Importing Diversity: Inside Japan's JET Program (25 page)

Within a matter of days Tanabe-san called to let me know he had
arranged visits to a half dozen schools and district boards of education in
the prefecture and to ask if I could meet him and Sato-sensei for dinner. I
was excited at the opportunity to finally meet an ETC, for this was the person who technically served as the ALTs' boss. Though there are prefectural
school boards in Japan whose members are appointed by the governor,
their influence is exercised through the administrative office of the boards
of education (ky(5ikuiinkai). These boards of education are the center for
recruiting and training an elite group of educational administrators known
as teachers' consultants (shidoshuji). Coming directly from the ranks of
teachers, they are vital liaisons between boards of education and the
schools; teachers' consultants typically spend much of their time advising
school-based personnel on prefectural and national policy regarding their
subject area. Most become vice-principals or principals shortly after they
return to schools. Thomas Rohlen succinctly describes this position:

Offices of education are staffed by people who come from the ranks of
teachers. After serving in the administration, they return to positions
in the schools. The responsibility to implement policy and almost all of
the contact with schools is thus in the hands of teachers temporarily
detailed to administrative jobs. All are seasoned teachers, but few are on
the edge of retirement. They earn appointments by excellence as teachers and loyal service.... Respected, hardworking, and aligned with the
administrative goal of maintaining efficient schooling, these staffers are
also politically savvy. They tend to be firm pragmatists who can navigate the tricky waters of education politics.`

Significantly, though the ETCs were English teachers before moving to the
board of education, they were usually not chosen on the basis of their conversational English or international experience. If anything, they represented the more conservative English teachers, predisposed to toe the administrative line; and they sometimes found the prospect of sustained
face-to-face interaction with foreigners terrifying.

That first evening, Sato-sensei matched Rohlen's description. As he came
off the train, I noticed that unlike most school-based teachers, he was impeccably dressed in a three-piece suit and was punctilious in demeanor. Joined
by Tanabe-san and Ueda-sensei, an English teacher at a nearby high school,
Sato-sensei quickly took charge and directed us to a small drinking establishment. Once seated in a semiprivate tatami room, he immediately
brought out a critical article on the JET Program that had just appeared in the
international edition of Time magazine. With two eager listeners, hot snacks,
and mugs of cold beer, both Sato-sensei and Tanabe-san quickly warmed to
the task of sharing recollections of their first year coordinating the program.

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 assistants: 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.