A new sort of education Thursday

After the undergrad Intro to Education course I took on Thursday mornings in spring term of last year, I had a break from education in the fall term. This school year, however, (the Japanese school year starts in April and runs to March, with breaks in both summer and late winter/early spring) I've got another ed class, this time at the grad level, but still on Thursdays.

This term I'm taking a grad course on the history of Japanese education. It doesn't have much bearing on my thesis, but I knew as soon as I read the syllabus that I had to take it because of the assigned text. We are reading the Japanese translation of Andrew Gordon's A Modern History of Japan. Why would I want to read the Japanese translation of an overview of Japanese history written by a well-known American scholar of Japanese history? Well, Gordon was my advisor for my first thesis. He wrote a message and signed my copy of the English original, which I used when I was one of the TAs for the intro-level overview of Japanese history course that he co-taught. The book was written out of his lecture notes for that class, and the year I TAed was the first one after the book had been published and was being used as a text.

It has been a truly odd experience to read the book for a grad-level Japanese course. (I'll admit that most weeks I cheat and read the English original and only glance through the Japanese translation) I'll find myself suddenly remembering discussing a certain section with my students, or listening to Gordon's lecture on a different section, or marking the exam questions, or climbing the rickety little stairway to my discussion section's classroom - overlooking Annenberg Hall , high in the eaves of the historic and stunning Memorial Hall . But really I'm sitting in a windowless classroom in the upper floors of a modern skyscraper in downtown Tokyo.

The class itself has its moments. I've had a number of frustrating weeks, sitting through seemingly endless comments of "wow - for a foreigner he really knows a lot about Japanese history! It's so impressive!!" The fact that this is a typical Japanese response to any knowledge of Japan by a foreigner is annoying. Given that the professor of the course I'm currently taking and the other two students have freely admitted they are education/sociology majors and NOT history majors and thus the only (one-time) Japanese history major in the room is the one with the white skin and big nose, makes it somewhat more annoying. But given that the comments are about a scholar who is both very well-known and extremely highly regarded in the field (both in the US AND in Japan), the condescension is particularly annoying.

In class this evening, however, we got off topic waiting for one student who never actually showed up. We got into discussing and comparing higher education in Japan and the US/Canada. The prof, who's area is Education and who is involved in the teaching certification program at my university, was blunt and direct in his criticism of many Japanese practices. In particular he blasted the Japanese system of double standards for athletes, the lack of expectation that students actually study, the practice of students working part-time jobs til the early hours of the morning, and a host of other issues. My beef is the glaring lack of feedback given to students. They submit papers and write tests and all they get out of it is a grade on their report card. 99% of professors provide absolutely no feedback to students, giving them no idea of WHAT was good or bad about what they did and where/how they could improve. The only time many students get any type of response from professors is on their graduation thesis, in their final year. In addition, the vast majority of undergrads, and some grad students even, have a difficulty in expressing their own opinion or engaging in critical thought. With issues like grade inflation and babying of students, however, the US/Canadian system is far from perfect...

It was a lively and interesting discussion, but I'm still looking forward to next week (the last for this term) and then another term of a new sort of education Thursdays...

Paying Attention

When preparing for exams it is very important that you first get as much information about the format of the exam, length of time to write, etc. Finding out if the exam is open book is also a very good idea as it could change the way you prepare for the exam. Because while discovering that you are allowed to use your trusty electronic dictionary to write an exam in a foreign language is a very pleasant surprise (yay! yay!), realizing you've spent the past week preparing for said exam in the completely WRONG way is not so pleasant (aaaacccck!!)... Not that I would know this from personal experience, of course, I ALWAYS make sure I understand everything completely. I'm just... umm... offering advice... yeah... that's it... offering advice. Wouldn't, uh... want anybody else to make the same mistake. Yeah...

(banging head on desk...)

One exam down, one more and an oral presentation on my proposed thesis coming up tomorrow.

Sigh...

The Last Thursday

I had my last Education Thursday yesterday - well, if except for the exam next week! (eeeeeep!!) I've enjoyed this particular class and feel I've gotten a lot out of it - surpassing my expectations in both regards. With one week left of classes (including two final exams and a presentation on my thesis to the entire department - double eeeeeeeep!), I'm feeling the same way about the term in general.

