I always find it to be a real cultural lesson to be working at this high school. It is a high academic high school and the teachers are run ragged trying to fit in extra lessons, extra help, extra practice, extra tutoring... and their normal workload as well. My favorite 'Lost in Translation' JTE came into the staff room with a sheepish look on his face yesterday. He explained that he has to calculate how many hours the students in his homeroom class had studied the night before and report it to a higher person (not sure who) so they can make sure all of the students are studying enough. Well, his class's hours were rather low so he fudged another hour on to each student's studying time. And that put this homeroom class in first place! So then the next day he had to fudge down 15 minutes per student so that their average would be lower. How ridiculous is it that the teachers are lying to prevent their kids from being the runts of the school? And what prevents the students from just saying "Oh yeah, I studied for 4 hours last night" when they only studied for 2 hours? If they have not studied enough, their homeroom teacher is supposed to yell at them so, really, what is the incentive for being honest?
A lot of the teachers had to go to a big meeting this afternoon. Apparently the test scores for this high school are falling. They already have three periods of extra lessons on Saturdays and the principal of the school has decided to add another period of extra lessons on Saturday. Wow!
I was talking to one of my young JTEs today (he is only 24!) and he said that he was really looking forward to the weekend because he was going to take a day off. He is going to take a weekend day off! How ridiculous is that? He should have every weekend day off! That is why there is a weekend!
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That's awful...seriously aren't there rules about when studying becomes an opportunity cost, or at least some kind of national debate over the psychological/ developmental toll of studying every waking (and some sleeping) hour you're not in school? That part of the Japanese education system makes me really ****ing angry--it's not like overstudying makes you smarter or more useful (especially when you're so exhausted that all your brain function becomes sluggish). How did making learning all about numbers come to be ok? Ugh. I feel sorry for your JTE friend and for the kids.
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