Let's Japan.org Debunking Eikaiwa and Ramblings in Japan

A couple of things in the news caught my eye that made me think Japan's approach to teaching English could be changing for the better.

From the :

The Japanese and U.S. governments are considering the establishment of a program that would send young Japanese teachers of English to the United States to improve their English ability, it has been learned.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan plans to expand cultural, intellectual and human exchanges between the two countries, in addition to security and economic cooperation as part of the government's efforts to deepen the Japan-U.S. alliance. The government intends to reach an official agreement that includes the English-teacher plan when U.S. President Barack Obama visits Japan in the middle of next month.

The government envisions training young English-language teachers at primary, middle and high schools in the United State for periods of one to two years.

OMG! Teachers that can actually speak the language!

The Japan Times:

Education minister Yoshiaki Takaki is stressing the importance of teaching children foreign languages to promote their interest in other countries.

"Since we are living in a globalized society, I am keenly aware of the necessity of children acquiring the ability to communicate in foreign languages," Takaki, 64, said in an interview last week with news organizations.

"We have to educate children who in the future can speak at least a language spoken as a common language in many countries or that of neighboring countries," he said.

It's nice that the Education minister thinks this way. One can only hope it puts an end to the idiocy from "thinkers" such as Masahiko Fujiwara and other assorted politicians (hello, Shintaro Ishihara!) who feel that learning a second language is a waste of time or would somehow impinge on the ability of children to learn Japanese.

After giving up GEOS and Nova and his job, Masaki Inayoshi is back in the saddle.

According to the Asahi shimbun, GEOS, Nova, and its juku cram schools were sold (again!) as of October 1 by G.communication to Inayoshi Capital Holdings, an investment firm set up by former G.communication chairman Masaki Inayoshi, who gave up his position in August.

The diagram from the Asahi article illustrating the deal looks like this:

As the Chunichi shimbun reports, G.communication sold its 66% stake in G.education to Inayoshi Capital Holdings. Apart from wanting to focus on the restaurant business, G.communication felt that Inayoshi was the best choice for rebuilding Nova and GEOS.

This marks Inayoshi's return to eikaiwa after a very brief departure. However, the eikaiwa market is still in tatters following the collapse of Nova and GEOS. When G.communication took over GEOS in April, there were 230 schools. There are now 167 with the possibility that more closures will come. G.communication said that it gave up the schools in order to focus on its restaurant business.

G.communication's owner, Foody's ran into trouble earlier this year when its main bank, the Incubator Bank of Japan was shut down. In August, it announced it would sell its shares in G.communication to Hanshin Shuhan, a deal which is still being negotiated. The Asahi spoke to someone at Hanshin Shuhan who said that they had no interest in continuing to operate the English conversation schools.

It looks like a win-win situation for all parties involved in this case. As I mentioned previously, I likened what was going on to trading hockey cards. It appears that everyone involved got what they wanted. Inayoshi effectively keeps his English schools, and G.communication and Hanshin Shuhan get rid of a drag on their businesses.

The Asahi shimbun also deserves a little slap on the wrists for their reporting. Their article make reference to the sale as increasing uncertainty among students (わずか半年で再び身売りされ、受講生の間に不信感が広がりかねない。) What about the teachers? How about a little love for them? I guess not. I guess there aren't enough to care about anymore. They'll simply fade away should Inayoshi's business fail in the future.

If you're sick and tired of reading anything having to do with NOVA and Sahashi, you might want to stop reading right now.

Sahashi was back in court to have his appeal heard.

His lawyers still maintain that he is innocent and that his use of money from an employees' fund was to pay refunds and therefore does not amount to embezzlement. Sahashi was originally sentenced to three and half years for the crime.

This time, however, Sahashi invoked the name of Tsunehiko Maeda>. If that name sounds familiar, it's because he was the lead prosecutor in the Atsuko Muraki case who was arrested for tampering with evidence.

According to Sahashi, Maeda suggested that in changing lawyers he was get off with just a suspended sentence. When Sahashi refused the offer, Maeda told him he would get a stiffer sentence and go to jail for five years.

The prosecution replied that Maeda had minimal involvement in Sahashi's case and that the bulk of the investigation was done by Osaka Police investigators.

The end in the Sahashi saga appears to be near. A final ruling is slated to be handed down on December 2. That Sahashi would try and use Maeda as an excuse to get his decision overturned isn't much of a surprise. When it looks like he will be checking in at the Graybar Hotel, it's time for a Hail Mary play.

CBS News is all gaga over how awesome Japanese education is given how it stresses the importance of respect and how much they accomplish with so little is spent on it.

How do they do so much with so little? By investing in top-notch teachers.

"Teachers are given a good deal of respect; they're expected to devote their life," said Catherine Lewis, distinguished research scholar at Mills College. "The whole system is set up to emphasize the development of teachers."

