs to a "base school" if at all possible. The concept of the base school was quite straightforward; instead of reporting to a desk at the district board of education when not visiting schools or during school vacations, an ALT would be based in a particular school. While the ALT might continue to travel to other "visit" schools, perhaps one or two days a week, most time would be spent at the base school. Once the ALT was more or less integrated into school activities like any other teacher, he or she therefore would be able to develop meaningful relationships with students and teachers.
Though the goal was very attractive, there was, of course, also a rub. Those at the base school-particularly the Japanese teachers of English-suddenly were forced to assume a tremendous burden. Not only did base schools have to arrange housing and help ALTs settle in, but they were also responsible for the ALTs' healthy adjustment to Japanese society, ensuring that their stay in Japan was rewarding and that they gained a favorable impression of Japan.
The ministry's directive, coupled with complaints from the ALTs themselves, prompted Sato-sensei and Tanabe-san to emphasize expanding the number of base schools at the high school level after 1987. Because he had participated in the prefectural High School English Teachers' Association and had traveled extensively to schools around the prefecture for consultations and seminars, Sato-sensei was keenly aware of the atmosphere, needs, and problems of each school as well as the personalities of the principals and the English teachers. Several prefectural high schools were natural choices for hosting ALTs because they already had an international component to their curriculum. For example, the primarily female Northwestern High School offered a special course in conversational English, and many of its graduates went on to study foreign language at local universities. Two ALTs were placed there as early as 1987. In addition, the prefecture boasted a commercial high school with a special course in international business; two ALTs were posted there in 1987 as well. Finally, one ALT was placed in the prefectural high school that was a "designated school for returnee children" and was actively engaged in a variety of international exchange activities. In all three cases, school officials boasted loudly about the arrival of the ALTs, for their schools were competing in the prefecture with private high schools that had long hired foreign teachers.15
Beyond these five placements, however, Sato-sensei and Tanabe-san were forced to make hard decisions that involved multiple tradeoffs. One of the board of education's most obvious strategies was to avoid asking schools with strong ties to the teachers' union to serve as base schools. Although the union's influence both nationally and in the prefecture was at an all-time low in the late ig8os, at least a half dozen schools in the prefecture were still considered to be union strongholds. I visited several of these schools and discovered that to protest Ministry of Education policy, students were not required to wear uniforms and teachers would often show up at school just in time for their first class rather than attending the "mandatory" morning meeting. Sato-sensei had harsh words for what he called the "self-centered" attitude of these teachers, whom he claimed thought only of their own salaries and working conditions rather than of their students, who suffered for it. He found particularly galling the refusal of some "union" schools to participate in the grading of the "practice entrance exams" that were used to gauge students' chances of admission to a university. Because of their antagonistic relationship with the board of education, Sato-sensei rarely considered any of the union schools as serious candidates for base schools.
No love was lost on the other side either, as union-dominated schools rarely showed enthusiasm for the JET Program. Their resistance was far more rooted in politics than in philosophy. Acceptance of an ALT implied acceptance of the authority of the prefectural board of education and, by extension, of the Ministry of Education. Sato-sensei encountered union resistance in a number of forms. Shortly before a team-teaching seminar for prefectural English teachers was to be held in 1989, he received word that one school would not be sending representatives after all. In a heated meeting, the English teachers had ultimately decided to boycott the seminar because such administration-sponsored seminars were seen to be platforms for the dissemination of politically conservative ideas. The ALT thus became an inadvertent participant in the ongoing struggle over schools attempting to define their own educational goals and methods, ones that de-emphasized competition and entrance exams. Ironically, many ALTs share these beliefs, and many union teachers are active supporters of communication-oriented English teaching.
This ideological affinity has led to curious policy twists. One ALT posted to a strong union school, for example, found that her JTL absolutely refused to use ministry-approved textbooks. While she enjoyed her unusual freedom to teach conversational English, she had strong reservations about this practice because Sato-sensei had repeatedly told prefectural ALTs that they were required to use the approved texts. When she raised the issue with Sato-sensei, he advised her to refrain from pushing the issue. Another interesting case involved a prefectural high school with a moderately high level of union support whose English teachers actually approached Sato-sensei and the board of education to request an ALT. Itosensei, a twenty-eight-year-old JTL, described what happened: "The board of education chose [the neighboring school], even though it was an examoriented school and the teachers didn't take care of the ALT, simply because that school was more attractive (kawaii) to the board of education. It's a shame that this is the case, but schools are circumvented simply on the basis of whether they are strongly influenced by the union or not (kumiai no iro ga tsuyoi ka doka)." Because the percentage of teachers who are union members varies considerably among prefectures, in some union resistance is a relatively large obstacle to implementing the JET Program while in others it may have little effect.
Another huge difficulty for Sato-sensei was that while his contacts were strongest in the more academically rigorous high schools, it was precisely these schools that were most reluctant to accept a JET participant. Not only was there likely to be great resistance from the teachers, who saw teaching conversatio
nal English as a distraction from exam preparation, but parents who had high aspirations for their children and who often felt that conversation could be learned at college might weigh in as well. If such schools did accept an ALT, he or she would probably be relegated to the role of "walking dictionary"-that is, simply consulted about the proper usage of key grammatical phrases that appeared on the entrance exams. Such treatment, in turn, could frustrate the ALT and lead to other problems for the board of education. In one prefecture I visited, the board of education had attempted to alleviate the problem by advising schools not to use the ALT in ninthand twelfth-grade classes since these students were preoccupied with studying for entrance exams. To some extent, Sato-sensei sympathized with this approach; while he issued no such directive, he was keenly aware of the burden he was placing on schools: "To tell you the truth," he admitted, "it's a lot easier on the English teachers if you're not a base school."
At the other end of the spectrum, schools with major discipline problems were less likely to be chosen as base schools, for several reasons. Teachers at these schools said that they were too busy with disciplinary issues to properly attend to a foreign guest. One middle-aged female JTL put it this way: "If you invite an ALT to a school with problems, usually nothing good comes of it. In between periods the teachers are always patrolling the school. There's no time to give to ALTs. Some of my kids can't even find their way to the subway station after school. And you talk about interna tionalization! We need to take care of the basics in this society first!" A further complication is that ALTs are perceived by classroom teachers as representatives of the board of education, and thus there is often a strong desire to prevent them from knowing actual school conditions. In general, Japanese schools with discipline problems are extremely concerned with keeping internal problems out of the view of the public; this sentiment is only strengthened when that public is identified with the international community." One male JTL, twenty-eight, told me, "My first year at this school, the head English teacher didn't want an ALT. When I asked him if we could have an ALT that year, he said, 'Oh, I already told the principal we didn't want one.' I said, 'Why?' He said, 'Because of the condition of the students.' And he did that without even discussing it with other teachers." Thus the schools that were average were the most likely to be initially considered as base schools.
Importing Diversity: Inside Japan's JET Program Page 18