One of the things that is contractually a part of my job is to act as a person who can "help introduce students to foreign cultures." It's a nice little bit of lip service that got slugged into the ALT job description, and usually takes the form of explaining things like why people don't take their shoes off in a western home, or comparing notes on whatever Hollywood/MTV exports have become popular here. Occasionally we'll be asked to explain a non-Japanese holiday. Usually Halloween. Sometimes Thanksgiving.
But now I've been asked to assist in teaching a class on discrimination. A common image of Japan is that it is generally homogeneous, monolingual and monocultural. Let's leave aside the question of whether the nation of Japan, which has the vast majority of its citizens identifying themselves ethnically as (Yamato) Japanese as opposed to Ainu, Ryukyuan, "Korean person in Japan" or general foreigner-type, can be defined as homogeneous or not. That's a level of definition I'm not competent to make or inclined to attempt.
What concerns me is that I'm going to have to try and explain the concepts of discrimination and tolerance to a group with no real sense of the existence of "others" in their society or even as human beings like themselves. It'll be difficult partially because the students are 15 years old. No one has a whole lot of ability to think outside of their own experience at that age. But it's also where they live, what they've experienced and what they're likely to experience that concerns me. They probably won't have any sort of first hand experience with anything like this until well into their adulthood, if at all. It sounds like a very nice plan to teach them about discrimination, but without finding a way to get them to internalize the ideas, it'll wind up leaving them with a false sense that they understand the situation and therefore don't have to be concerned with it.
Hell. Maybe I'm thinking about it too much. But the odds are good that Japan as a nation is going to need to have more foreigners trying to immigrate in the future, and these kids will have to deal with it.
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Alien at Large:
- Datsun Z
- Souf London, United Kingdom
- I am, in fact, a distinctly moral individual. But they are distinctly individual morals.
4 comments:
I think I can help you out my friend: http://www.wcl.american.edu/hrbrief/11/2barrett.cfm
What I find especially odd is not only was the Equal Employment Opportunity Law only enacted in 1999 but especially on April 1, 1999…. Hmmmmm…. Happy April Fools, Ladies!
Datsun, those quizzes were horrible! I bet you took every single one of them didin't you? Btw the geek hiarchy is going on my wall!(Thumbs up) Thank you, but your still a bastard for those quizzes :P!!
The reduction of the rest of the world into gaikoku has been getting on my nerves quite a bit of late. I've been asked to do a presentation of English culture to a local High School, and I intend to makre a point of the multi-cultural aspect (regardless of recent tensions)...I feel I'm going to be partially banging my head against a brick wall, but it's preferable by far to being a human tape recorder.
I feel your pain, Shining Love Pig. How many times have you had a head teacher tell you with complete authority that native speakers always say/do/think [insert stereotype here]?
You may be banging your head against a brick wall, but don't give up. I've heard some people can break bricks that way. And if nothing else, I know it feels gooooood when you stop...
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