Here's one of those top-notch teachers in action.

An elementary school teacher here instructed his students to make a ransom note as part of their moral education, it has emerged.

[...]

The teacher came up with the idea of creating a threatening letter in an attempt to enhance mutual cooperation among students, a monthly topic for the ethics class, a school official said.

Coercion is the key to developing cooperation and creativity!

Back to CBS News:

What hasn't changed in Japan is the value placed on education best summed up by a Japanese proverb: better than a thousand days of study is one day with a great teacher.

Like this guy, right?

A teacher here has been replaced as head of a third-grade class after posing a math question asking students how long it would take to kill a certain number of children.

In a math lesson at a municipal elementary school in Okazaki in May, the 45-year-old teacher asked students the question: "There are 18 children. Three children are killed each day. How many days will it take to kill them all?"

[...]

It has also emerged that the same teacher hit a girl on the head on July 1 because he didn't like the way she received paper distributed to the class. The student was not injured but was reportedly left in tears.

Great teachers either scare their students into learning or just beat it into them.

The next day...

Seeing as this is about oversimplified reporting, Our Man in Abiko has a brilliant post on how to write in Japan.

The angle that CBS report takes (Japanese education is cheap AND good), while it may appeal to some of the more idiotic thinking that has taken hold in the United States (respect, meaning obedience to authority, and low spending, meaning fewer wasted tax dollars), is at odds with what is happening in Japan now. The low spending is perceived as a problem. Japan is second last in education spending in the OECD. Moreover, the pendulum is swinging away from "relaxed education" (yutori kyoiku) to fatter textbooks or more classroom hours to help boost academic performance. As has been noted in comments, the issue is quite a bit more complex than what CBS presents.

As of October 1st, Interac will cease to exist, being bought out by Advantage Partners. This comes from the General Union, which cites an August 24 official government gazette containing the notice of the buyout. More about the buyout can be found on ESL Cafe and Hoofin's blog.

According to the GU's post, Interac and its owner, Selnate, will merge with Alphis (president: Josh Porter). The same Josh Porter is also president of AP18 (Advantage Partnets), which will assume the legal rights and duties of the deal.

The GU then wonders what will happen to Interac's ALTs.

• Will ALTs keep their jobs?
• With the dissolution of Interac and new management under Advantage Partners and the new company formed in Interac's wake, honor existing ALT contracts?
• If contracts are unilaterally canceled, will they be deemed terminated or defaulted by Interac?
• If no bidding is made for ALT contracts after October, isn't it against the law to hand those contracts over to an unrelated company?
• Will Interac's employment contracts and license as a dispatch company still remain valid?

There are plenty of unknowns for teachers, but equally important is why Interac is being dissolved. One can assume that it's all about money. Eikaiwa has been in the dumps for a long time, with major schools Nova and GEOS going bankrupt. When Interac has been in the news, it has been for all the wrong reasons. Interac is notorious for its poor working conditions and illegal dispatch contracts. Most recently, it has been found guilty of unfair labor practices and the Osaka Prefectural government has informed its divisions not to enter into contracts with Interac.

If it's past has finally caught up with it, dissolving the company and re-emerging under a new name looks like a way to dodge any legal and financial obligations. Unfortunately, it leaves the teachers working there in limbo.

When I saw this story in the Japan Times for a webisode series called "English Teachers" about the antics of teaching at Be Yes! School of English, I thought it would be a live version of Charisma Man.

English Teachers - Episode 1 "First Days Suck" from Nameless Media and Productions on Vimeo.

So much for my suspicions. The first episode was good. I'm always a sucker for the narrated style of movie. I'm also a little slow on the uptake and thought that Be Yes! was suitably inane name for a school until I actually heard it spoken. Let's have a Be Yes! day!

The Japan Times' article mentions that the series draws upon the bankruptcies of Nova and GEOS. It'll be interesting to see what they do with that. Will the teachers be teaching for food in the park? Will they be lied to and robbed blind by the manager? I'm looking forward to more.

P.S. That has to be the most spacious eikaiwa I have ever seen. It looks like it was shot in a hospital. The water cooler in the lobby must mean that it is a serious, high-end school.

GEOS North America Announced on September 10 that it has signed a letter of intent [PDF] for the acquisition of all 12 GEOS schools in North America by Florida-based Open Hearts International College.*

When GEOS' Australia schools suddenly closed, GEOS North America was quick to tell its students that everything was OK. That didn't work out very well, did it? Now Open Hearts is making a similar statement:

Open Hearts International College, under owner and President Jenny Nieveen, has run a successful school in Miami for over 10 years, and with the acquisition of the GEOS operations, the goal of the company is to create the strongest and largest group of language schools in North America.

