Re: What's MEXT in English?

From: Kevin Gowen (kgowenNOSPAM_at_myfastmail.com)
Date: 08/17/04 

Date: Mon, 16 Aug 2004 20:19:31 -0400

Chris Kern wrote:

> On Tue, 17 Aug 2004 07:08:19 +0900, Chris Kern <chriskern99@yahoo.com>
> posted the following:
>
>
>>On Mon, 16 Aug 2004 15:36:58 GMT, "Jed Rothwell"
>><jedrothwell@earthlink.net> posted the following:
>>
>>
>>>Is it really necessary to have native speakers of English as teachers?
>>
>>At the current stage of Japan's English education, I think they do.
>>One of the big problems that Japan has with their English education
>>system is that the teachers don't know English, and neither do the
>>parents of the children. All the teachers can do is teach what's in
>>the textbook -- and sometimes not even that. So the children see that
>>their teacher doesn't know English, and that their (presumably
>>successful) parents don't know English, and so they don't see any
>>reason to learn it themselves.
>
>
> In addition to this, I forgot to point out that a lot of English
> teachers have no confidence in either their own ability or their
> students' ability. I've had English teachers tell me that Japanese
> people cannot learn English. Or that "natural sounding English" is
> too hard for the students and so we shouldn't pay attention to that.
> Often they introduce themselves to me with "My name is (name). I
> cannot speak English, I'm sorry." Some of them communicate with me
> entirely in Japanese. Out of the 25-some teachers I've worked with,
> two of them have shown any interest in expanding their English "world"
> beyond the textbook (i.e. by reading English novels or the like) -- I
> don't think it's surprising that their English was the best of the
> pack.

At some point, you will stop giving a damn about Japan's English
education and just go through the motions while you focus on realizing
the maximum potential of your time in Japan. For example, you might find
a wife or learn to sing 金太の大冒険. I did both of these things and it
was much more beneficial to me than trying to teach Tomoyasu how to make
restaurant reservations or spell "chrysanthemum".

- Kevin

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