Encouraging Signs of a More International Socialization of Japanese Kids
When the author was attending elementary school in Japan as a child, the concept of catering for foreigners within both the school environment and community was practically unheard of. While foreigners have already been not rare even in a provincial city like Kanazawa by the early 1990s, the general mainstream society basically pretended that if the foreigners are treated not any differently from the Japanese, they will assimilate into Japanese culture in no time. As much as many foreign residents treated to go along with such idealistic wishes of the Japanese majority, to accept a new culture while abandoning an old is difficult.
Fast forward two decades, the number of foreign residents in the island country have only continued growing, especially in Tokyo where many find relatively high-paying, career-advancing employment. As the Japanese continue to experience decreasing number of offsprings year on year, the profile of internationalization, even in smaller, more suburban schools, have become more prominent. Even if the number of non-Japanese kids remain a small minority in the quantitative sense, the exposure to foreign elements within Japan for school kids nowadays is at a completely different level compared to 1990s.
Schools, as agents of socialization of children, are also compelled to change how they handle the issue of growing foreign influence in communities that immediate surround them. Socialization no longer just means teaching children to accept unwritten social norms that all Japanese take for granted, but must now include a healthy dollop of lessons on how to interact with foreigners who are not only not familiar with Japanese norms, but in many cases, are themselves agents that are reshaping traditional norms by combining them with foreign norms that are increasingly routine even in Japan.
Unfortunately, in most cases, teachers and school administrators are not readily prepared for changing the way their students are socialized to reflect growing internationalization. Much have to do with the unchanging nature of the professional training they received to maintain a certain traditional regimen that define how Japanese school operate and instruct. Changes in such regimen require structural alterations that often come only with difficult legal changes. Additionally, most school staff are, after all, Japanese, with the inherent and strong wishes that their students grow up to retain traditional norms that the staff themselves are familiar with.
In such a conservative context, it is encouraging to see that, despite the underlying social obstacles, schools are slowly but deliberately encouraging the level of international exposure students face. While the program is a limited pilot, bringing in foreign guests to schools helps students, who, despite being surrounded by foreign influences, have little opportunities to speak with foreigners, to see foreigners as normal members of their community. To see foreigners as normal in turn would help the Japanese majority to, however gradually, accept foreigners as permanent members of their social communities despite cultural differences.
The initiative to use foreigners for organic interactions with students circumvents the issue of existing school staff not knowing how to handle teaching of internationalization. When students are exposed to foreigners themselves, they have the abilities to make their own decisions about what foreigners are and are not, making much more lasting imprints than any lectures on the subject can ever hope to achieve. If the exposure to foreigners are frequent, continual, and diverse in both circumstance and sociocultural backgrounds of the foreigners themselves, kids will be much better equipped to live and work with foreigners in the future.
But the initiative, which the author had the honor to participate in, is still in its infancy. Like the case with cultural events for foreigners, internationals are treated not as residents of the country but as long-term tourists who are only interested in the most visual of Japanese cultural manifestations. And the interactions are often one way presentations of information, with little effort to help kids develop critical thinking abilities on how they can better cohabitate with foreigners in the same social space. Until such efforts are made, the Japanese population will continue to suffer from a simple black-and-white view of "the world vs. Japan."
If anything, the near exclusive focus on the idea of introducing Japan to foreigners only helps to exacerbate the "Japan vs. non-Japan" dichotomy of the kids' worldview. It only reinforces the tired narrative of "in Japan, all people should behave in a certain way to create a peaceful society," and worse yet, "across the world, people should behave more Japanese to become more peaceful." A false sense of unsaid but firmly believed moral superiority such narratives create among the Japanese will only work against further deepening of cross-cultural interactions. Further designs of the initiatives must take such reality into account.
Fast forward two decades, the number of foreign residents in the island country have only continued growing, especially in Tokyo where many find relatively high-paying, career-advancing employment. As the Japanese continue to experience decreasing number of offsprings year on year, the profile of internationalization, even in smaller, more suburban schools, have become more prominent. Even if the number of non-Japanese kids remain a small minority in the quantitative sense, the exposure to foreign elements within Japan for school kids nowadays is at a completely different level compared to 1990s.
Schools, as agents of socialization of children, are also compelled to change how they handle the issue of growing foreign influence in communities that immediate surround them. Socialization no longer just means teaching children to accept unwritten social norms that all Japanese take for granted, but must now include a healthy dollop of lessons on how to interact with foreigners who are not only not familiar with Japanese norms, but in many cases, are themselves agents that are reshaping traditional norms by combining them with foreign norms that are increasingly routine even in Japan.
Unfortunately, in most cases, teachers and school administrators are not readily prepared for changing the way their students are socialized to reflect growing internationalization. Much have to do with the unchanging nature of the professional training they received to maintain a certain traditional regimen that define how Japanese school operate and instruct. Changes in such regimen require structural alterations that often come only with difficult legal changes. Additionally, most school staff are, after all, Japanese, with the inherent and strong wishes that their students grow up to retain traditional norms that the staff themselves are familiar with.
In such a conservative context, it is encouraging to see that, despite the underlying social obstacles, schools are slowly but deliberately encouraging the level of international exposure students face. While the program is a limited pilot, bringing in foreign guests to schools helps students, who, despite being surrounded by foreign influences, have little opportunities to speak with foreigners, to see foreigners as normal members of their community. To see foreigners as normal in turn would help the Japanese majority to, however gradually, accept foreigners as permanent members of their social communities despite cultural differences.
The initiative to use foreigners for organic interactions with students circumvents the issue of existing school staff not knowing how to handle teaching of internationalization. When students are exposed to foreigners themselves, they have the abilities to make their own decisions about what foreigners are and are not, making much more lasting imprints than any lectures on the subject can ever hope to achieve. If the exposure to foreigners are frequent, continual, and diverse in both circumstance and sociocultural backgrounds of the foreigners themselves, kids will be much better equipped to live and work with foreigners in the future.
But the initiative, which the author had the honor to participate in, is still in its infancy. Like the case with cultural events for foreigners, internationals are treated not as residents of the country but as long-term tourists who are only interested in the most visual of Japanese cultural manifestations. And the interactions are often one way presentations of information, with little effort to help kids develop critical thinking abilities on how they can better cohabitate with foreigners in the same social space. Until such efforts are made, the Japanese population will continue to suffer from a simple black-and-white view of "the world vs. Japan."
If anything, the near exclusive focus on the idea of introducing Japan to foreigners only helps to exacerbate the "Japan vs. non-Japan" dichotomy of the kids' worldview. It only reinforces the tired narrative of "in Japan, all people should behave in a certain way to create a peaceful society," and worse yet, "across the world, people should behave more Japanese to become more peaceful." A false sense of unsaid but firmly believed moral superiority such narratives create among the Japanese will only work against further deepening of cross-cultural interactions. Further designs of the initiatives must take such reality into account.
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