Today the Yomiuri had the second in its series of articles about elementary school English. This time from one of the opponents, Prof. Yukio Otsu. You can read the article here ( note: the link will expire soon).

He seems to be of the familiar, but not widely held outside Japan, view that English shouldn’t be taught as it might interfere with their Japanese. “It’s crucial that children first establish a firm foundation in Japanese as their mother tongue and learn its structure.” The usual one-liner response to that is, “Well try telling that to a child in Luxembourg. They’ll answer you … in 3 languages.” In Africa it’s estimated that half the population is multilingual, and most professional educators would laugh at the suggestion that a few hours of English per week would harm the kids’ Japanese ability.

But the new tactic seems to be to latch on to the failings of the current implementation and use that as further ammunition. For example South Korea where 6th grade kids find English amongst their most disliked classes, or some parts of Japan where a similar thing happens. Of course the reason in both these cases is nearly always teachers pushing grammar based Junior High School type teaching into elementary schools. Some schools really do go overboard on this and it really is a shame to see the kids who do end up really disliking English and anything to do with it. Luckily most schools aren’t like that!

The thing is people who make these types of negative comments completely gloss over the widespread results of many other kids who now enter junior high school with really good pronunciation, a good attitude to English, and the basics of most of the JHS content, all thanks to a good experience in elementary school. But Prof Otsu goes on to say “Introducing English education at the primary school level won’t produce positive results, no matter how many resources we secure for it”.. Obviously someone who’s never actually taught English in elementary schools then! Where do they get these experts?

The problem is, as it always has been, is that the people in charge don’t see the good effects as many Japanese JHS teachers often don’t have the English ability to recognise them themselves. Of course to most ALTs and good English speaking teachers the difference is obvious, and amazing, but how do we quantify that for the skeptics?