JETS, English Teaching, and the Theatre of the Absurd

The Japanese government supports the pay of both JETS and other English teachers. In the former case the government pay JETS about 300,000, in the latter case because earnings of about 250,000 are required in order to get a visa (though language schools often get around this requirement by requiring their teachers live in profit-making language school provided housing). All the same, if restrictions were removed, or loosened, then I think that the Japanese could employ people at considerably lower wages.

Should the Japanese leave the pay of English teachers to market forces? One of the reasons that they do not is to avoid putting Japanese English teachers out of a job. I think that Japanese speaking English language teachers (foreign or Japanese) would be able to compete in the job market even if these pay supports for foreign English teachers were removed.

I would recommend that the Japanese made more use of Philippine, Maltese, Indian, Pakistani (second language) English language speakers to obtain even cheaper language teachers for their students at lower levels.

As is commonly repeated, English in Japan is often taught as "Exam English."

Most subjects at school (Maths, History, Geography...) are taught as 'exam subjects'. English is quite normal in this regard.

Those JETS, and other ALT's that have had training, and many of those that have not had training, are aware that if the Japanese teachers keep on teaching English as they do then their charges, the school students, will not learn to speak English.

I think that there needs to be more awareness that English schooling serves a dual 'purpose,' as practical training (that results in English-speaking ability) and as an academic praxis (like other subjects taught at schools).

The existence of "schooling," and the teaching of academic knowledge such as grammar, trigonometry, historical dynasties, geographical features, in Japan in other 'developed' nations especially, is quite a knotty issue in itself.

Does schooling cultivate the mind? Is it 'dumbing down'? While much of the knowledge imparted to school students is not used by those students, and whether or not they are "cultivated" or "dumbed-down" is up for grabs, adult life in developed nations, often requires that humans learn a large variety of facts and procedures that have no immediate value to the learner, but have meaning to the society. Those humans that can learn the dynasties of their nation, or can learn geographical formations, or English or Latin grammar, can also learn the quality control procedures of their company, the tax regulations of their business area, the names of their companies' products. Schooling schools us to be the cogs required by society.

English language education is part of Japanese academe. The student that can learn lots of conjugations, past participles, vocabulary will get into a 'good' university, and be a good quality control engineer, tax accountant, or bureaucrat.

If English were taught as a practical skill, then would it cease to be useful as an academic subject? There are a lot of useful things that are rarely taught in schools: how to change plugs or diapers (nappies), how to chat people up, look cool, or find a partner, how to console, berate, and encourage, how to cope with bereavement or ones own death, how to deal with jock-itch and hair loss, how to avoid being brainwashed by advertisements. All these things are taught to an extent, but schooling does not seem to focus upon teaching life skills. Or does it? If schooling did teach "useful" life skills, then it would cease to teach (or perhaps rather separate people according to) the paramount life-skill required of people in 'advanced economies' of "how to spend ones life learning and doing things that are pretty irrelevant to the individual;" or how to cope with the absurd.

English schooling here in Japan is part of the rest of schooling here and everywhere. It teaches, and streams, those that can be a cog and cope with the absurdity of modern life, and those can't.

JETS and other native English speakers who come to teach in Japanese schools are a little like those very rare individuals that do use the things they learnt at school. They are like museum cureators in a history class. They come from a far removed world where the subject being taught is actually used, day to day. The museum cureator in a history class might bewail the fact that the history lesson does not focus upon the (for them, really useful!) ability to separate artifacts according to their year of production. "Gosh, your teaching of history is so impractical, let me show you how it is done", they might say.

In rural areas of Japan, if not Japan as a whole, there are limited opportunities, and still more limited necessities for speaking English. As internationalisation and globalisation progress, will the demand for English-as-a-non-academic-subject, as a practical skill, increase? Chinese, Korean and Tagalog may be equally useful. Automated translation tools and the translation industry are also evolving. Will there come a time when all Japanese need to speak English, or will various translation machines suffice for the majority?

Teaching the useless, the grammar, past participles, cosines, enzymes, molecular weights, is teaching the useful, because life for people in 'advanced' nations is absurd. Eugene Ionesco gained inspiration for his theatre of the absurd, from his experience of learning English. This is a pen. My taylor is rich. I am a rhinoceros.