Uncool Greg

Present-day American kids are apt to attribute success to innate ability. One may be smart generally or smart for a particular area. Rather than accept or argue against such fatalism, many Asian societies just say, “Get to work!” For anecdotal support here are excerpts from Chapter 5 of T. R. Reid’s book, Confucious Lives Next Door, Random House, 1999.

… When the Japanese students get older, there is clear educational tracking. But in elementary school, and to a large extent in junior high, everyone is expected to succeed in every class. The secret to success is considered to be hard work. Why does one student get straight A’s in math, science, geometry, and language, while her best friend gets all C’s? In the United States, almost everybody answers that question by saying that the all-A student is smarter. In Japan, almost nobody would answer that way. The reason some kids do well in school and others don’t is almost universally considered to be effort…. I’ve visited hundreds of Japanese classrooms over the years, and virtually every one has the word doryoku framed on the wall. The word means “effort”….

… There is no conception in East Asia that music and math belong in schools but moral values do not. Learning to do right is considered just as important as learning to add right. Every day at Yodobashi No. 6, the rules of life in a civil society were given at least as much attention as the rules of grammar or long division. Academic training and social training were blended in almost everything the students did….

… Many teachers wrote the goals for the day on the blackboard each morning before class. The interesting thing was that most goals said nothing much about academics. They were about building good citizens…. The overall mission of Yodobashi No. 6 was set forth in three phrases on the wall of the central entryway: “A child who is energetic and friendly,” “A child who warmly helps the whole group succeed,” “A child who thinks carefully before acting.” These schoolwide goals were echoed in the classroom goals set forth on the walls of my girls’ classes…. “Let’s work persistently until the job is done,” “Let’s make a new friend at recess,” “Let’s not waste anything at lunchtime,” “Let’s work together on the road to junior high school,” “Let’s remember the rules and follow them.”

… In the fifth-grade classroom one day, three boys were standing on their desktops throwing books at each other. Girls were running around from one desk to another playing some kind of slapping game. Another kid was trying to lob a soccer ball into a trash can across the room. The most amazing thing of all was that Yamada-sensei was sitting calmly at his desk at the front of the room, grading papers or something, evidently oblivious to the bedlam breaking out in his classroom…. After this went on for ten minutes or so, the teacher gave an almost imperceptible arm signal to one of the students–who was, it turned out, the designated class leader for the week. This boy walked up to the front and shouted, “It’s time!” Nobody could hear him at first, but he kept saying “It’s time.” And within thirty seconds or so, the disorderly mob was once again an orderly class, quietly looking up at Yamada-sensei to see what he wanted the class to do next. I learned later that this kind of temporary wildness in the classroom is specifically prescribed in the Education Ministry’s Guidelines for Elementary Schools, so that the children can let off steam. The key point is that the teachers feel perfectly safe letting it happen, because they have complete confidence they can gain control again at any time…

… I never entirely figured out how they do it. But one key factor, I concluded, is that keeping control in a Japanese classroom is not strictly the responsibility of the teacher. The students share responsibilities like that, and they consider this perfectly normal….

… Starting with the first grade, it was students–not the teacher, not parents–who were responsible for managing the permission slips, and collecting the money for field trips. It was students, not teachers, who were responsible for the care and feeding of Yodobashi’s farm animals, and for the maintenance and cleaning of that unicycle fleet. So much responsibility is left with students that Japanese schools rarely call in a substitute teacher. If the first-grade teacher is going to miss a day or two, she provides a detailed plan for the day and lets the two student leaders direct studies. The teacher in the room next door pops in now and then to make sure things are okay. And this seems to work….

… In Japanese schools the students are the janitors; a certain amount of time is allocated each school day for the activity known as oh-soji, or honorable cleaning. Kids wash blackboards, empty trash cans, clean toilets, and mop those shiny pine floors in the hallway. It isn’t exactly fun, but it isn’t exactly a chore either. It is just something the students are expected to do, and they do it…. One advantage, of course, is that it gives the students a built-in incentive to keep their school clean from the start…. At Yodobashi, as at other Japanese schools, lunch was served to the students in their classrooms–and all the work was done by fellow students….