My first term as a full-time graduate student at my university has sped by. I've learned tons, have gotten a good start on my thesis, and really feel like I belong. But it has been tough too. I find the more I am able to do the more I realize I am missing out on... I can follow the discussions in my graduate seminars, but depending on the subject I can find it difficult to marshal my thoughts, put them into some semblance of coherent Japanese, and then actually say them before the discussion moves on elsewhere. The weekly response sheet for my education class is similar. Class ends and I'm usually still madly taking notes. By the time I've written my name, student number, and the class info, most of the other students are handing their sheets in. The prof has very kindly told me to take my time, but I nevertheless feel rushed trying to get SOMETHING coherent down on my sheet. It never fails that I am having lunch an hour later and suddenly think - "Ah! I should have said this!!!" or "Ah! Why didn't I think of that?!!"

All this has me rather worried about the upcoming exams. I love writing, and term papers or other such assignments have always been something I've enjoyed. Exams, however, well not having to write final exams was a definite plus of grad school! And yet here I am, back in grad school but taking undergrad classes and so having to write exams - in Japanese too! Sigh. Figuring out the question, sorting through what I want to say, and then writing it out by hand (without a dictionary, of course) just takes that much longer. Especially since both exams are in areas I've never studied before - bringing with them a whole set of specialized terminology... Aaaaaaa. But I am a regular student, and I don't want to ask for special treatment, so I will simply have to study hard and then do what I can on the day of the exam.

As my grade 8 social studies (I was in French Immersion, so it was actually sciences humaines, if you want to split hairs) teacher taught me, I will get a good night of sleep the night before, read through the entire exam before I write anything, and start with the questions I know I can answer, pacing myself throughout. I certainly don't remember my grade, but many of Mme. Clarke's lessons have remained with me to this day. In the same way, I'm going to try not to stress over how well I do or don't do on the exams, but instead focus on what I've gained from these two classes.

All the same... When it comes to picking out the rest of the undergrad courses I have to take for the curatorial certificate, I'm going to do my darnedest to make sure I pick courses with final papers instead of written exams!

No Education for Me! - REVISED

** NOTE: I've edited this post after learning that my professor DID in fact contact the correct people to have the class officially cancelled - I apologize for thinking otherwise! I am not sure whether that notice resulted in an official posting, however, as it seemed like a full class of students waited the allotted 40 minutes. **

Two Thursdays have passed without an Education Thursdays post, so allow me to explain. The first week's lack of post was due to the fact that I skipped class (and the country) for my trip to the US with the museum. The second week's missing post? Well that was due to the fact that the professor didn't show. There is a complex system in place at my university for professors to alert students to the fact that class has been cancelled. It involves classes being listed somewhere on campus. Since I take courses at two different campuses, and both undergrad and grad courses at one campus, this means I am supposed to routinely check multiple notice boards. I admit to not checking these boards (especially for my education class as I only go to the campus for the class). I know where the grad board is and I check it for class cancellations and general announcements about once a week. For the rest - well, I just go to class. I didn't check, so I can't be sure, but given the large number of students sitting around, I'm guessing that my education class was not posted as cancelled.

There is apparently a time rule - how long students should stay before they are allowed to assume that class has been cancelled. I'm not sure of the time (I think it is about 40 minutes), but apparently most of the class does know the time (or they were just following each other, as about half of the students got up to leave at the same time. I stuck around for another 5 or 10 minutes before heading off myself.

I had other things weighing on my mind. You see I had an oral presentation scheduled for my grad seminar the next day. (yes, note my use of the word "scheduled") I was VERY stressed about this presentation. I was to be giving an overview of one chapter of the book we are currently reading (on what would be best translated into English as social education/pedagogy), written by the professor. I managed to figure out a way that I thought would be new, different, and rather clever, to go beyond the book for the second half of my presentation, but I was worried about the first half. After all it is really only in the past year that I've become able to honestly say I can sit down and read an academic book in Japanese and actually have it make sense. And did I mention this is a book written by the professor, who would be obviously sitting right there for the entire presentation?! I've done that before in my previous incarnation as a grad student, and, as the saying goes - once bitten, twice shy!

So much of the past week has been spent working on this presentation, often into the wee hours of the morning (made much much worse by a nasty case of jet lag). Then I get to class on Friday and find out we're still watching War period and pre-War period animated films, related to the previous chapter.

So that about sums up my week...

I hope to be back to commenting on more interesting stuff soon, and do promise that my next knitting update is in the works!

It's Thursday again...

