4 May 2001 (11 Iyar 5761)
I am racking my brain over the question of how to deal with exceptional students (in both positive and negative senses) in class. Ideally, the academic demand of each and every student should be met, but in reality, various factors that limit my classroom activities force me against my will to pay less attention to the special demand of these exceptional students who always constitute a minority in class.
My basic philosophy of university teaching is to encourage good students, thus to adjust the academic level of the courses to theirs, rather than to try to rescue bad students, as I believe that universities are not and should not be elementary schools. In elective courses I can justify myself in assuming certain minimal requirements, but when it comes to obligatory courses, I am forced to make some compromises to lower the level to that of the majority of average students. In obligatory English courses for freshmen and sophomores, for example, there are always a minority of exceptionally good students, and I feel sorry for them as I have to make my courses too easy and probably boring for them.
Actually, the fundamental problem lies in the bureaucratic regulation of Japanese universities to oblige all the students equally to take the same English courses. This is a good example of the wrong interpretation of equality, and benefits no one. They should arrange a placement test, and make classes according to the proficiency levels of students. Those who show a certain level of proficiency should be exempted from further study, but on the other hand, those who do not reach it should be required to study again and again until they do so. To show "mercy" to such students can only harm them in the long run and the very raison d'être of universities themselves.
Although I feel less sorry for exceptionally bad students, it does not mean that I do not feel sorry for them. When I find them in obligatory courses, I am sorry that they were allowed in the level they are in at all through the wrong interpretation of equality, are forced to sit in the courses that are mostly incomprehensible to them, and often fail in the final examination. In elective courses I can feel less sorry for them though I feel rather helpless when they do not have even the fundamental knowledge of the language in question they are supposed to have according to the level in which they are placed. They are forced to have a hard time in my class as I am not ready to lower the level, especially when there are many returning students who took the same course in the previous semester or academic year, and continue to come, as is the case with one of my Japanese courses. When those who are apparently far below the level of the course stop coming, I have a mixed feeling. On the one hand, I feel relieved as I do not have to encounter silence to every question I ask them in class any more, but on the other, I feel rather guilty that the given circumstances could not allow me to pay more attention to their special academic demand.
11 May 2001 (18 Iyar 5761)
I am extremely bothered by an alarming - and seemingly ever growing - tendency among young people in Japan, at least on the basis of my personal observation of university students, to try to find "solutions" to the problems they face simply by evading them. For example, more and more students decide to leave the courses, even obligatory ones, quite early in the beginning of the new academic year without making any effort once they are imposed a task that may require some degree of intellectual effort. Another example is that more and more students fail to show immunity to constructive criticisms expressed against them, and abruptly disconnect any form of communication.
Such an approach is against my philosophy of life and against the teaching of one of my ex-teachers that choosing the more difficult of the two alternatives is a sure way to success in life. As our muscles cannot be strengthened without enough physical burden, so are our souls unable to develop without encountering and then conquering spiritual hardships. The surest way not to get drowned while swimming is never to swim, but then one will never be able to learn how to swim, and this must be a wrong approach in life.
More and more children in Japan are being raised, hermetically sealed from exposure to any possible burden upon the "muscles" of their souls that could otherwise help them grow spiritually. As a result, even university students are mostly quite childish and immature in Japan compared to their counterparts in other countries, and many of them have not learned how to cope with even minor hardships, thus trying to find easy "solutions" by evading the very hardships they face and missing the chances to grow spiritually. It is a world-wide phenomenon that the more developed a society is, the more time it takes its members to become adults. Although those who are 20 years or older are considered adults according to the Japanese constitution, the age must be raised from 20 to 30 at least if we are to adjust the law to the social reality.
This ever growing tendency in Japan is quite an alarming one, but I fear that nothing will be able to stop it until it really worsens and reaches the "critical state". When I think of this, I feel really helpless.