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T.R. Reid–remember when he was on NPR every week?–is not the only one to observe this. Following is a teacher’s point of view, from Bruce S. Feiler’s book, Learning To Bow: An American Teacher In A Japanese School. Ticknor & Fields, 1991. Chapter 14 covers “Baseball, Apple Pie, and Dragon Mothers: The Teacher In Japan”.

…The word sensei, though commonly translated as “teacher,” in truth has no equivalent in English. The two Chinese characters that make up the word literally mean “one who was born before.” The essential ingredient for a sensei is the wisdom he or she has gained through experience, not through reading books…. Any valued advisor or mentor can earn the respect inherent in the word sensei.

…Japan has an essentially homogeneous culture, with a common moral and religious heritage. Parents are more willing to give schools the authority to teach their children the common “Japanese” values of hard work, self-sacrifice, and national pride. Teachers, the ones who assume this burden, are thus given responsibilities that stretch far beyond their classroom door. As Machida-sensei said after he retrieved his student from playing hooky, “If I don’t get him now, who will? If I don’t help him today, who can?” This type of teacher, one who takes responsibility for the personal development of his students, who not only teaches science by day but coaches tennis in the afternoon and makes house calls at night, is lauded in Japan as a Nekketsu Sensei, roughly translated as a “Hot-Blooded Teacher”. … Although Japanese teachers earn high marks for their community service, they also must work painfully long hours, teach in overcrowded classrooms, and earn low wages.

Excerpts from Chapter 9: “Trash Day: Pledging Allegiance in Japanese Schools”

… Because the government allows no tracking of students based on ability, the members of this class reflected a true cross section of the west side of Sano. Future scientists learned alongside future truckdrivers, future poets along with future store clerks. While this system presents countless problems for teachers, who at any given time are speaking over the heads of some students and under the heads of others, the government feels the advantages for social relations are more important. The future doctor learns early to give assistance to those who are less capable….

… The classroom that the students inhabited had been, in effect, leased to them by the school, in an arrangement not unlike the way a feudal lord lent land to a group of serfs. By taking possession of this plot, the students were able to practice tending their own home, cultivating their own garden. They made posters of their class motto to hang on the wall; they kept plants on the balcony rail; and they sometimes brought flower arrangements from home to put on the cabinet in the corner. Every morning before school, students rummaged around the room, sponging down the blackboard, replenishing the supply of chalk, and writing the day’s schedule on the board. The chores changed on a rotating schedule and gave each student a chance to practice “preparing the farm” for a day. At 2:30 every weekday afternoon and at noon on Saturdays, classes officially ended and the daily ritual of cleanup began….

… Cleaning time, like lunchtime and homeroom before it, was often frenetic and fun. A group of boys would stop to arm-wrestle while some girls arranged a tournament to find out who could crawl the fastest across the floor with a dampened rag. It was hard work, but as one student said, “If the room is clean, we like to study more.” Although many teachers resented having to mop the floor when they had more important work to do, they still viewed their role as vital. Mrs. Negishi also changed out of her skirt and into a sweat suit (although not in the classroom), wrapped a kerchief around her head, and scrubbed the floor alongside her students. She taught by example. “If I don’t clean, the students don’t clean,” she told me. “It’s part of my responsibility.” … Students and teachers have clear roles, but the success of each depends on the cooperation of the other.

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I have seen this same young self-displine in Chinese schools. Even when American schools don’t structure for deep responsibility, students with Asian parents still get the attitude that “effort” trumps “smart”. The results are well-known. I have often said that the kids in my Sunday School class at the Chinese church can beat any math team in the state. There are plenty of great writers and artists among these kids. Attitude is what makes the difference.

There are downsides to the typical Asian school, especially in higher education. Still, at the life-influencing lower levels Americans could learn some things.

Some people with a sigh may observe that American schools lack parental support and reinforcement for this disciplined attitude. Parents seem to prefer to have success and failure beyond one’s control than possibly a matter of effort. I’ll have to do some more reading, but I have the impression that 19th century American schools held hard work as a primary virtue. I’ve heard fears of that emphasis on effort leads Japanese kids to a higher rate of suicide. Actually, Japan’s adolescent suicide rate is lower than America’s, and violence in schools is way lower.

Transitioning from a fatalist attitude to active engagement will be some trick, though!

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