2 November 2001 (16 Kheshvan 5762)
In the beginning of this week I received a totally unexpected email message. I am still excited about it and the subsequent exchange of messages, as such a pleasant surprise does not happen "every Monday and Thursday". It was from one of my ex-classmates in high school. We have not met each other since the last class reunion more than 15 years ago, just before I went to study in Jerusalem. We were never close to each other - actually I was close to very few people in my high school days - so we had never been in any contact all the years, until I suddenly heard from him this week.
Receiving his message, I immediately recognized his name, but wondered why he suddenly emailed me after all these years. As I read his message, I imagined that he might have been reminded of me somehow after he had attended the annual reunion of the alumni of our school living in Kansai area (Kyoto, Osaka, Kobe and their vicinities) a week before, as I am the only one beside him among the 50 classmates who live in this area now. Although the original purpose of his message was to recommend me to attend the annual reunion next year, our subsequent exchange of messages developed into other subjects. In the end I suggested that we meet and shmooze over beer in the near future. Of course, he accepted my suggestion gladly, and decided to meet at the end of this month.
The idea of seeing someone I know after more than 15 years again really excites me. In our age it is about 40% of our life. I am curious to know what marks, whether external or internal, the time has left on him during this period. I also wondered how he would recognize me and all the changes I had undergone in all these years. Although it is difficult to be objective about myself, I really seem to have changed immensely, especially internally. I myself could not have imagined 15 years ago that I would become what I am now.
9 November 2001 (23 Kheshvan 5762)
I am invited to speak about my experience of learning at a yeshiva in a study group of business executives in Osaka next Monday. As I am supposed to have only 40 minutes at my disposal, and was warned by the organizer of the meeting that they may not be so familiar with Judaism and the yeshiva world, I have decided to concentrate on what differentiates most clearly between the Japanese and traditional Jewish educational systems and their respective underlying philosophy, though my experience with the latter is quite limited: discouragement vs. encouragement of independent critical thinking, asking questions, and dialogs. This may also apply to secular Jewish education systems in a lesser extent. Of course, I am generalizing, and am fully aware that there must be exceptions in both systems.
At the outset I have to say that I do not necessarily accept the tenet of the so-called cultural relativism, but rather I believe that there are absolute values, even outside the framework of a specific religion. Therefore, I can refute a counterargument directed to me when I say that to discourage independent critical thinking, asking questions, and dialogs is detrimental to the intellectual growth of students. Having taught so many university students in Japan for the past eight years, I can say exactly where this discouragement implemented consciously or unconsciously, at least in the postwar educational system in Japan, is leading. It has massproduced human robots though there are, of course, some good exceptions, which may be considered "defective products" and even ostracized from the society. As a teacher I cannot help feeling that unfortunately, Japan is sinking gradually, and this is largely due to the defective postwar educational system that has not only discouraged the above three things but also failed to impart public awareness and morality to students, nurturing "brain death" and egocentrism in the names of social "harmony" and human rights respectively.
Of course, I am not claiming that the yeshiva way is a magical formula that can save Japan from sinking completely, nor would it be possible to implant it in an alien cultural milieu though it has historically been proved successful in its original "habitat". But not only students but also teachers in Japan seem to have much to learn from the traditional Jewish educational system that encourages independent critical thinking, asking questions, and dialogs. I am just sorry that I as a single teacher am totally helpless, even sensing the possible social demise of the country where I was born.
16 November 2001 (1 Kislev 5762)
Smile seems to be such an integral part of the basic human instinct as is testified by the fact that even blind babies smile and non-blind babies smile back to someone else's smile. A natural smile, especially if repeated, is a good way to open someone else's heart. So it really scares me to see people who seem to have lost this instinct in the process of socialization and show no sign of movement in their facial muscles.
In the first lessons of all the courses I have been teaching in Japan, I have always encountered motionless and emotionless faces of students. They seem to be afraid of expressing any facial emotion. But by the end of the first semester most of the students feel comfortable enough to smile back to my smiles and jokes in class though it is not easy for some of them to start reactivating their dormant facial muscles suddenly. I find great pleasure in seeing more and more smiling faces in class as we see each other more and more in class. It is even greater pleasure to see people with natural smiles without any distortion of their facial muscles though this does not happen every Monday and Thursday.
