Japan vs United States

Today is the beginning of mid term exams. For the next two days I will not teach in any regular class at Kawaragi, however I am scheduled to teach this afternoon at Sogo Center. That is where they have an alternative education program. I really enjoy the kids at Sogo, they aren’t too far out there. Last week, there were only a couple of kids who seemed hardened and difficult to reach. Two weeks ago, when I first worked in that class I really enjoyed it. It sounds like there is quite a turn around from week to week. I hope I have many of the same kids that were there two weeks ago.

Discipline in Japanese classrooms is drastically different than US classrooms. I haven’t confirmed it yet, but I have been told that it is illegal to remove Japanese students from the classroom. One of the long term ALTs told me that, it doesn’t matter how disruptive they are they can’t be removed. This is the result of a court decision. As a result, some students rarely pay attention in class.

I have had a couple of students in 9th grade who are entirely disengaged in class. They wear the uniforms, as required, but they have dark t-shirts underneath with writing which shows through their white shirts. They often don’t tuck in their shirts and they will actually leave their pants unbuttoned and unzipped so that they can ‘sag’ American style. Their pants stay on because of their belt. There are only a couple of boys who push it that far.

In one class last week, one student in the front of the class actually had his shirt off and was sitting there in his black t-shirt. Tashiro asked him to put his shirt on. I think that his class had just returned from PE and he was refusing to get dressed back in his regulation shirt. I ran the class as Tashiro worked with him and tried to get him dressed. It was distracting, but I tried to work the room away from the student and draw attention to me, not him. I glanced over a couple of times. Eventually, I saw another teacher talking to the student through an open window next to his desk. Then he was gone. I don’t know what happened with him that day. I have seen him back in the halls the last couple of days, but I haven’t been back to his class yet.

In the United States, I wouldn’t allow any student to blatantly disengage like the students are allowed to here. In every class there is at least one student who does not participate. They will talk, read or nap, but not pay any attention to the teacher or what is going on in class. I have seen teachers ask students to be quiet. Some times the students will quiet down for a minute or more. Many times, though the student will continue to talk with the students all around them.

One student outright defied Katano, the Kendo instructor. The student refused to open his book and was talking with others around him. Katano, chewed the kid out in the middle of class and even walked down to the second row where the kid was seated and stood there over his desk for several minutes while I was supposed to be teaching. This is unusual for him, he is a front of the room type teacher. I was quiet. Every other kid in the room was quiet. The kid just stared back at him as Katano opened his book and placed it in front of the student. As soon as Katano turned away, the kid just flipped the book shut as if by accident. There is no way I would ever cross that guy. He is one guy who seems to be on the edge. I just wouldn’t do what that kid did.

I have seen some students take the initiative and smack the disruptive student next to them. In fact the first week, I saw a girl make a fist and slug the boy next to her. The teacher did nothing. I did nothing. I have been told ‘not to discipline the students.’ So I turned it into part of the lesson. When I spoke to the girl in a dialogue in class I asked her, “do you have any brothers.” She said yes, but she didn’t need to. The way she threw that punch told me that she has scrapped with boys before. She knows how to hit and I told her that in front of the class. She laughed. I like her. That boy doesn’t give me any problems in class and neither does she. She is one of my allies.

I know it doesn’t seem like it, but I am fairly strict. In my class most kids figure out what they can get away with pretty quickly. Others must cross the line before they even know that there is a line. Most kids think that I will always joke around. I do kid around frequently, but I also try to be very productive. The kids, who seem to be socially mature, pick up on my cues. In fact the only rule I have in the classroom is, ‘every student has a right to an education.’ I interpret that to mean that each student gets an education and they have a responsibility not to interfere with that same right that other students are entitled to. That is not the way it works here.

Here in Japan the pressure to conform is entirely different. Students do whatever they want in the class. The vast majority will pay attention and give some effort in there studies. Some will let everyone else do the work. There are a few who work hard to excel and there are a few who are not going to do anything that the teacher wants them to do. It seems that the classroom is not where education takes place. Students go to ‘Juko’ schools, cram schools after their day at school. Societal pressure on the kids to excel is very strong, just not in the classroom.

This morning just a few minutes ago, as the teachers conducted the morning meeting, Katsumoto informed me that they were talking about a middle school student who had committed suicide last night. Katsumoto said that they didn’t know which school the student came from, but it sounded like the suicide was tied to the pressure of the mid-term exams. I thought I would be able to read the teachers better. I thought there would be a greater hush than what I saw, but there really wasn’t much difference in this meeting than in any of the others. In the states I have heard of Japanese students who commit suicide over academics. I didn’t anticipate that it would happen so near. The closer it is the more real it becomes. I hope that this is as close as I experience it.

I know students are wound tight. I don’t know what the answers are to classroom discipline. Is it better to knuckle down like I do in the class, or is it better to let social pressures do the heavy lifting? I don’t know. Students everywhere are wound tight. Something else happened this morning before I came into work, I read on the internet that a student in Ohio had snapped, shot a teacher and some students, and then killed himself. I don’t know who is wound more tightly, Japanese students or students in the United States. I also don’t know what the best way is to release some of that tension, by allowing them to blow it off in class or where?