Comments on the JET program
Posted by Matt Dioguardi on February 12th, 2007
I posted these comments recently to the community in Japan forum at Yahoo:
There’s been a lot of interesting comments on the JET programme, recently. I don’t know that much about it, except that I’ve done the same type of work before and found it mostly unsatisfying.
I just wanted to note that the pattern I see in the JET program seems to be the same pattern I see every where else, it’s for visitors. Come in, work a little while, then go home.
Here’s a quote: “The cornerstone of government migration policy was and remains that of limiting the stay of migrants and assuring their return to their home countries after two or three years.”
That’s from, Katsuko Terasawa, who writes chapter 10 of _Japan and Global Migration_.
Supposedly learning English is about internationalization. However, real internationalization means having people come over here to live. As I’ve said before in this forum, I think teachers should be offered a salary on par with other starting teachers. They should then be given a full time position and then treated as if they will be around for a while. Everything should be done to help them “fit in” and become a part of the community so they will want to stay. They should be treated like ordinary teachers.
Instead, is it not the case that people are treated as guests and everything is explained to them and they don’t really take part in things the way a normal teacher does? (As if there not being Japanese makes it impossible for them.) Is that internationalization?
It seems to me like through such a system, by accident, a lot of good might come about. A JET might be really adaptive, and they might find a school willing to give them the right amount of autonomy. But this doesn’t have to happen, does it? In fact, it could easily be just the opposite.
It seems to me the premises behind the exchange program are that foreigners just can’t fit in to the Japanese school system as teachers, and moreover that they can only fit into society on a temporary basis as visitors. These premises need to be challenged.