Upon the completion of the sale, GEOS North American schools will retain all staff and the company will continue to offer the highest level of customer service to both students and partners, local and international. The schools will also retain the “GEOS” name as well as relationships and commitments to all agents and vendors.

Open Hearts International College and GEOS North America look forward to building on the mutual strengths of both companies, and on becoming an industry leader in North America and around the world.

It's interesting that they are keeping the GEOS name given how quickly GEOS Australia and GEOS Japan collapsed earlier this year. Other than the press release, I know nothing else about the deal. Consider this an open thread to talk about the remains of GEOS North America.

*OK, the title of this post is misleading. GEOS has not been sold at this point, but expectations are that the deal will eventually be done.

Given all the talk of the JET Programme on the chopping block, I've been thinking about the discussion it has generated. The consensus seems to be that the program should be saved since it's a great soft power tool and exchange program for Japan. Although I wrote along similar lines earlier, I've realized that I was ignoring the elephant in the room: the way Japan teaches English is a complete mess and needs to be changed. Part of that change would involve ending the JET Programme and use of dispatch ALTs, and replacing them with qualified language teachers.

Although Debito's latest column in The Japan Times is about keeping JET, I think he also inadvertently makes the case for ending it by pointing out that the way English is taught is broken.

First, he lets JET off the hook because the "E" in JET is for "Exchange," not "English." While technically correct, anyone vaguely familiar with the program knows that the ALTs are in the classrooms giving English lessons. A quick glance at the JET website shows that "More than 90% of JET participants are employed as ALTs." If nearly all of the participants are ALTs, you can't really let them off the hook given that the program has done nothing to boost English levels over the past 20 years, can you? If JET is supposed to be a cultural exchange program, then there are probably better ways to implement it instead of disguising it as teaching English. It could be rebooted into a homestay or student exchange program, for example.

Debito then goes on to point the finger at Japan's "psychotic" classroom, a combination of rote textbook learning reinforced with ridicule and shame. The problems with the way English is taught in Japan are well known, so just when you think Debito is getting to the heart of the matter, he comes up with this gem:

Ever notice how the Japanese media keeps voicing over Japanese when they speak English proficiently, or picking apart their performance for comic value? Because eigo is not supposed to be easy — so throw up some hurdles if there's any threat of it appearing so.

Good Lord, it's a conspiracy! English is difficult so the media is throwing up all sorts of roadblocks to stop it. He doesn't give an example of the media throwing up a hurdle, but probably has some idiotic variety show in mind where hitting someone on the head with a plastic hammer and laughing at their poor English is considered comedy. The only example of voice overs that comes to mind is the simultaneous interpretation seen on news programs like NHK's Close-up Gendai, when the host, Hiroko Kuniya (bilingual herself), interviews foreign guests. Amazingly, NHK voices over the English on the assumption that the audience might be interested in what's being discussed.

It is Debito's conclusion, however, that reinforces my belief that JET should be scrapped.

Get rid of JET, however, and the eigo psychosis will force things back to the way it was, with cries of "Gaijin da!" from behind garden fences.

Wow. Only JET can save the nation from the inane utterances of school children. That's his justification for saving the program, never mind that he emphasized that JET wasn't a teaching program at the beginning of his column. I need a drink.

If you don't find Debito persuasive, perhaps the Have Your Say feature can scare you into keeping the JET Programme. With photos of school children from Christiana Aretta's English Dreams project mixed in with reader comments, the underlying message is that ending JET will crush these kids' dreams. I find that hard to believe. Little Aki won't grow up to be a pilot because there was no JET ALT in his classroom, he'll fail because he wasn't taught communicative English in the first place and will probably have to get his parents to fork out thousands of dollars to make up for that lack of teaching at a cram school or English conversation school.

Dispatch ALTs

Like JET, the use of dispatch ALTs is another practice that needs to end. A recent excerpt from the Yomiuri's Gakuryoku-ko series succinctly illustrates the insanity that goes on:

It's early July, and Eri Imazeki, 26, is teaching her sixth-grade English class at Kashiwa Municipal No. 1 Primary School in Chiba Prefecture, with the help of Australian ALT Dina Tang. But the two educators do not speak to each other.

When Tang stood at the podium and said, "Hello everyone," Imazeki went to the back of the classroom and watched the children as they spoke English with Tang.

In Kashiwa, public schools do not directly employ foreign teachers, instead contracting third parties to supply them. One reason for this is cost-cutting.

However, when using such ALTs, teachers are not permitted to directly instruct their assistants.

In April, a teacher asked an ALT to place cards on the blackboard. Though on the surface this may seem a harmless request, the Chiba Labor Bureau demanded the school instruct its teachers to not ask anything of the ALTs, as it would be considered an order, and making the use of a third-party appear as mere camouflage.

Following the order, the school opted for the safest approach: banning all conversation between teachers and ALTs during class.

