I’ve successfully completed the first couple days of school. Not much was involved on my part – mostly just sitting in the staff room trying not to look bored. The first day was a school assembly in the stiflingly hot gym, where several students had to run out and be sick. I gave a short speech in Japanese introducing myself, and then the other teachers chastised the students for not tucking in their uniform shirts. To give you an idea of the type of “serious” behavioral problems they have at Japanese schools: one girl came in wearing nail polish and they made her cut her nails! Otherwise the biggest offense is a sloppy uniform.
Today, the students were testing (I don’t understand why they had tests after summer vacation rather than before), so I tried to be as little of a distraction as possible. I did get to be the native English speaker on the listening portion of the English test. The English teacher and I did a conversation over the P.A. system and the students had to answer questions about it! Otherwise, I spent much of today looking through the English textbooks. Very interesting – one chapter is on “children and landmines”, another is about the starving children in Sudan. Yet another on refugees, and another on green roofs and the heat island effect. Odd topics for junior high English classes.
On the English exam, the teacher had the students write two questions to me, so she asked me to write answers to the questions on their tests. Most questions were things like “Do you like Japan”, “Do you like sushi”, “Do you have a brother”. After a hundred questions of this nature, I was very surprised to see the question “Have you ever seen a UFO?” Give this student an A for creativity! Alas, I had to answer no.
I ended the school day wandering through the school during the student activities time. Said “hello, how are you” to lots of students and watched them practice basketball, soft tennis (not entirely sure what that is), and table tennis. I was hoping to find an activity like ikebana (Japanese flower arranging), but I may have to settle for watching them rehearse for the school play – Sleeping Beauty. Should be entertaining!
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Actually, and sadly, those topics really are not that surprising considering there's a huge U.N. push for such things in children's books. Here in America, the programs are called "International Baccalaureate" schools - and they're touted to parents as if they're the cat's meow.
They're actually very dangerous, considering that the general goal is to create children of the world, not of a particular country.
Mind you, I say these things not to criticize important subjects such as living cleanly, spreading peace, and so forth - but these kinds of school books go far beyond that.
-Cliff Claven, out.
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