This year I have a serious problem with one of the nine university courses I teach. Although we have already studied together more than one semester, the faces of the students as a whole are mostly frozen. Unlike the other classes, where most students already feel comfortable enough to smile they feel like, this problematic class happens to have an extremely high concentration of students whose instinct of smiling has severely been damaged. It is true that they really scare me, but more than that, I feel sorry for them, who for some reason or other, have lost their ability to smile as normal person would like such human robots, and I can easily imagine their difficulties in communicating and making friends with others. What really worries me is that the number of such students who do not have any facial expression including smile is increasing year by year. This is for me one of the numerous signs that unfortunately, Japanese society is collapsing from inside, unless human robots can also constitute a society.
23 November 2001 (8 Kislev 5762)
Last evening I met an old classmate of mine who had emailed me suddenly in the beginning of this month. We had not been in touch with each other since our last meeting in our early twenties in a class reunion in our hometown. When I waited for him last evening, I had a mixed feeling of nervousness and curiosity, thinking about the possible physical and spiritual effects the period of 15 years could have on each of us. Outwardly, he had not changed very much, but he, on the other hand, might not have recognized me if he had not seen my picture with beard and mustache at my Web site. The first word he uttered when he saw me that my eyes had not changed is still echoing in my mind. Actually, eyes may be one of the few body parts that remain more or less the same throughout one's life.
We have taken quite different paths of life. Educated as a technician, he has been working for one of the leading trading companies, is married, and have two children; in short, he has been following well trodden and proven paths. I, on the other hand, seem to have deviated so much from the paths the majority of the people in Japanese society take that these days I have to force my way through the virgin soil, often getting injured and/or exhausted.
Several years ago I found graffiti in a toilet of one of the universities where I still teach, asking what the purpose of life is. What I wrote as an answer to this question was training of the soul. The more experiences of life I accumulate, the more strongly I feel that we seem to be in this world to train our soul thrust into flesh and blood though I do not know why we need a physical body to train our soul. I felt this even more keenly, hearing what my ex-classmate had to say about his experiences of life and telling him mine last evening. I get additional empirical reinforcement about this feeling from a most fascinating book called "Journey of Souls: Case Studies of Life between Lives" by Michael Newton which I happen to be reading now.
30 November 2001 (15 Kislev 5762)
Although there were and still seem to be oppositions by some teachers, more and more universities in Japan are adopting what their counterparts in some other countries adopted many years ago - the evaluation of teachers by students. The two universities where I have been teaching since April 1994 started this last year. This week I had the privilege of being evaluated by my students of English and Hebrew at the two universities.
Most (or all) members of the faculty, whether full-time or part-time, in Japanese universities are supposed to assume the double roles of researchers and educators, at least theoretically and/or in their perception. As researchers they are exposed to external criticism as long as they publish or read papers though it is known that there are quite a few professors who have neither published nor read any paper for a long time. As educators they were never checked by anyone else before their evaluation by students was introduced; it is still considered a kind of taboo to come to a class of some other teacher. Therefore, I personally think it good that this mechanism exists. As we become more experienced in teaching, we are liable to become complacent and teach out of inertia without innovating anything.
In both universities there were two kinds of questionnaires. In the first questionnaire students were required to grade various aspects of teaching according to five ranks. In the second, which was newly adopted this year in both universities, they were encouraged to write whatever they thought about the teaching of their teacher. In both they did not have to write their names. The results of the first will be computerized and sent to me later, but I was allowed to receive what my students wrote in the second questionnaires. This was really a good opportunity to hear what they thought about my teaching but did not dare to tell me face-to-face, and gave me a lot of pedagogical stimuli, which I hope will help me improve my teaching.
I was not sure whether they would like or be able to get used to my way of teaching, which is based on the interaction through questions, so is quite unusual in Japan. To my surprise, more students seemed to have enjoyed this than I had expected though there were of course some students who felt that I was a nudnik, which actually I am. One of the important lessons I have learned from this is that although many students seem shy and bad at communicating even in their mother tongue, they do have a desire, probably instinctive, to communicate with others and improve their communication skills.