It is a pleasure to have the opportunity to be an inside observer of the Japanese school system. I have been an Assistant Language Teacher (ALT) in Hachinohe since July. As an ALT I visit two junior high schools and four elementary schools. Before coming to Japan I worked as an elementary school teacher in Seattle, Washington. My experience in Japan has brought up occasions to compare and contrast the school systems, students and teachers. It is evident to me that both have their strengths and weaknesses. In this essay I will discuss my observations regarding student backgrounds, attitudes, teaching and learning styles, and foreign language acquisition.
A major difference that sets Japanese classrooms apart from American classrooms is their almost complete homogeneity; most Japanese classrooms are made up of Japanese students. As opposed to American classrooms that tend to be largely heterogeneous made up of students from many different cultures. For example, my classroom last year had Caucasian, Nepali, African American, Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Cambodian and Mexican students. The many backgrounds create a rich classroom community where students may learn from each other’s differences. With differences there also arises differing expectations of the importance of education and the role of the teacher vs. parent in a child’s education. The American school system is faced with providing a safe, productive school environment while also responding to the challenges of a diverse population. In a Japanese classroom, students come from families with the same educational experience. Students expect to work hard, respect their teachers and participate as an active member in their school community.
If I were to pinpoint the most striking difference between school systems it would be the attitude of the students. In Japanese schools I observe responsible, independent students working toward community goals. This communal responsibility can be seen as early as first grade and continues through junior high school. Japanese students are expected to clean their school, serve school lunch and be an active member of their school community. Most of the students take their role seriously and responsibly clean, serve and participate with a positive attitude. I have never seen responsibility and communal values exist as strongly in American schools. I think individual teachers have achieved this in their own classrooms but it does not exist schoolwide. It is interesting for me to witness a systematic expectation from a young age that students are part of their community and will act in a way to support everyone by cleaning, serving and participating. I think this communal responsibility stems from the homogenous population within Japanese schools. In American schools, teachers struggle to instill a communal responsibility in their students due to a lack of homogeneity in the population and school system at large.
In American classrooms cooperative learning to discover the answer is often more prevalent than a stand and deliver rote learning style observed in many Japanese classrooms. In a language classroom there must be time allotted to teaching the language and students must be committed to memorizing vocabulary and rules of the language. Although there must also exist a time of creative production of the language for the memorization to do any good. Students need opportunities to interact with each other and grapple with understanding the language. I think this can be achieved through all four-language domains (reading, writing, listening and speaking) but producing the language through speaking and writing requires lots of practice. I think this practice is best achieved through cooperative learning groups where students are given a task and the time to work together to create a story, write a letter or give a presentation, etc. I would like to see cooperative learning used more in Japanese language classrooms.
I am impressed by Japanese students exposure to English beginning in early elementary school. Many students begin learning basic phrases in first grade and it is required for fifth and sixth graders to learn English through regular classroom activities. In elementary schools communication in English is the focus and most of the activities encourage the students to speak the language. Then Japanese students move onto to junior high school and continue English through high school. I have observed that although students continue their study of English there is not an emphasis on speaking the language but instead on memorizing dialogues, reading and writing. The interactive, creative part of language is stifled by the timidity of students and the teaching and learning styles of students and teachers. On the one hand early exposure to a foreign language is a strength of the Japanese school system but it would be advantageous to incorporate more authentic speaking and listening opportunities as students continue their study of English in order to reach the goal of fluency. In contrast the American school system is lacking opportunities for students to learn a foreign language at a young age. Foreign language studies don’t begin until junior high school. It is up to the individual parents to enrich their children with opportunities to learn a foreign language at a young age. There are very few public schools that offer a foreign language program and the ones that do are popular and competitive to get into. The Japanese emphasis on learning and communicating in English beginning in elementary school is a strength in their school system. I am curious about how the current exposure to communicating in English in elementary school will affect student’s English fluency in the future.
The time I have spent working in Japanese classrooms has impacted my thinking about education and school environments. I look forward to returning to an American classroom and incorporating some of the communal values and responsibilities I have observed in Japan. I want to share my travel experiences and Japanese language studies with my students. It is my hope that I might influence them to study a foreign language (maybe Japanese) and seek out travel experiences. The classroom should be a rich environment for learning and socialization but traveling and living among other cultures can create lifelong learners and responsible world citizens.
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