Notes on Japanese School Children

Genki is a word that is tossed around here a lot. It was uttered about 876.7 (the speaker coughed and didn’t get the entire word out) on the first day of training and would continue in this pattern as two weeks played out. If there was a little ding for every time I heard this word it would be more annoying then the train crosswalk. Members of my training group adopted it and used it in conversation over coffee in the smoke filled hotel lobby, in restaurants and on train station platforms. I read it in the teacher conversation notebooks and in lesson plans. Quite frankly, I am sick of the word. Each time I hear it now it call up images of smelly dead fish, rotted fruit and Pauly Shore films. The word stinks. I’m tired of hearing it and I want it erased from the Japanese dictionaries. It was one of the words taught to me by the instructor robots and I throw it back at them. I will no longer use the word unless nail guns are placed to my eyes. Genki is dead to me.

To The Company and company teachers the word means energetic, full of zest and pep. The language course said it means fine. Let us go with the company understanding for this post. There is a misconception back home, and I know because I procreated it myself to those who would ask about my Japanese teaching aspirations, and this misconception is that Japanese children are amazingly disciplined. I don’t know about you folks but I had visions of kids bowing to parents subserviently, kids that trained early in the martial arts disciplines of the mind and are able to concentrate for hours on the mysteries of nothingness. Boy, was I wrong. These images do not apply, folks, banish them now. The generations have changed.

There is a word out there for spoiled, overprotected Japanese children. I have forgotten it in the mishmash of everything I have been taught these last few weeks. By 1902 Japan was facing extreme overpopulation. Cities were now extending into the small farming villages and natural water springs, rivers and ponds were converted into man made canals. Houses were built one on top of another and more and more old Japan fell to modernized cities. The Japanese were even looking at Texas as a potential spot to immigrate and quell the overflow. It was a never ending baby boom that would have deep repercussions in the years after the war with the rebuilding of the landscapes destroyed by bombings to allot for the growing populace. These children of large families would be the fabled extremely disciplined children, raised sternly under the rod. They would grow to become the businessmen and women that would transform war torn Japan into a country of supreme technological advancement. Surly, us folk in the Western world know that all fine gizmos and gadgets are from Japan. This growth would create the worlds second largest economy which would climb by an estimated 10% over four decades and hit a wall in the early 1990s when Japan hit a recession.

The amount of births (especially the post-war baby boom) is not the only factor in the reason why my train cars are so cramped. Japan’s life expectancy rates as one of the highest in the world. Results of a study revealed that in 2006 that, on average, a Japanese person will live to be 81.25 years of age. The population, however, has been on a decline in the last few decades. The over population problem is still evident but the demographic leans heavily towards the bulk of the populace being elderly post-war kids. Another study in 2004 states that 19.5% of the Japanese population is over the age of 65. People are no longer procreating like little white bunnies. The reason stems mainly from shifts in attitudes on marriage and children. Japanese youth are marrying less and having less children. New fears arise now as if this trend in lower birthrates continue Japan has seen its population peak and it is expected that a drop to a populace of 100 million by 2050 while give way to an additional decline to 64 million by 2100. It has reached the point where families who have more kids are given special allowances by the government. Of course, you also have to account for the fact that most of Japan is mountainous and thus uninhabitable unless people enjoy every room being their own personal amusement park complete with a crooked kitchen and a really wild slide. The country has been trying to create more space with landfills but this is a strange time for a country that was once overpopulated. With the low birthrate land may be aplenty in the not to distance future.

How does this get us all back to that word I dislike so? With less children per family and, indeed, some only have one, there is a tendency to spoil the kids rotten until they become heathens of unleashed energy that are ultimately turned over to me. Now, kids will be kids and I am not complaining about the over energetic behavior except when it has lead to some voice raising when it comes to issues of violence. Boys will pick on the girls verbally, which is the common form of abuse in Japan (more on this later) but I have often had to break up fights, playful or otherwise, between both sexes although it has mainly been between boys. Yesterday, for example, two kids engaged in an exchange over who could punch each other hardest in the balls. This contest, after I broke it up, gave way to a test of how many times one could jump on another’s back before it snaps in two. Having finally had enough of being quiet in my dissuasion of such behavior and realizing this was not the correct means of correctional discipline I stood up tall over the kids casting a my shadow down over them and then I unleashed a booming slew of harsh words with a face contorted in brazen anger. They paused in mid punch, mouths open, as they did not expect such a turn. One started to laugh thinking I was joking. I shot him a look that burned a hole through him and clear through the wall behind. No more Mr. Nice Guy. I told him in my stern tone that this was not funny, again advised them it would be on their best interest to stop fighting and I dotted the I of my loud tirade by flashing them my arms crossed in an X which is the classroom symbol for NO. Let me tell you, those kids didn’t mutter a word unless prompted. I don’t like shouting a kids and avoid it when possible but violent behavior and verbal abuse, whether I understand what they are saying or not, is something I am not going to tolerate in my classrooms.

That said, I am starting to learn to harness this energy into more active games and through these games I get the kids to listen. True, not all of the kids are poorly behaved and some actually want to learn the language. Two of my opening questions to new classes are “Do you have any brothers and sisters?” and “How many brothers and sisters do you have?” It seems as though the ones who answer that they have no brothers or sisters are the ones who are wild and out of control while those who have siblings are easier to handle. When you are an only child, in Japan as it is back home, you always tend to get what you want. It was not customary, our head trainer told us, to baby and over mother kids before the birth decline and with parents now doing so it has lead to behavioral problems teachers prior to the 1960s seldom experienced. Note, I am not talking about learning deficiencies here as they are another beast entirely and I will talk about that shortly as I have a class on Saturdays with a couple of kids with such problems.

