Bringing thousands of JETs to Japan is not a good investment for the country's taxpayers in this day and age of an already globalized world.
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Kumiko Torikai, dean of Rikkyo University’s graduate school of intercultural communications and the author of several books on English education in Japan. She says JET has outgrown its usefulness and needs an overhaul. (AP)
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Branded
"Kumiko Torikai, dean of Rikkyo University’s graduate school of intercultural communications and the author of several books on English education in Japan"
Considering Japan's position at the bottom of the "English ability" scale, you'd think this "author of several books on English education in Japan" would shut her yap- she's obviously part of the problem !
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LoveUSA
I agree with her. Even if 128 million Jets come to japan, one for each person in Japan, the result won't change. I wonder why nobody has written a good textbook for the Japanese schools, one in which there isn't one English sentence and then 2 pages in Japanese explaining it. I am amazed at how good the Russian school English textbooks are. Please copy them and use them in school.
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Alphaape
If Japan really wanted to get serious about overhauling the program, then all they need to do is look among the 40,000 or so US Military and associated civilian personnel that are working here. Many get out of the military and choose to stay here, some working on base and others elsewhere. Why not make a concentrated effort to recruit those that choose to remain here. In most cases some of them have Japanese spouses and probably are able to speak a lot better to a non English speaking Japanese than a college person who is coming to Japan for the first time.
In areas like Tokyo where there are many spouses of military/US workers who may actually be professional teachers but don't have the opportunity to teach onbase, you would have a willing pool of potential applicants, without having to entice them to come here and pay for their trip over. Also, as I have seen from posts here, they will probably be less likely to have a person be a visa overstay since these people normally leave when their spouse who is assigned here leaves.
I don't think that they are really willing to transform the JET program if they are not looking at the potential pool that is all ready here.
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Richard_III
No offence to ex-military types, but I wouldn't want them teaching my kids.
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Alphaape
Richard,which would be worse, someone who may have been in the military and a bit older and has actually had to work for awhile to make a living, or someone who is just getting out of college with no real world experience who may still be in the "party mode."
Not that the person who is getting out of the military may be young, but many retire over here that are married to Japanese spouses, and have just as much to loose by not having a job. Not all of the ex-military are the ones you may see hanging out just trying to get by mooching of some girl. Many are hard workers, I would say that probably with a better work ethic than someone right out of college or "taking time off from their studies" to experience the world.
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tmarie
I agree with her. They need to spend the money on training the Japanese English teachers before spending money on a bunch of uni grads with no clue abotu teaching or their native language.
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chotto
It's all been said before...
*Make English OPTIONAL at SHS *Put JETs where kids WANT to learn *Scrap private dispatch companies and cut the number of JETs *Use the money to send wannabe Japanese English teachers abroad to live for a year.
Fixed.
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limboinjapan
I have lived and worked in many different countries some developed others away underdeveloped but they all had one thing in common, and that was just about every university graduate could speak fairly good English (not my native language either) as well as most government official in any public position that may deal internationally or with foreign people also spoke English.
With one major exception JAPAN!
I have lived here more than 19 years now and heard all the "internationalization" slogans but I have actually seen this country roll backwards.
I say scrap the JET, scrap the outsourced cheap labour teachers, Basically scrap the whole English teaching pretense, until Japan decides it actually needs to deal with the rest of the world.
This may take a few generations, China has already passed Japan economically, I suspect that Japan may wake up once it is no longer in the G8 .
Now I suspect I will now hear from all the Japanophiles say things like "why English" and others "why not Chinese!".
Well I just finished an international video conference this morning that included China, France, Japan, USA and it was conducted in ENGLISH, but everyone could follow EXCEPT the Japanese. (FYI Chinese owned corporation)
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