In case you couldn't tell, I am really enjoying my Intro to Ed course on Thursday mornings (and I'm not just saying that because I made the mistake of mentioning my blog to my prof and he asked me for the address...)

Class today was on teaching styles. The professor started by asking us to raise our hands and express our preference for either one-on-one style teaching or one-on-mass. I abstained since he hadn't specified if we were to answer from the point of view of a university student or a potential teacher, or what type of class/subject/etc... yes, yes, I know, my father always complains when I do this splitting hairs thing! Anyways, so it turns out the prof was basically setting us all up. You see, he asked the question expecting something along the lines of the 3:1 in favour of mass teaching response that he got. (disaffected university students want as LITTLE individual contact with their profs as possible, after all!) Then we watched video clips of innovative math classes in a US private school and a large but cutting edge public school in China. Both teachers used various teaching method, including games to keep the kids interested and small group activities to involve everybody at once. While there were obvious differences, the similarities between the two classes were quite striking given social and cultural differences between China and the US.

The Chinese kids started their lesson by chanting their times tables up to five, and then singing a song with the same. The more I thought about it the more I realized that the games and activities that followed were all checking memorization - quite often focused on getting the child to give the correct answer as quickly as possible. Numbers were expressed in abstract terms - words, numerals or traditional hand gestures (not simply holding up that number of fingers).



Until asked by my professor, it didn't occur to me just how different this was to the American classroom, and to how I had learnt math in Canada as well. When I went up to hand in my weekly comments sheet he asked me if I had been taught math through physical representations of numbers. My immediate response was (in my own head) "Of course so! One apple is one apple, two apples are two apples and the easiest way to explain 1 + 1 to a 5 year old is to give them two apples." But apparently they don't teach that way in Japan (or China either, for that matter). Huh. I have a vivid memory of a first or second grade math class where the teacher handed us REAL money (woo hoo!) and had us count it out individually. Why do I remember one specific class from over 20 years ago? Well... they say we remember the bad things the longest, right? I can't for the life of me remember any of the games we played at lunch time or recess, but I remember this one math class very vividly. You see, I got mixed up between time and money, and decided that there were 60 cents to the dollar (and no I'm not talking exchange rates on the Canadian dollar!). So I counted it up and decided I had $1.05 When I announced this to my teacher she did a double take and squawked "I didn't give you THAT much money!" Sure enough, I had only $.65 My entire class laughed and I was left with a life-long memory of shame...

Right, so where was I? Ah, yes... Thursdays are for Education...

So what about your elementary school math classes? Did you learn basic math through physical representations (money, blocks, etc) or did you memorize it by rote? I'd love to hear feedback on this one!

My professor already knows what his comments are going to be. After watching the videos and seeing the American and Chinese classrooms and how basic math was being taught, most of the university students who raised their hand in support of mass lecture-style teaching would be doing an about-face, supporting inclusion of individualized teaching and other forms of learning as important teaching tools. Not simply telling us the answer, but giving students the opportunity to "come up with it" on their own? In teacher-speak I think that's called "guided discovery."

Education Thursdays

My Intro to Education Theory course on Thursday mornings is proving to be a thought provoking class. The prof ends class 5~10 minutes early and has us write down and hand in our comments/responses to that week's class. (this also serves the purpose of taking attendance, which in many courses comprises part of the final grade)

This past week we ran a bit late and I didn't have enough time to martial my thoughts and get them all down on paper, so I left class with a full mind and an almost painfully strong need to sit down with paper and pen and WRITE.

This week's theme was academic ability - in particular its relation to an individual's personal traits and cultural differences. We looked at a number of studies that tested 5 year-olds and linked their results to their academic test scores in grades 5 and 6. The first was of a matching test, where the little kids were asked to pick the matching image out of 6 similar choices.

(don't worry if you can't find a pair - I spent a good 5 minutes searching
before I realized this is just the ANSWER, the question - with the one you are
supposed to find the match for, was not included in our class handout)

In the second test, kids reached into a box and (without looking) touched a wooden shape and then had to pick out the shape they had felt from four diagrams on a piece of paper.

The study showed that in Japan there is a strong correlation between how a student did on the matching test, and how they did academically later in elementary school. In the United States, however, while there was no correlation for the matching test, there was an even STRONGER correlation between how a child did on the shape-feeling test and how they scored academically years later. In short, in Japanese schools it is the students with patience and attention to detail who excel, while in the US it is free-thinkers with good imaginations.

