Dialoguing with "Japanese Class": Thinking from the Classroom

2021/06/14

It is difficult to talk about school education. After all, almost everyone has experienced it. Moreover, even if people have good memories of school life, it is rare to meet someone who says they enjoyed studying in the classroom. Perhaps that is why the personal opinions of those recognized by themselves and others as social successes are so popular. As is often said, because schools and education involve the future of society, these personal opinions naturally become heated. "Past education is no good; future schools should be like this—." Pushed by such voices, media discourse tends to portray schools and teachers as "forces of resistance." They claim that school education does not change because teachers do not make the effort to change. But is that really the case?

My recent book focuses on high school Japanese. The central content is a critique of the new high school Japanese curriculum, which attempts to isolate literary works as non-practical texts and reduce learning that begins with language to training in social norms surrounding language. However, my primary thought was that I wanted to support high school teachers who have been tossed about by "reforms." I myself began my career as a teacher in high school and have been involved in textbook editing for a long time. From that position, I wanted to send a small message of encouragement to the teachers in the field who continue to innovate in order to foster the linguistic power in the students they face in the classroom to survive toughly in the modern world.

According to a survey by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, as of May 2020, there were 4,874 high schools nationwide, with approximately 3,092,000 students enrolled. The number of full-time faculty and staff was about 229,000. If part-time and temporary appointments are included, the number of teachers increases further. This many students are learning, and this many teachers are teaching. In the classroom, both teachers and students experience new learning and re-learning every day. For teachers, missing each other's points regarding teaching materials is nothing other than an important learning opportunity. Not limited to high school Japanese, "reforms" that ignore the empirical knowledge of the field and the expertise of each subject and course only rob teachers of their motivation and exhaust the field. Students taught by such teachers cannot possibly enjoy learning.

Dialoguing with "Japanese Class": Thinking from the Classroom

Noritsugu Gomibuchi

Seidosha

274 pages, 2,420 yen (tax included)

*Affiliations and titles are as of the time of publication.