Importing Diversity: Inside Japan's JET Program (27 page)

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 guidance 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
conversational 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.