E-ju-cay-shun

The club activities are clearly a major difference between the job of an English teacher and the job of a teacher in Japan (see previous post).
Taken aback is too strong a word to use, but I was mildly surprised at teachers behavior towards students in general. It wasn`t just one teacher but I notice it with nearly every JTE I teach with. And the fact I noticed it, a small difference, is important. Japanese teachers have a much more hands-on contact with their students compared to English teachers. If the student is slumped over their desk asleep (as many often are) the teacher will touch the student, and shake them to get them going, hit them (gently!) around the head – almost in a coaxing sort of way. Teachers in Japan have a lot more person-to-person contact with their students. I`m sure that if this occurred in England, students would view it as strange, and probably some smart-arse student would say it was paedophilia/ child abuse in a joking way. Even though in jest, this would cross the minds of English people – the students, their parents, their teachers. But, in Japan this would not cross the mind of anyone. This is just a normal way to be in the classroom.
It reflects a deeper, overall divergence between the style of Japanese and English education. Japanese teachers are much more similar to parents in many ways, concerning the amount of input they have into the raising of children into young adults. Many times in the teachers room I see students talking deeply to teachers about matters that are probably quite serious. This is not just a few isolated cases, but I see it relatively often, in all of my schools. When I speak to teachers and ask how they can possibly find enough work to do to keep them in the teachers room until late into the evening, the teachers often state that they are speaking to the parents of their students on the phone. That that are meeting with the parents of the students. These teachers play a hugely important role in the upbringing of the children. They spend so much time with these children through the school day, and as part of the club activities, meeting the students individually to discuss their work (and having more personal conversations too is what I guess from seeing some hushed conversations here). Naturally, because of all this contact, the homeroom teacher of a student knows that student extremely well, perhaps almost to the level of a parent in some cases. It was interesting for me to find out, that in Japan if a student ever gets into trouble with the police, the first thing the police will do, is to call the school, to get the student`s homeroom teacher to come down to the station! The teachers do have this level of involvement in the moral upbringing of their students.

But, this role similar to a parent has led to problems I believe with the maturity (or lack thereof, as the case may be) in Japanese students. Because the teachers have such a close parental-like role the students can become very dependent on them. Never afraid to ask for help from their teacher-parent (and never will this help be turned down).
It crystallized for me after I had been to Hitachi-kita school for a couple of weeks. Hitachi-kita is my high level school. As is logical, in the higher level schools the students are more serious about school, the teachers are more serious about school. Therefore, the relationship between students and their teacher is perhaps intensified compared to the lower level schools (where the kids view school as purely a social occasion). Hitachi-kita`s aim is to get maximum kids into maximum good universities. They are the 3rd best ranked school in Hitachi and because of this aim there is pressure, pressure, pressure – on the teachers AND the students.
These teachers take few breaks as far as I can see. Even during lunchtime students are frequently in the classroom talking with their teachers, receiving personal help with their school work. Teachers do this because they are so motivated by the university pressure, but also because of the general attitude of heavy involvement in the students` academic and personal achievement and development. A couple of students come and ask me to check over their work during lunchtime. I do it, I correct it, as all teachers do (because these kids are keen – want to study English at university, and to reject them would be seen to discourage them). But, I just think and imagine the situation if this were to happen on a daily basis in an English staffroom as it does here (a stream of students coming into the staffroom to ask for help with their work). Fuck off, let me eat my lunch in peace! would be the response I reckon.
Is this a good thing? This personal help. It might improve them in the short-term. Having your teacher standing over you, making you work, giving you detailed personal help will surely increase your marks, but I would say it is a problem in the longterm. These kids are going through school extremely immature. Teachers do comment that Japanese students are immature, and this heavy involvement in their students lives is I`m sure, part of the problem. When they leave school and study at university it must be a big shock. To work individually without such close teacher help. To work without the knowledge that a teacher is standing over you, and will act as a big motivating force in you getting your work done. To work without knowing in the back of your head that your teacher will correct your work if you ask for it.

It is this kind of personal work that takes so much of a teacher`s time. I remember talking to Tomota-sensei. Leaving school at 5.15 pm. She would be working on a student`s speech contest speech that evening. The student had made some crap attempt at it, but Tomota-sensei was going to rewrite it because she didn`t think it was good enough. She even emailed it to me to check it as well. The dedication of these teachers to their students does astound me. (And for a teacher to write a student`s speech is entirely normal by the way. I judged a speech contest last weekend – and knowing the standard of high school student English there is NO WAY that most of the students had written what they wrote).

So, how has this method of teaching – which in my view tends to produce immature students, come about? Why are these teachers taking on a parental role? It`s because of the wider Japanese working culture. Japanese adults all work late. If both parents work – what happens to the kid? Teachers take the parent role, because the parents often hardly have time to! If the kids don`t spend all their evenings and much of their weekends and their holidays doing club activities who is going to look after the children? Working parents certainly don`t have time too. So the teachers take on this pseudo-parent role. To fill the role that working parents do not have time for, because THEY are at work. It`s a little sad really.
To summarise it is the never-ending commitment to the club activity and all that it entails (coaching, refereeing, driving the club to matches all around Ibaraki – and beyond, if your club is good), and the intense personal attention students receive from their teachers, on top of the regular lessons and lesson planning, that account for the way Japanese teachers work the hours that they do.