School

You may be coming to Japan for the purpose of teaching English. There seems to be some kind of English learning boom in Japan. Especially for businesspersons, whether or not they are good at English will be a matter of life and death at work. Actually some of the global companies in Japan are adapting TOEIC(Test of English for International Communication) scores as promotion criteria. Put simply, employees with under certain scores in the TOEIC can not be promoted. The big wave of globalization has been driving businesspersons to go to the private English conversational schools.

Here is a question about the English levels of the Japanese people. Why do they go to such expensive English conversational schools? Most Japanese today have to start studying English at junior high school under the compulsory educational program though. The answer is that Japan has put emphasis on reading and writing rather than speaking and listening in the English education. But when it comes to English communications, which is the most important skill for any languages or even business, the Japanese have difficulties in doing that. In response to criticism in teaching foreign languages and the waves of globalization in the business world, public schools have started practical English lessons by welcoming English native speakers to Japan from overseas in order to intensify speaking and listening abilities.

Some of the Japanese public schools, however, are not idealistic places to teach. To take a close look at the number of school violence, despite of the drop in 2000, it has still been at high levels in the past four years. The figure includes not only the student’s violence against classmates but also against teachers.

Starting with the risk in public school on the teacher’s side first, there happened a serious case where a junior high school teacher was stubbed to death by a student with a butterfly knife. This is not usual of course. No teacher could go to school if it happened so often. Yet some violent behaviors against teachers have still been seen at any school in any time. When I was a student, for example, in the early eighties, school violence was the first peak. The students at that time had escaped from poverty owing to the miraculous Japanese economic recovery helped by their parent’s great efforts. So they were groping for something in life after reaching the first two stages of the fundamental human needs of physiological and security according to a psychologist, Maslow. Overlapped by their sensitive ages, some of them appealed to violence at school in one form of expressions.

This time, however, the big difference in school violence is that many of wrongdoings are done by normal students. To see a recent series of serious crimes by seventeen-years-old boys, many of them were considered to be nice boys. Their school records were good. Reputations among their classmates were not so bad. So what has made them commit crimes? There are mainly two reasons I can guess. One is because they can’t find outlets for accumulated frustrations. The youngsters at the ages constantly lead a very stressful life such as cutthroat competition for entrance examinations or big expectations by parents. But they tend to keep these stresses inside themselves. If the accumulated frustrations reach a uncontrollable level, the youngsters take destructive actions. The other reason is that the people nowadays (not limited to youngsters) get into virtual worlds influenced by TV games. Some of the maniacs have not been able to distinct between real and virtual worlds. Actually serious crimes have been committed as if they were playing their own games.

To think of the risk on student’s side, my analysis of today’s young psychology above I explain may bring about serious violence against classmates too. This is one of the biggest social problems so-called bullying. In some of the cases, bullied students commit suicide after they were plagued by bullying. A junior high school student in Yamagata prefecture, for example, was rolled up side down so tightly with an athletic mat in the school gymnasium. He was left alone for a long time, and finally he died of pressure. He was bullied just because he spoke the standard Japanese(Yamagata prefecture is located northern part of Japan facing the sea of Japan).

Another factor for today's juvenile delinquency is that the idea of not accepting differences is deeply rooted in the Japanese society. This phenomenon can be seen in adults or companies as well. But since childhood it's necessary to educate kids to acknowledge any differences against others. If so, diligent children looking very normal as students can freely express themselves. Even the maniacs in TV games or the Internet can be recognized as some kind of specialists for their computer skills.

School Violence(in-site)

Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology

Note: ( violence against teachers)