Japanese School: A Yen For Learning

It’s Saturday morning, and high school students Akinori and Hiroko listen as their instructor demystifies Japanese as it was written hundreds of years ago. Down the hall, sixth-graders Miyako and Makoto have just turned in tests demonstrating their mastery of Japanese characters-two kinds-as well as the corresponding characters in Chinese.

Downstairs, first-graders Tomomi and Yoichi join in an exuberant drill on subjects and verbs, which, roughly translated, goes like this: “Does the wind run?” “No!” “Does the wind fall?” “No!” “Does the wind blow?” “Yes!”

Aside from reveling in their shared Japanese language, the students enrolled in the Japanese Language Advancement School of Dallas, one of fifteen Japanese schools in the United States, are acquiring the supplementary education necessary to their return home and entry into the Japanese academic system. The school represents at least a partial solution to an ongoing dilemma for Japanese families posted abroad: how will their children acquire the necessary training for acceptance to a traditionally rigorous Japanese university?

According to E. Kobayashi, vice president and general manager of C. Itoh & Company (America) Inc., families have typically solved the educational dilemma by choosing to send school-aged children home with their mothers while the fathers stay abroad with their companies. However, the second-school option is gaining favor with both families and the Japanese Ministry of Education, since it helps students maintain educational, cultural, and linguistic links with home. Permanent residents of the United States may also attend.

Presently, nearly 200 children aged four to eighteen are enrolled in classes that meet forty-five Saturday mornings per year, from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Students study Japanese composition, literature, poetry, and mathematics. Parents have requested that the school offer courses in history and cultural studies as well.

When asked if he thinks the program is working, Kobayashi points with pride to his fifteen-year-old son, who is fluent in Japanese even though he has spent only three years of his life in Japan. Kobayashi fears, though, that even with the combined academic load of American and Japanese schools, his son will lag behind students schooled in Japan. But there is a growing recognition in Japan that international business requires an international perspective, one that can be provided by students educated in two countries. The Ministry of Education now gives separate entrance examinations and holds designated spots for Japanese students educated abroad. The goal is to nurture bilingualism and biculturalism while ensuring that the students retain their Japanese identities.