No surprise there, I suppose. Isn't that the stereotype, after all? Hammering down the nail that sticks up, versus the sacredness of the individual. I'm not one to agree with something just because that is what "everybody says," however, in fact I'm just contrary enough to want to believe the exact opposite! So, I began to think...

I started with my Brownies. After all, I first became a Brownie leader 10 years ago (we are NOT going to discuss the fact that that means my very first Brownies graduated from high school last year and have just finished their first year of university, making them the same age as the "kids" in my education class!! But I digress...) In the intervening decade I've worked with 5 different troops in Canada, the US and Japan. Culturally, the North American and Japanese Brownies are divided by uniform. While in Canada and the US girls are required to wear no more than their scarf and enrollment pin, and can choose from more uniform options such as t-shirts, sweatshirts, blouses, skirts, shorts, sweat pants, full headscarves... In Japan, on the other hand, girls are required to wear uniform hats, blouses, skirts belts and socks. For formal occasions black shoes (of your own choosing) are also required. This is a cultural difference (I can't imagine trying to tell the parents of my girls in Canada that their daughter must wear totally black shoes with her uniform, they'd think I was mad or controlling or both!) but is also at least partially due to a desire in North America to make Guiding/Scouting accessible to a wider (specifically lower income) audience. So the first image that came to mind was the uniformity of my Japanese Brownies versus the individuality of my North American Brownies.

Score
Stereotypes: 1
Sarah's contrariness: 0

I started thinking more superficially about the troops I've worked with and the girls in the troops. I was rather surprised to realize something that has never hit me before. My Brownies are all in the 8-10 age range but unconsciously I had been thinking my Japanese Brownies were older. While this could be partially due to the fact that in both Canada and the US I also worked with the pre-Brownie age group as well, the more I thought about it the more I realized that my American and Canadian Brownies seemed younger, more kid-like, my Japanese Brownies much quieter and more reserved.

Score
Stereotypes: 2
Sarah's contrariness: 0

I decided at this point to think of other examples, so I turned to my prison sentence time as an English teacher. My favourite memory is of the Halloween craft project I did with all my students under the age of 16. I cut out pumpkin-shaped templates in orange construction paper and gave each student a pair of scissors and black paper. They were not allowed to write or draw pictures, but could decorate their Jack-o-lantern in any way they desired. Most of them looked at me dumbly as I slowly and simply explained (miming when needed) what I wanted them to do. I had made a basic example myself and was half expecting to have dozens of similar Jack-o-lanterns. While it took them a few moments to get warmed up, however, my students COMPLETELY AMAZED me with their creativity and individuality. No two Jack-o-lanterns were ANYTHING alike, and not one single one looked like mine or any other "traditional" Jack-o-lantern either!

Just a few of the unique creations my kids came up with.

Score
Stereotypes: 2
Sarah's contrariness: 1

The craft had originally grown out of a desire to make decorations for the school when my manager couldn't find any decorations she liked at the store. The kids LOVED having their handiwork up for all to see, and many of the cram school teachers and students asked if they too could make a Jack-o-lantern. I had been a bit worried that the parents would complain of a valuable lesson hour having been largely "wasted" on a craft project. I was not, however, prepared for the reaction I got. The parents were overwhelmingly positive in their reaction. They LOVED the artwork and enjoyed trying to guess which face belonged to which child. I also had a number of parents individually thank me directly or through my director for having done such a project with their child. They felt it was an important creative opportunity, one their child didn't have outside of the English classroom.

Score
Stereotypes: 3
Sarah's contrariness: 1

With this type of score, I was forced to take a step back and think about the bigger picture. I thought too about kids programs I helped out with at the museum, and about the experiences of my friend who is Japanese but worked in the US as a museum educator. Gradually I began to see a picture that largely agreed with the studies. Culturally, Japan is a country that encourages similarity and order. Children, when encouraged, are just as imaginative and energetic and individual, but they are much less likely to be encouraged to do so, especially not in a classroom setting.

A Woman's World

One of the courses I am taking this term is Intro to Education Theory, a required course for both the teaching and curatorial certificates. The prof is apparently rather well known, as he is a prolific author. While I can't speak to that, I can tell that you he definitely doesn't fit the old adage that "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach. And those who can't teach, teach teachers." His class is always interesting, thought provoking, and very well taught. We've been looking at gender and education over the past few classes and that, in combination with some comments I've gotten recently, got me to thinking...
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Japan is famous for its cuteness. It is quite acceptable, normal even, for grown women to wear frilly pink things. Frilly pink is a fashion statement I haven't made since I was about 10 years old. But as bellbottoms demonstrated, fashion has a way of coming back, and so it appears that pink frills are going to be re-introduced into my wardrobe after a nearly 20 year hiatus. By force, if necessary, as one of my friends demonstrated recently! But let me backtrack...