To move on, I’ll leave with these thoughts on teaching really young kids (ages 3-8) by saying that one should not come into the classroom with the images I had of well behaved kids. If you get a bunch of only children they will be nightmares and you will spend most of your lesson chasing them around the class. The key is trying to find ways to incorporate this over energetic (read: not wanting to listen to a damn thing you say) behavior into games that will serve as instruction to both the problem kid/s and the ones who are trying to learn. Genki does not have to mean pain in the ass. However, be on the look out, because even the cutest of porcelain doll faced Japanese children will ram their fingers in your ass the second your back is turned to them. This phenomenon has not happened to me yet so I will just leave it up to your own personal research for now.

The running and shouting and energy ridden younger classes transforms into opposite behavior in my older classes. I am going to steal a bit from Mog here and talk to you about the Japanese school system. The school year in Japan begins in April and ends in March and kids here spend 240 days a year in school, 60 days more then us lucky Western folk. In other words, remove those two months of summer vacation and you have the Japanese school year. Japanese school kids are worked harder then those sowing Wal-Mart socks for Kathy Lee Gifford. The Japanese are known for their intelligence and it comes from the cultural status of education as being immensely stressed here for the importance of a fine society. Education is doled out three ways here. Public school and private school, you have to attend one or the either, which must operate to the standards of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). The third are schools that do not adhere to the criteria put forth by MEXT. High school is not compulsory in Japan but over 90% of students still attend. Both junior high and high school kids have really taxing days.

Kids will wake up early in the morning to get ready for school. The day at school begins at 8:30 so some are up as early as 6am. They are dressed in uniforms that prohibit much individual expression. Most will walk or drive their bike to school while others will make a further commute on packed trains where they will study or text their friends on their phones. At the school they change from street shoes into pink slippers for girls and blue for boys, toss their stuff into small lockers and they then go through their lessons until the end of the day and o soji where the kids have to clean the school. This is performing, basically, janitorial duties. After sweeping, washing end emptying trash the kids get out of school in mid afternoon. After this you go to your club or play your sport. Playing a sport is mandatory here and people are thought less of if they do not join some sort of club. So, when school gets out kids can “look forward” to another few hours spent in sport. Clubs can be divided into two types: sports clubs (baseball, soccer, judo, kendo, track, tennis, swimming, softball, volleyball, rugby) and culture clubs which has them dressing up in drag and signing lame 80s pop songs. Okay, just kidding, they learn broadcasting, calligraphy, science, mathematics or work on the yearbook. Kids will also go and learn English, which brings them to me. Afterwards some kids will continue to piano lessons or some other after school educational activity. After this they many even attend a Juku. Juku is a word for “cram school”. Here kids continue their studies and act as a form of supplementary education to prepare them for their highschool entrance exams. 60% of children enter cram schools and these schools also heap on the homework. Kids my finally crawl home around seven in the evening to do homework and, if they are lucky, eat. It is not unusual to have young kids staying up until 2am studying or finishing homework. Getting into high school here is a big deal and basically makes or breaks your existence.

These overworked kids also have to deal with all the other stuff people there age have to deal with: bullying, peer pressure and raging hormones. Verbal bullying is especially a problem and it outweighs physical bullying. Kids have to grow up fast in these stressful environments and while some swim with all their might others get lost in the sea and sink like a stone. A sad reality here in Japan is a high suicide rate for young kids, some even under ten years old. Statistics revealed by the Japanese National Police Agency in 2004 states that in that year 34,427 deaths were a result of suicide. This is 27.0 per 100 thousand people. Four years prior it was 24.1. The Suicide Culture, as some reports have called it, has come in three waves and we are currently in the third which began in the late 1990s. The phenomena of Internet Suicide clubs sparked a controversial film (Jisatsu Saakuru) which has been banned in my home province of Ontario. These kids will meet total strangers to die with. The problem when it comes to kids tossing themselves in front of trains has become such an issue that mirrors have been put in front of the tracks to help deter jumpers.

Unlike the wild younger kids, the older kids, those in or just entering their teens, are quiet and seem depressed. Mostly, they are just exhausted. Thankfully the curriculum at this age group does not stress games and mobility because getting these kids to blink is a chore. When they slouch into my class they are zombie kids that just want to find a bed and the best that you can do is hope to teach them something in between their yawns. They may not be misbehaving when they do not listen to me and talk only in Japanese. They very well could just be in a corpse like state of fatigue from a day that began early in the morning and will not end until late at night. Their complacency to my lessons is understandable as I am the filling in a rather large, moldy sandwich of a day. Of course, then you get kids like the Spice Girls, those spoiled brats who think they are too cool for school and thus they sit and text away on their stylish cell phones while making fun of the gray in their teacher’s hair. These are the cliques that form in this age group and, actually, I have seen them even as early as 10. Boys will sit with boys and girls with girls and each group will make fun of the other while secretly longing for relationships. Oh, you know you are, kiddies!

So, when these kids get to me it is hard to try to get them interested and it is not as though they (and I’m not talking about you Spice Girls) are bad kids because of spoiling or they are just filled with so much get up and go because they are very young, these kids are just tired and this is something I have to understand. I have to learn here to work with two types of kids with two opposite amounts of energies. The young ones are easy as the games can be used but getting through to the sleepy eyed older kids is going to take some thinking and careful observation on what makes them click into place.

We complained as teens that we had to go to school for a few hours a day when we could be back home watching cartoons, playing Nintendo or whatever wasteful activity we could drum up that wasn’t expanding our minds. Back home we got 2 months off, more if you count Christmas and other holidays, and our school days were break and recess filled. I look at these kids in Japan and think how fortunate we were or, then again, maybe not. Maybe us brats back home, myself included, could have benefited from such a rigorous educational day.