18 May 2001 (25 Iyar 5761)
In one of my English courses at Kansai University this week I did something I had never done before in my seven years of university teaching: to leave the classroom in silence in the middle of the lesson in protest against some mass manifestation of self-pampering by the majority of the students. I could of course stay in the classroom and protest them. But for me totally neglecting the existence of someone without even bothering to say any word of protest to him or her or even look at him or her is the severest form of protest, and that is what I had to do to show them that I meant business.
According to the syllabus dictated by the university I was supposed to teach reading comprehension based on the old-fashioned grammar-translation method in this course. But I took the liberty of changing the syllabus to something emphasizing the output rather than the input as I know that the majority of the university students in Japan are desperately poor at expressing their opinions both in speech and in writing not only in English but also in their mother tongue. So in the first half of each lesson a couple of students are asked to make a short speech about any social issue they choose and express their opinions about it on the basis of the manuscripts they prepare and I check in advance; in the second half of each lesson we are learning step by step how to write logically.
I usually do not assign any homework in this course, but last week I was forced to ask them to finish a short composition about themselves as we could not finish it in class. Although I repeatedly asked them to finish the composition, emphasizing that the next lesson would be impossible without it, and it would have taken them only ten minutes to finish it, I was disappointed to find that the majority of the students did not finish the composition. I was bothered by the fact that they did not pay attention to my repeated plea as if they were absent-minded elementary school students, but I was more bothered by the fact that they pampered themselves, thinking that nothing would happen even if they came to class without doing the assignment.
Strangely, I felt no anger, but I suddenly felt totally helpless, and could do nothing but leave the classroom in silence in the middle of the lesson as this seemed a rather fundamental problem on their part. Afterwards, I wrote a letter of public protest, not in an accusing manner but in a way to induce them to reconsider their self-pampering, and put it on the bulletin board of the department to which they belong, adding that they would be free to email or call me. I was even more bothered by the fact that only one student out of about 40 responded to me by email. In my course I am trying to show them the importance of expressing their opinions, but even in such an exceptional occasion, there was only one student who expressed his opinion. Herein lies the true reason why they cannot speak English; they do not express their opinions, if at all, even in their mother tongue.
25 May 2001 (3 Sivan 5761)
After leaving the classroom in the middle of the lesson in protest last week, I was wondering that no student might come to class this week. Although this fear turned out to be groundless, to my relief, and the attendance of the students was more or less as usual, this was a good chance not only to reexamine my teaching but also to reconsider the weakness of Japanese education and its products.
Actually the weakness of Japanese students is not restricted to their difficulty in expressing their opinions verbally, but is even deeper and more fundamental. Quite a few students have difficulties in communicating with other people in the first place. Communication is a complicated - and for me fascinating and enjoyable - process involving various components, whether verbal or nonverbal, and expressing opinions is just one of them. Communication skill is probably among the most fundamental skills for us human beings, but unfortunately, the Japanese educational system is not only incompetent to impart and develop it but even instrumental in destroying it. In face of such a situation there are not many things I can do in the short term simply by improving my teaching.
The inability to express one's opinion logically even when one is fortunate enough to have anything to say at all is a serious disadvantage in itself. But communication is not a self-contained process but involves other interlocutors. The inability to ask questions and answer them logically and the predictability of questions and answers, if any, make typical Japanese communication a series of mutually irrelevant short narrations and their simplistic approval by others. Simply confirming what they already know without challenging others' opinions with logical counterarguments does not deserve the name communication for me though it is the almost exclusive type of communication in Japan. When it comes to communication in public, this is worsened by lack of confidence manifesting itself in the low volume of the voice, among others.
It is really sad that whenever one meets a good communicator in Japan, it is almost always safe to assume that he or she experienced non-Japanese education for a certain period of time, especially in his or her formative years. It is even sadder that the ever increasing virtual communication on the Internet and by cellular phones seems to be making this poor skill even poorer in face-to-face communication.