The people in charge of teaching the students how to communicate in another language don't communicate amongst themselves because it could violate labor laws. In addition to this, the hiring of dispatch ALTs has been fraught with it own issues ranging from lack of training, illegal contracts, low pay, no job security, high turnover, and lack of benefits.

As it stands, teaching English in Japan, be it via JET or dispatch ALTs, is conducted mainly by untrained, unqualified, university graduates whose skill happens to be the ability to speak English while looking nice at the same time. It's time to end these classroom distractions, but with one big caveat: that Japan gets serious about teaching English. It would be a massive undertaking in terms of time and effort and would require a complete overhaul of the English curriculum, and the hiring and support of qualified teachers. Moreover, it would probably take close to a decade before any concrete results are seen.

This may be wishful thinking on my part since it requires a major change of thinking by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. On the other hand, keeping JETs in the classroom for the sake of diplomacy (or saving the nation from some idiotic conspiracy) and hiring dispatch ALTs because they are cheap does nothing to improve the level of English in Japan. How about some constructive thinking on improving English teaching and boosting TOEIC scores instead of keeping alive ineffective programs and practices and hoping that it will all magically work out? In fact, we should be asking ourselves what are the consequences of amateurs in the classroom.* Leaving things the way they are is nothing more than bread and circuses.

*I'm not so jaded as to think that JETs and dispatch ALTs are incompetent and have not done good things in the classroom. They have, but in looking at the big picture, they haven't been very effective.

Citing a tough financial situation, Hiroshima-based David English House has closed its doors as of September 1 and filed for bankruptcy.

While some of its schools will close, a number of its teachers will go independent and take over existing contracts and keep other schools open. For the most part, it sounds it will be business as usual for its students.

Apart from its English schools, DEH was also known for its distance learning courses through the University of Birmingham (MA in TEFL) and the University of Sheffield (MA in Advanced Japanese [no longer offered]). I did a Master's in Advanced Japanese Studies at the University of Sheffield through DEH a few years ago and have nothing but good things to say. It was well-organized and a lot of hard work, but a lot of fun, too.

Like many readers here, zakzak wonders about the odd combination of restaurant companies and English conversation schools.

As you know by now, G.communication, which operates Nova and GEOS, which in turn was owned by Foodys, is now owned by Hanshin Shuhan after it acquired Foodys' 50.9% share of the company. Foodys sold its shares in G.communication in order raise money when its main bank, the Incubator Bank of Japan, was shut down by the Financial Services Agency on suspicion of obstructing an FSA audit. According a source that spoke with zakzak, Foodys sold its shares on the condition that Hanshin Shuhan assumed the loan that Foodys used to buy its stake in g.communication.

Zakzak then delves into the histories of the companies involved.

• G.communication started out as a juku and branched off into the restaurant business in 2000. It started growing and acquiring more restaurants around 2005 through a series of mergers and acquisitions.
• In October 2007, it took over Nova.
• However, G.communication's mergers and acquisitions left it short of cash and its president, Masaki Inayoshi, sold his shares in October 2009.
• The shares were sold to Foodys and Venture Link. Both companies are members of the Incubator bank of Japan's network for SMEs.
• Foody's, being the largest shareholder in g.communication with a 50.9% share, jumped on the M&A bandwagon with G.communication only to have its plans go off the rails when the Icubator Bank was shut down.
• Now that Hanshin Shuhan owns G.communication, it says it will continue to operate the eikaiwa business as usual.
• Hanshin Shuhan is a liquor distributor started by its 34-year old president, Higaki Shuusaku, in 2001.
• Hanshin Shuhan was new to the distribution business but quickly made an impact by leaving free refrigerators stuffed with drinks in offices, and then making the rounds collecting money for the drinks that had been consumed. The company raked in the money by taking a page out of the Toyama okigusuri method where medicine kits were distributed to homes and customers paid for what they used. From 2009, Hanshin Shuhan also got on the M&A bandwagon.
• In May 2009, it acquired Gyukaku through a take over of Asrapport Dining. In April of this year, it acquired liquor distributor Daishuhan from the Japan Asia Group. It's latest acquisition is G.communication.

Zakzak asks, "Where is the money for these M&As coming from?" One of Hanshin Shuhan's major shareholders are limited investment partnerships with investment enterprise Orix #10 being mentioned. An executive in a business research firms tells zakzak that Hanshin Shuhan is more an investment company than anything else. If true, izakayas and eikaiwa make for strange bedfellows in the world of mergers and acquisitions.

Comment: When I was a kid I was really into trading hockey cards and playing games like "knock down," farthies" and "scramble." I get the sense that the same thing is being done with GEOS and Nova, except that they aren't particularly valuable--kind of like picking up some 4th-liner pylon in a game of "scramble." They are minor players in larger deals and will eventually find themselves discarded and clothes-pegged in the spokes of some unlucky investor's bicycle.