CIA

So today was the main reason I’m down here in Okinawa, to attend a panel discussion and give a 2 hour workshop at the Okinawa JShine Conference. Things were very well organised and the people in charge certainly did a very good job and we ended up with 100 people there.

Things started off with a speech by one of the guys on the Education Ministry’s panel who are looking into introducing elementary school English. It was good to get all the latest data, and as usual things have been bogged down in bureaucratic stuff, but things are moving, if very slowly!

It seems the biggest thing now is trying to decide who should teach the subject. Foreign teachers are expensive, people in the community usually can’t teach large groups and their travel expenses are very expensive, so the easiest way is for homeroom teachers to teach it. Which is great for the Ministry as it wouldn’t cost them anything more in wage bills! So the guy asked me how many schools I thought could actually do English if it was only taught by homeroom teachers. This is a tricky question as in an ideal world, languages would be taught be native speakers. Using computers and things we can get the language section sorted for anyone to teach ( for example the Genki English software takes care of the pronunciation problem), but 80-90% of communication is non-verbal, and this is something that only a fluent speaker has. But then again there’s no way native speaking teachers could cover all of the schools in Japan. Hence the question about how much we could cover with just homeroom teachers is a very valid one. So leaving the non-verbal side of things alone, and accepting that non-native speakers will be doing it, I reckon there is at least one genki teacher in each school who could do a very good job. So provided the training is there, I think this could in an ideal situation lead to 100% coverage. But it turns out from the Ministry’s own research that they think it could only be 50%! That tends to suggest to me they are still only concentrating on practical training, without the very important confidence training that has to come first, but it also means no final decision on the status of English is in sight.

Anyway, the panel discussion went on this way for quite a while, and I was really conscious that the audience were getting fidgety and bored. So the next question was “What do you think of the way things are going?” and I was basically saying, “Everyone in Tokyo is worrying too much and not doing enough!” and I popped in the story that many professors in Asia think it’s all a Japanese government ploy. The theory being that Japan can do anything, so why are they so slow about adopting English? The answer, they say, is that if people could speak English they could get their information from anywhere. But if they only speak Japanese, the government controls what people hear and think via the media!! Now I know this isn’t true, the reason things are bogged down is that there’s just a crazily inefficient system of deciding things by people who’ve no experience on the ground. But one of the panelists said, “Yeah, I’ve heard that rumour before, but they say it’s not the Japanese government, it’s the CIA!”.

That livened things up a bit. Then we moved on to talking about ALTs ( the general consensus being that they aren’t very good and get paid too much. So I did my bit about that it’s the weirdo ALTs who take all the limelight, but in reality the majority of ALTs are doing a great job and all the best schools in Japan are that way because of the good ALTs there), about why the percentage of kids who like English in elementary school is going down ( it’s because of places like Kanazawa where they bring in Junior High English and it just turns the kids right off! And that most of the good lessons done aren’t reported as the people in the Board of Educations can’t see what a difference is being made), and about Reading / Writing ( conversation is the main aim, adding in basic phonics later is cool, but leave out writing as it takes up too much time, isn’t the skill that’s needed in the workplace, and it’s best to keep it for JHS where the kids who can speak English will have a new challenge and won’t get bored like they do in other countries!).

So the current target is to make Elementary School English a subject in 3 or 4 years time. Which is cool by me because it means teachers who care about their kids can start doing cool things now, and not have to worry about Tokyo imposing a horrible set of textbooks or curricula on them. It was also interesting to hear that Okinawa had an elementary school English curriculum planned, tested and ready to go in the 1970s! They only called it off when they reverted back to Japanese rule and hence had to mirror the Japanese system. But it does make you wonder why everyone feels they have to start again from the beginning, when in reality everything that’s needed is already out there! ( What was that about the CIA again???)

So then it was on to my workshop. Now that was a lot of fun! Not only had people been sat down for 3 hours listening to stuff that really isn’t that important for teachers, it was my first time here, which is always cool. Lately in other towns there’s a mixture of people who know Genki English and newcomers. The fans want to see new stuff, but that tends to terrify newbies! But here nobody had any idea what to expect so I just went in there on full genkiness level and started from the very beginning with “What’s your name?“, “How are you?“, “How old are you?“, Mingle, “What are you doing?“, Harry Potter and the balloon game. Needless to say they’d never seen anything like it and adding in all the help that’s on the webpage, the three rules of Genki English and the war speech at the end, and everyone was totally hyped up, basically because it was what everyone had been talking about all day, but here it was all laid out for them, in easy to use form, ready to go tomorrow in class. I had no mic at the beginning, and everyone was getting tired, so it was hard work, but they were great. And it looks like Okinawa will be another one of those cool places like Fukuoka or Okayama, where the teachers are really keen!

Then in the evening it was out for dinner at an all you can eat, all you can drink restaurant with a live band! Which was cool. Unfortunately it was hard to chat ( my voice is going again!), but everyone was really great and I’ve got a feeling I’m going to be back in Okinawa! Talking to singers and business people and teachers was a nice mix of topics, and the Okinawan liquor goes down very well. The night finished at 2AM, and I was wondering why I was still so genki, I guess it’s because I’ve been working till 3AM everyday this week. But for today it was a bit of TV and time to crash out for the night.