The K Experience

The Japanese Student Stereotype

Past - Japan

Thursday, 10 July 2008

Being an assistant language teacher in Japan, piece of cake right? Well everyone one knows that Japanese students are well behaved, studious, intelligent, obedient...all that stuff right...

Well, not quite. If experience has taught me anything in life, it's that stereotypes cannot be trusted. The problem is that there are far too many of them, and they are all taken for granted. For example, British people: drink tea, are stuck up, have a dry sense of humor; black people love chicken (to eat), are always late, make good athletes, have big ... hands, etc etc. Yes of course you will find British people that do drink tea, who are stuck up and who do have a sense of humor, but you will also find some who don't like tea, are really easy going, and have a ...wet...sense of humor. Likewise with black people, some do love to eat chicken, have issues with being on time, are good athletes, and have big...hands. You will also find those that are vegetarian, are always punctual, hate the idea of competitive sports, and are...well you get the idea.

So imagine my shock when my students weren't the little angels I had imagined them to be way back when I received my letter saying I would be teaching in Japan. They didn't turn out to be the well behaved, studious, obedient students I had envisioned, and many were just the opposite. There were many times that I had to stop students from talking about rubbish, stop them from reading their own magazines in class, and often I would have to stop them from sleeping. But then again my school was slightly different from the others that my fellow JET friends taught in. I was in a Technical High School. The students had either failed the entrance exams for the good high-schools, or had been kicked out of the good high-schools, and thus ended up at Futako. They were not expected to go onto university, the best would just about get into college (a technical college). Thus most were not interested in learning or doing well in English as it was only needed for university entrance exams, and as most weren't going, there was no real point for them.

Coming to class for many of them was just going through the motions. They had to have English class, it was compulsory up until final year. So they just came, failed their tests, would chose something else senior year and would never have to worry about the dreaded language again. For me this was both good and bad. Good in the sense that, I had freedom in my classes to do pretty much what I wanted. Other ALT's had to stick to the workbooks, and acted as nothing other than a reader in class, because they had to stick to the script and get everyone to pass the tests. I didn't have that pressure or that same responsibility. So I was free to spice the lesson up with lots of games, movies, PowerPoint's, whatever I had in mind (which didn't always work). After all whether they passed or failed the little test which I gave them, didn't really matter much. That was the bad part, there wasn't much in the way of self-expectations, no matter how much I tried to instill.

That's not to say that there weren't any outstanding students in the school. There were a fair few, and I was there for them whenever they needed help. Some always paid attention in class, did all their work and tried to talk English to me whenever they could. Some did go off to college just to study English, with the intention of going off to university afterwards. There was a special class for students continuing English lessons in senior year, although many only chose that cos they thought it would be easy.

I quickly changed my main focus from them learning from me, to me learning from them, and just being around as much as I could helped them a little. Many didn't really want to communicate in English, so I did my best to learn Japanese, and outside of lessons we talked a bit. I joined the brass band, and performed with them quite often, and stuck around after-school for whatever activities they did.

Teaching in classes with demotivated students wasn't always my experience teaching in Japan however, I took part in 3 English camps, two run by other schools, and one run by Takaoka city. These were for students who wanted to perfect their already quite good English, and hence this was a bit more of what I had expected before I came to Japan. I would also hear stories from my friends teaching in other schools of how their students would have in-depth conversations, of ethics, philosophy, and history, so it wasn't the same everywhere.

One thing I will always remember is that students all around the world, are pretty much the same. Some good ones, some bad ones, some focused, some not. Of course you could always compare students from different countries, but that wouldn't really be fair. Each country has different aims, foci, and general directions for their respective education systems, and hence there would be inherent differences in levels of ability in certain areas. But generally, if you look at it, from Japan, to Ghana, to the UK to the US of A, kids are pretty much the same.

Stereotypes are there, I guess, because we like to have an image of things that we have not yet experienced fully ourselves. Those images are of the simplest observations. However, stereotypes should be challenged, weighed up, compared with real observations. This usually happens when you immerse yourself into certain situations. But far too often, stereotypes are not tested, and many of the people who make important decisions, which effect other people don't always have anything other than their stereotypical images to go by. I ended up learning my lesson about students and stereotypes. It was pretty tough, but I enjoyed it, and made something of it. I hope others know to do the same.

You can check out the other pictures in the gallery.

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Diana Fay

|07-11-2008 19:19:56

I must admit I was guilty of believe the "perfect student" Japanese
stereotype before I read this. I always thought being a highschool teacher would
be a horrid job, I hope they aren't too rough on you!

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K	\|07-11-2008 21:51:18

Thanks for the comment. It was a few years when I taught there actually, but
that's how it was. The teaching part wasn't great, but I did enjoy the
experience, and do miss some of the kids, even though they've probably forgotten
about me. Teaching high school can be a great experience, depending on the
school, and the kids. I'll write about some of the kids in another entry.

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Teach by Examle

|07-13-2008 20:06:52

I have to say, I empathize with your experience. I worked at a high school with
demoralized students and it is indeed a challenge!

Were the parents very
involved with students in these schools? That seems to be a key factor in
demoralized students.

Also how do you go obtaining a teaching position in
Japan? I would like to do something like this.

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K	\|07-14-2008 07:38:18

During the time I was there, I hardly saw any parents, and never talked to any.
So parental involvement wasn't so big in my case. However, that may only have
been because I was the assistant language teacher and probably wouldn't have
been able to communicate much with them anyway.

I got the opportunity to teach
there through the JET Programme, which recruits native English speakers to teach in Japan. You can read here to see how my experience started out.

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Xuehong

|07-28-2008 00:23:59

I have to admit that I believed in the stereotype kind of Japanese student too,
even though I understand clearly that not all Chinese students are the diligent
ones who are good at math.

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leo	\|01-13-2009 02:38:16

There are many Japanese stereotypes, some are true, others are more contrived to
suit non Japanese
impressions
http://japansugoi.com/wordpress/stereotypical-japanese-characters-by
-peter-machat/

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