I was a girly-girl as a kid, my favourite colours were pink and purple and my favourite clothes were the beautiful dresses my mother hand-made for me. Gradually, however, I (like most girls I knew) grew out of it, and became more comfortable in jeans. I took this trend a little further than some, perhaps, as when I wore a skirt to math class in grade 12 my teacher just about fell of his desk in surprise. Two years later, during my first trip to Japan, the petite and feminine Korean exchange students in one of the other classes all but forced me to start wearing make-up and buy a skirt. My second time studying in Japan I started wearing nail polish. My host mother attributed this to the guy I had just started dating and was so impressed that a guy could have such a feminizing effect on the lost case she saw me as, that she was ready to send us down the aisle after only a few weeks of dating. She immediately took me shopping and picked out a shade of pearly pink nail polish for me. Fast forward 5 years. Different university, different group of friend, different boy, and yet the same effect. My friends find out there is a guy I'm interested in and they go into full feminizing mode. While having lunch with a friend a few weeks back, I made the comment that I wanted to buy a pair of shoes. She squealed and proceeded to bodily drag me into shoe stores. My enormous foreign feet (I can still hear Indian shopkeepers yelling "big size, big size!!") are a size or two over the largest shoes normally available in the average store. My friend and I, however, managed to find a couple of different Godzilla-size shoe stores. She groaned and rolled her eyes at a few of my choices, clearly vetoing anything that didn't have a bow or other cutesy decoration. She argued hard for something with a heel, but those of you who know me know that this klutz needs no help tripping over her own feet, so I flatly (groan!) refused heels. I finally settled upon a pair of off white flats that satisfied both me AND my friend.

After shoe shopping, she decided to take the girl-ifying one step further, and address my accessories. She helped me pick out a pink and silver necklace and then proceeded to scour every single store she could find for matching earrings.

All of this (plus the blushing and gushing caused by the aforementioned thing for the guy) has caused my friends to make comments like "wow, you are a girl after all!" and "You're turning into a girl!!" (begging the question, what was I before?!)

With strains of Shania Twain running through my head, I've turned to people watching - checking out the shoes of women on the train (almost exclusively ballet flats or heels, except for the 65 and over crowd), noticing the high number of women in skirts walking by the coffee shop, remarking on the dressy-ness of women in the grocery store and groups of mothers waiting for the school bus. Everywhere I looked (in Tokyo, I admit), I was struck with the formalness, the dressy-ness, and most of all the femininity of Japanese women.

My professor today talked about societal conditioning of gender identity - from colouring and patterning of socks and other baby clothing, to usage of certain linguistic terms for boys or girls. In the arena of education one of the examples he gave was of a girls high school where a belief that girls were less interested in/qualified for maths and sciences led to a smaller number of those courses offered. This caused more girls to take arts and humanities courses, thereby fulfilling and fortifying the expectations. This self-perpetuating cycle makes it more difficult for girls who might be interested in maths and sciences to chose that route. I would add to that the uniforms worn by junior high and high school students. While boys wear shirts and ties or the more common Mandarin collar-style buttoned jacket with slacks, girls wear blouses or sailor blouses and (very short) skirts.

(the historical progression of uniforms from one school)

Girl Scout uniform is also skirts and blouses on all occasions except for camp.



While I know a number of examples to the contrary, it is still the norm for Japanese women to give up outside employment to look after their family. In response to a presentation in my sociology grad seminar last week about social support for mothers/housewives, the two male grad students remarked that they were open to the idea of quitting their jobs to look after the family/home if their wife were making more. When the professor, skeptical of their sincerity, questioned one with specific mention to the girlfriend, the student in question was much less convincing. My education professor came to basically the same answer. He would like to see change. He says he can't understand why more fathers don't get involved in child-rearing and housework, he loves it! (he's married with a young daughter)
He has little confidence in the ability of the education system to effect major change, however.

Where does this leave me? Well, I need to go and do my make-up and my hair and iron my outfit before I go to class, I'll get back to you later...