Her name was Miyu, a 26-year-old Japanese English teacher at a public Junior High school in Hyogo prefecture, Japan. Miyu was (and hopefully still is) incredibly passionate about teaching English. It’s easy to recognize a passionate teacher when you are one. Miyu believed that the sole purpose of her existence was to teach English to other Japanese. At the age of 17, Miyu traveled abroad and lived in an English speaking country for 6 months during which she immersed herself in the language completely and utterly. She even pretended to have had an interest in studying acting just so that she would force herself to memorize, speak and repeat, though, by her own admission, she did not have a clue what her lines meant, which caused much frustration to the other student actors who never tried to hide that frustration. Instead, they criticized her, mocked her, teased her and eventually cast her off. You can imagine the impact of such a treatment on the psyche of a 17-year-old Japanese girl, far from home, all by herself, surrounded by a bunch of Caucasians who were probably acting mean as most teenagers would. Miyu, however, never crapped out; she held her ground and stayed focused on her goal. 6 months later, Miyu could already speak English better than most Japanese English teachers; she came back to Japan, finished her college, and, as she had always dreamt, became an English teacher at a public Junior High school in Kansai.
Never had Miyu imagined for a moment that she would regret choosing her profession or working at a public school as an English teacher, but as Miyu brilliantly summed it up:
“I had no idea that I was supposed to do everything except teach”!
She would often stay at work until 10 and sometimes 11 pm trying to prepare or finish off tasks she had been assigned by senior staff. She would knock off work at 11, drive for almost an hour (as she still lived with her parents) before she could get home by 12 and then end up going to bed at about 2am only to wake up 4 hours later to relive “groundhog day”. Miyu wouldn’t have even complained about the long hours if she were actually asked to do her job, or the job she had thought she would be doing, teaching English, but the tasks and responsibilities given to her were irrelevant and unrelated to English teaching. “Why didn’t she just quit” you must be wondering. Well if you ever lived in Japan, you would know that changing jobs in this country is way more complicated than in the rest of the world. Once you land your first job, you’ve basically signed off on a life in prison. If you decide to quit without providing an awfully compelling reason, the chances are that you will never be hired again. No matter how much you despise and loathe your boss or the job, you can’t tell it to anyone , you’re just going to have to come up with a very good excuse and it’d better be true, like, “I’ve decided to go on a 1-year trip around the world and study English”, or “I’m having a baby and not sure if I can get back to work after that”, or “I’ve realized that I don’t want to be doing this all my life”, and then you would have to truly change your career. Miyu knew this as well as every other Japanese, and she still loved English way too much to quit her job and end her career.
In Japan, things are never what they seem. I have taught in a number of schools and met many Japanese teachers who told me how the system works. For example, in terms of the students’ performance, it is always made to look higher than it really is. How? The tests are made so easy that even the laziest and stupidest students can’t fail them. Why? All students’ need a passing grade to get into college and spend 4 years partying and getting wasted rather than working on their assignments. It is a joke. That explains how Japan could rank the 4th in global education! Are you kidding me? The majority of high school students have been learning English for 3 years and they still can’t answer basic greetings and questions. Yet somehow, they manage to pass.
Japan needs change sooner rather than later. Otherwise, this country will continue to slip until it collapses. All that will be left is a distant memory of the great Japan that the world once knew. I am not Japanese but I love this country, and if I didn’t care about what was going on, I wouldn’t waste one minute of my time advocating for change. I do care and I do believe Japan has much to offer in so many ways but the times are changing and if Japan does not want to be outstripped by its Asian neighbors, it has some serious heavy lifting to do. And what could be a better place to start from than education.
Let’s all speak up for Miyu!
Let’s all say NO to exploitation!
Let’s all say NO to incompetence! Let’s all say NO to fraud!
Speak up now!
Like this article and most importantly SHARE it. SHARE it with everyone you know, Japanese or foreigners in Japan and tell them to like it and share it too, until it triggers a debate and hopefully, just hopefully, Miyu’s shattered dream will one day come back to life.
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