F**king toast

It's been entirely too long since I wrote anything here. And I apologize for that.

Today, while browsing through the comments on an ALT (assistant language teacher) discussion board for foreign language teachers working as assistant teachers, primarily in junior high schools, here in Japan, I came across a comment that really, REALLY pissed me off.

The thread topic was something like, "What would you change about Japanese English language education if you had carte blanche?" And one of the regulars in the discussion board wrote this:

"just getting rid of the JTEs and getting properly trained/experienced native teachers seems like it would be enough."

JTE stands for "Japanese teacher of English." That would be the regular English teachers, whose first language is Japanese.

Now, admittedly, there are plenty of JTEs who are not very good at speaking English. But there are plenty who are good teachers. But even allowing for that to be a bit of hyperbole on the part of the commenter, the comments still is filled with so many problems.

Let's start with the issue of "properly trained/experienced" - who decides? The JTEs all have their teaching licenses here in Japan. Doesn't that make them properly trained? And many of them have been teaching for years. Doesn't that make them experienced? Despite proper training and plenty of experience, some JTEs aren't good. That's a fact. However, the original comment seems to presume that for some reason, non-Japanese teachers would be immune from this phenomenon. Somehow, all "properly trained/experienced" non-Japanese English teachers would be good. I call bullshit on that!

Another issue is that, let's be honest, there is a HUGE fucking difference between being an assistant teacher and being the main teacher. I've been both. Certainly, some ALTs are plenty capable of planning all lessons and running classes all on their own. But many are not really ready for that. It's one thing to be given a topic and asked to plan a single lesson or activity. But to plan the entire syllabus is another thing entirely. There are just some days when you can't bring your A game to the table, trying to plan a dozen lessons a week with other duties on top of that.

On top of that, if ALTs want to make the move to take charge of the entire lessons, doing away with the JTEs entire, these ALTs need to make sure that they can speak Japanese at a proficiency that is appropriate for a professional. You don't exist in a vacuum. You need to communicate with the other faculty and administration, as well as parents. Again, some ALTs are able to do this. Many are not.

Which brings us to the point of bringing in enough of these "properly trained" native English speaking teachers. There aren't enough Japanese-proficient, certified TESOL teachers in the English speaking world to staff all the Japanese schools.

And all of this doesn't even get at the real thing that bugged me. And it's the goddamn colonialism of the comment. There is an unfortunate line of thinking within parts of the TESOL community that native speakers automatically make the best teachers. Again, I have to call bullshit. In plenty of cases, a well trained non-native speaking teacher is just as good, if not a better teacher for a particular group of students. Arguments that favor non-native speakers? For starters, they understand the struggles of the students. They were/are English learners. This advantage is particularly pronounced if the students are largely culturally homogeneous. And in most Japanese classrooms, cultural homogeneity is the rule. A teacher who shares that culture? They are going to have some built in advantages that a cultural outsider will have to work to overcome. Not to say that it's impossible. But it takes an effort that the non-native teacher doesn't have to expend, meaning that the teacher who is culturally similar to the students theoretically has more time/energy to focus on teaching, with the cultural understanding being literally instinctive.

And then there is the unstated presumption that "native speaker" English is the best is also problematic, and one of the problems I have with a lot of English teachers here in Japan. The fact of the matter is that in today's world, there are a LOT more non-native speaking users of English than there are native speaking users. More and more, the chances are that if a Japanese national is going to use English, they are going to be speaking with another non-native English speaker. Maybe it's a tourist from China, or a businessman from Taiwan. The monopoly of the English speaking world on the language is long gone. It has become the de facto lingua franca. Hell, even within the so-called "native speaking" world, there is a huge variety of English. Is someone going to tell a Glaswegian that his English isn't native, despite the fact that he's been speaking it his entire life? And what about the woman in the bayous of Louisiana? Is her version of Cajun influenced English less valid?

Let's be real - what English education in Japan needs is good teachers. It doesn't matter if they are native speakers or non-native speakers of English. And that's what it really boils down to. Do the students actually learn how to use the language?