At the start of September my city holds an English speech
and recitation contest. For the speech section third grade junior high students
(grade nines) deliver an original speech in English on any topic they like. Usually
the speech is composed in Japanese then translated into English by a teacher,
but we all act like the kids have actually written them themselves. They
usually follow tried-and-true Japanese speech formula:
“I was bad at sport/subject/musical instrument. I wanted to
quit. My team mates/teachers/band members encouraged me. They never gave up. I
got better at the activity because of them. We had a big
competition/tournament/exam. We won/ lost/ succeeded/ failed. I did my best and
learned an important lesson. I’ll do my best in the future.”
That covers 90% of the speeches. The remaining 10% tackle
actually interesting topics including human trafficking, growing up with
parents who are deaf, or war. At this year’s contest a number of students spoke
about experiences with international exchanges. Some had hosted home stay
students for a short visit from our sister city in China. These speeches also
followed a predictable formula:
“I was worried about how to communicate with the Chinese and
if we could be friends. It turned out they were just like us. I learned a lot.
I want to study English more and communicate with foreigners again.”
Despite the formula, there are some interesting things to
deduce from these speeches.
First, the cultural
indoctrination that it’s hard for Japanese to communicate with foreigners
doesn’t stand up against personal experience. Sadly, I don’t have confidence
that this memory lasts. In three years I think it is likely that these kids
will be back to thinking “it’s difficult for me to communicate with
foreigners.” One girl said “Can a shy
Japanese like me get along with an outgoing Chinese?” I am sure she knows that
there are many Japanese people who are not shy, and many Chinese people who are
shy. But the stereotyping messages are so pervasive that it will take more than
a short home-stay visit to change them for good.
Second, the belief that foreigners are profoundly alien is
so strong that something as simple as a Chinese girl enjoying (the ancient and
inscrutable Japanese art of) playing basket ball was surprising. Her hither-to
unquestioned belief was shaken by direct personal experience. A huge part of
what ALTs do in Japan is just… being normal. We blow people’s minds by eating
rice. The totalising stereotypes are strong, but they can be broken down.
For me the more interesting anecdotes were the ones that
revealed genuine differences. The trope of “she seemed so totally different
from me, but then we discovered that we both loved ice-cream, so I guess really
we’re the same!” is incredibly frustrating in its trivialisation of difference.
An American kid eating a sandwich while a Japanese kid eats an onigiri isn’t
emblematic of cultural difference, it’s window dressing. The differences that
cause conflicts, misunderstandings and international tensions are differences
in world view, different priorities and different ways of assigning
responsibility. Bread versus rice is not why the world is more suspicious of
post-war Japan than it is of post-war Germany. When I was a university student
in Nagoya I was participating in some
intercultural-communication-something-or-other event and the Japanese girls I
was paired with explained that Japanese children use red crayons to draw the
sun, while European children use yellow crayons. They were convinced that this
was a significant and profound example of cultural difference. Being in a
somewhat cantankerous mood by that point (I know, ME? Cantankerous? Who would
have though! XD) I mentioned that actually when I had spent time in the UK I
had noticed that the sun seemed much paler and weaker… possibly more yellow… than it did in Japan.
Anyway, back to the interesting anecdotes. One girl had done
a short home stay in New Zealand. She related her surprise when her host mother
told her to turn the lights out and go to sleep at eleven pm. Thinking that
this was a peculiarity of her host family, she checked around the town and
discovered that in fact, going to sleep by eleven was normal for
thirteen-year-olds. She pointed out in her speech that it would be impossible
to complete the daily schedule normal in Japan without staying up until one or
two am at least. If one were to unpack this, some really deep-seated and
interesting differences in educational systems, the role children play in
society and beliefs about health, wellbeing and parenting would emerge. Much
more interesting than whether the sun is yellow or red, surely?!
Another girl had visited a cousin in America and spent some
time with his friends. Whenever they asked her opinion or what she wanted to
do/eat she answered “I’m fine with whatever”. Eventually they got frustrated
with her and told her that not having an opinion about anything was like saying
that she didn’t care or didn’t have any thoughts of her own. She was shocked by
the confrontation and their accusations, and spoke regretfully about not having
been able to explain to them that, in her words, ‘agreeing with everyone-else to
avoid being disliked is Japanese culture’. I think that has a lot to do with
being a teen-aged girl rather than being an exclusively Japanese characteristic,
but that is what she said.
Where am I going with all this? I suppose I am being
contrary but I would really love to have the chance to do a class on
international communication that could say: “Get over the surface things. It
doesn’t matter if you use chopsticks or a fork. But don’t pretend that the deep
differences don’t matter. Unless we recognise the chasms our differences sink
between us, we can’t work constructively to bridge them.”
I want to teach this class in Australia, too. We have a
multi-cultural society of which I am very proud. But tensions have been
simmering for a decade now, and it isn’t helpful or constructive to respond
with trite lines like “no matter where we come from, all parents love their
kids”.
Having children move between boarders and communities is so
vital for this task of understanding. It’s also why hate groups like the
American Family Association are
telling parents to keep their kids home from school on "Mix it Up at Lunch" days
with considerable success; imagine
the harm to good Christian children if they ate lunch with a classmate who was gay
or Jewish or Hispanic? Not only do I think that international exchanges are
important but also co-education of Catholics and Protestants, Jews and Muslims,
rich and poor children, is something I wish we saw more of. It is why I am
committed to exclusively public and secular education. There's a short but good description of the importance of secular education in
Bosnia at Friendly Atheist (again?! what can I say, I am a fan girl). You can only begin to
explore the meaningful differences when you cease to be distracted by the
surface ones. When you realise that “they’re just like us” you can put yourself
in the position to try and understand why and how someone just like you has
come to be not very like you at all.
I’m not sure if that makes sense to anyone other than me…
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