Nanjing and the Japanese right

[HashiriKata]

I still haven't got around to re-writing my reply, upon Roddy's suggestion I am doing my best to improve my typing speed

It takes me half an hour to type this short reply ( ), so I normally type on a notepad and then copy & paste.

I'm at a low level school, but I don't see any hopes or dreams in the eyes of the students (or teachers actually...)

If we can't change the world, change our frame of mind

[tokyo_girl]

I have lots of hope - hope to find a different school!

Joke (well half a joke)

I praised one of my students in China who improved dramatically one day. I asked him if he could tell he was getting really good.

He told me - if you say I'm good I'm good, if you say I'm not good I'm not good. ... It took me aback ... It's the same sort of thinking as 'change your mind' and in truth I like that sort of philosophy and embrace it much of the time, however it has its limits.

Acceptance of the status quo is more than half the problem.

One of the other English teachers and I got the junior school - (JHS) to put on an English play last weekend. The junior school is really really small - 40 students, so they all had parts. They were great and they knew they were great. And doing stuff like that is fantastic for their self esteem. Too sad though that the school made the seniors go to home room / clean up time so they couldn't see it .(and wouldn't change the time of the play...) THere was hardly anyone there to see them in their 40 mins of glory..

Where I can, I do what I can, and looking for positives is important, but being happy with the status quo .... ..not so easy.

[HashiriKata]

Acceptance of the status quo is more than half the problem.

But solutions in life are not always that simple.

Also, I do feel sometimes like we're expecting too much for external changes and forgetting the other half of the possibilities.

[yonglan]

frustrated about more things here than I did in China (possibly in part because I had very low expectations of life and living conditions in China). Japan used to have much more equity than it now has (the equity came with problems undtoubtedly). Now the equity is going and the young are disproportionately less well off' date=' locked into crappy part time jobs and living at home.

I'm at a low level school, but I don't see any hopes or dreams in the eyes of the students (or teachers actually...)

[/quote']

Yes.

Lower expectations are helpful. Perhaps due to Sony, Honda, et al we go to Japan with very high expectations. I did. I too was very surpirsed by many things. I had read about the right wing, but many other things were a shock to me. Teaching junior high school for a year was a particular shock given the image of Japanese schools in the West (my colleaugues from the other 5 English speaking countries also said these things).

As for Japan's fall, that's true and sad, but being from the US it was not such a shock to me. When I was in junior high school one of our teachers showed us a newspaper article that said mine would be the first generation of Americans not to achieve a better life than our parents. Cool! Not really. The trend has proven itself, statistically.

I know I'm supposed to have a point, but that often eludes me

Tokyo_girl, the following two links may be of interest to you:

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?fl20040720zg.htm

http://www.eslcafe.com/forums/job/viewtopic.php?t=12508&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0&sid=bf5328a6ab3bdeba669e23825163d78f

[yonglan]

...what do you think?

I would mostly agree. I would simply posit that we may be overlooking the extent to which the "strengths" of the traditional culture are what are harming these countries socially.

[tokyo_girl]

Quote:

"strengths" of the traditional culture are what are harming these countries socialy

Agree very much that it is characteristics of the traditional culture that are shaping the way the society has evolved and is evolving. It is not western culture perse that is the problem.