Don't Stand on Ceremony (addendum)

It occurs to me now that the most disastrous lesson activities I've run in Japan have been the ones that ask students to make up their own responses without first having seven or eight examples for them. From the first days of nursery school the kids are told what to do and when to do it so that they won't fall out of step with the rest of the class. Pretty much all of their education is presented in the following format:

1. Teacher explains task
2. Teacher demonstrates task
3. Teacher explains demonstration
4. Students mimic demonstration
5. Repeat until all blanks on worksheet are completed

Now that I think about it, maybe those ceremonies of repetition serve some purpose other than boring me senseless. Maybe it's like a reminder that things are still going according to plan and that everything is still under control.

Of course, I could be quite wrong. Maybe the point is to bore everyone into an easily controllable state of submission. You never know.

"go enryo naku shi-te kudasai"

It means something like "don't stand on ceremony; relax, be comfortable." In effect feel free to do what you'd like. Perhaps modern linguistic theory has moved on from the assumption that social tendencies are revealed in the language, but it's a damn tempting idea to hold in Japan.
I mention this because the school year ends in March here. So the last couple weeks have been a time to prepare for conclusions. And the sense of preparation is never omitted here. At the junior high where I work, the third year students had their graduation ceremony on Wednesday the 15th. (Mandatory education in Japan is only 9 years total. In theory, the junior high graduation could be their official entrance into adult life. Most kids choose to go on to high school for an additional three years of schooling, though.)
So to finish up the year we needed a final chorus festival, in which each of the homeroom classes, five classes for each of the three grades, performed both of the songs they'd been practicing during the third semester, a graduation ceremony, and an end-of-school-year ceremony. But before each of those ceremonies, there had to be a practice session to make sure than everyone knew how and where to enter and exit each of the venues. And each rehearsal took the better part of a morning.
Just to sum up, each ceremony, of which there were three, required a rehearsal for entering and exiting. And to top it off, each rehearsal was treated as a school-wide gathering, which means the protocol for organized seating by class and gender as well as opening and closing remarks by the head teacher must be observed.

Really, hearing "don't stand on ceremony" must be an immense relief.

Manufactured Nostalgia?

The Japanese school year starts in April and ends around mid March. So the current school year is just about over. And the schools are all in the middle of their end-of-year events. But at my junior high they'd scheduled a special song event. It seems that this school is really good at, and proud of, its skills in chorus-style singing. So last week was the school chorus contest. Each class in each grade sang two songs: one they could choose and one mandated by the head music teacher. Then they were graded on performance and conducting, and the best class from each grade was chosen.

Yep. Two songs times sixteen classes plus the 3rd year mixed choruses groups A and B equals 36 songs in a poorly ventilated town hall auditorium. But most shocking was the end of the day. After choosing the winning classes and the best student conductors, there was a photo-retrospective for the 3rd year students to remind them of all the good times they had over the years.

Followed by a video message from their teachers from the first or second years that had gone to other schools.

Followed by a skit by the underclassmen showing their appreciation.

Followed by an interview session with the teachers chosen most popular by the class and their comments on the third year students.

Followed by a final song with choreographed group dance performed by the entire 3rd year class.

Can you imagine that? Like in one of those made for Family Channel movies, the entire class ran up on stage and started singing and dancing along to some radio-friendly (Japanese) pop song in unison.

. . .

I'm glad these kids have a good enough school environment for them to enjoy so much about being students here. And I can't honestly begrudge them actually liking most of their teachers, the lucky little bastards. But I do have to wonder about what receiving so much ready-form memory-fodder does to their ability to process unscripted events.


Eh, maybe I just can't let go of my hatred over being forced to watch Grease.

Just... I mean... it's...

Go ahead. Try to deconstruct this and tell me where it leaves you.

I have chosen to live in a country that has some people who have, in the most literal sense of the word, profoundly weird hobbies.

The program title says it all...

So far, my favorite Japanese TV show is "Trivia no izumi," or "Fountain of Trivia." Each week they examine a little-known bit of information, and explain why it's true. Each of the points is researched in a painfully sincere manner. For example, this tidbit about the last Emperor of China, prompted an interview with a scholar of Chinese history and a trip to China to visit the imperial grave. All so they could announce with authority that the final meal of the Last Emperor of China was... instant ramen.

There's other entries worth bringing up, but this one was easiest to explain.

Sweet?

Apparently, this is a succesful way to sell chocolate in the UK.

It's just chocolate. What's so manly about that? There's no raw meat in it, no cutouts from a Snap-on Tools calendar, it doesn't even burst into flames.

Whatever else in life may be casting doubt on your masculinity, putting this big, long, thick, piece of chocolate in your mouth is the thing to set the record straight.

What is your major (mal)function?

Not too long ago I had a chat with one of the Japanese teachers at the one of the schools I work at. And she told me something that genuinely surprised me.
She's what would be considered a senior teacher. She's around 45-50, and has been a teacher or a substitute for most of her career. And she started talking about her own experiences as a junior high student trying to study English. At that time there was no policy of importing foreigners for English classes, and as a result her classes were taught solely by a Japanese teacher. She, and most of the kids she went to school with, never saw a non-Japanese person until they were out of high school, at the earliest. The functional differences between a werewolf, a robot and a foreigner were all equally academic to her and all her classmates. She seemed to genuinely regret missing the chances her students have to get familiar with the existence of alien peoples.
One of the things that is expected of me, but which I never really grasped, is this role of, well, test-gaijin. I, and other people who have taken similar work, have been checked for terrifying deformity, sufficient patience and appropriate attitude. Command of the language is almost entirely irrelevant. I've been aware of how tangential my teaching skills were to my job for a while, but I never really grasped why.
Most of the people who are now of policy-making age in Japan's various bureaucracies were in school at about the same time, or earlier, as this teacher. These curriculum choices are being made by people for whom English ability is an unnecessary abstract. The curriculum choices are being made by people whose primary understanding of English language use is not one of nuance, fluency or even function, but one of fear of contact with the unknown, as represented by a non-Japanese person.
Regardless of what the board of education told my employers, regardless of what they told me, my main job really isn't to teach; In the minds of Education Ministry policymakers I'm like a safe strain of foreigner-serum introduced to the children so they'll develop the defenses to handle encounters with foreigners in the wild.

Is that role in any way unimportant for a nation struggling to come to grips with globalization? No, of course not.

Is that role one I can take any great amount of pride in doing well?


How would you answer that?