by liberal japonicus
I recently had what I think was a satori like epiphany, which I inscribe below the fold, along with various other musings. Feel free to follow whichever suits.
I have been trying to arrange for students of my department to spend some time with some US university students who are studying Japanese by bringing them down here for a weekend retreat. They are studying in another prefecture, a bit distant, and we have a connection, and so I've organized for them to come down for a weekend during winter vacation and stay at our research facility and bring our students to do stuff with them.
Unfortunately, it has been a nightmare organizing this. Almost all the Japanese students are busy, and the ones that are free, are hesitant. They have all dealt with COVID, and so have underdeveloped social interaction skills, so getting volunteers to participate has made the term 'volunteer' rather loose.
The US students, on the other hand, have a very relaxed attitude towards deadlines. Part of it is that they are studying in a residential situation, so they might not understand the Japanese penchant for lists and schedules, but that doesn't really explain the failure of any kind of organizational skills, so I suspect they are also showing some of the same COVID hangover, manifesting itself in a different way.
I tend not to go for the generational shade that a lot of comedians do, though this one by Nate Bargatze if one I like.
But I have to say, I'm thinking more and more that there is some truth to all this.
But beyond the generational stuff, another source of woes for me is dealing with my colleagues in trying to explain the concept. I got some outside money to do this, which I thought might mean something, but if anything, it has opened up more cans of worms. Because of the weak Japanese yen, there are only a tiny number of foreign students who want to do an exchange compared to the golden age, and because all our exchange relationships rely on sending one of our students to receive one of their students, when we don't send them, it means we have only a fraction of the exchange students we used to have (which was quite small compared to Western unis). In addition, Japan is no longer the destination that students really want to head to, the center of gravity has shifted to China. If we do get students, they tend to be otaku, which is fine, but they don't make up in numbers the drop. It has been a downward trajectory since 9-11 and COVID was close to a knock out blow.
But the satori I was talking about was realizing that only one of my Japanese colleagues (I believe) has ever done a homestay in a foreign country. This means that they have no idea how pivotal that encounter with another culture is. My colleagues seem to think that meeting tourists on the street and telling them the way to the bus stop is equivalent to going overseas, being placed in a family that usually cannot communicate with you in your native language and finding your way. This is exacerbated by the fact that our faculty, while nominally an English one, takes students who say they want to be 'international', but have never come face to face with what that means. So my colleagues wonder why invest this time, effort and budget to bring a handful of students down for a weekend retreat. Some other teachers who are in management, understand how the absence of foreign encounters and opportunities has hurt our school, but when approached by one higher up teacher, her plan was to increase student TOEIC scores, which would then mean that they would want to go overseas. I tried to tell her that this was bass-ackwards: students need some memorable encounter, which then ignites their interest and motivation. I really don't understand why that is so hard to understand.
Now, I wonder if I'm overstating this. I always wanted to travel and speak other languages, so my first homestay, with a French family in Paris, was immense for me, so I'm wondering if I'm an exception here. Have commentators here experienced this kind of language immersion? If not, has there been some meaningful and memorable encounter that shaped your path?
Another thing that is making this a nightmare is that our budgets are being squeezed and we have to go through a number of steps before any kind of funds can be assigned. I realize that the process of asking for details, plans, approval is a logical one, and Japanese entites, even more than Western ones, like to keep the same amount budgeted, but put on increasingly larger burdens to get that money, which has the effect of shrinking expenditures. It also means that only the people bloody-minded enough to wade through all the crap to get money do it and these are generally not the people with ideas that will expand audiences and opportunties. I was also reminded on how the process of putting in overseers who need to be presented with reasons and plans not only reduces expenditures, it also gives people who may not be particularly interested in anything like this assure themselves that they are 'doing something' and by concentrating their efforts on compliance and oversight, they are 'saving' the university. This, for me, is the other Damascean moment. I imagine that Trumps' two BFF, Muskie and Rammie, are going to do similar things with the DOGE. Installing a bunch of "high-IQ revolutionaries" allows people to shove their snouts into whatever people are doing in government and make the amount of work they have to do overwhelming so they wander off to do something else.
So hope there is enough interesting stuff in there to talk about. Have at it.
It might just be me, but the whole "DOGE" meme, from a picture of cute dog giving the viewer a side-eye, with a caption...
It always seemed that it was a haxxors-speak version of doggie => DOG-E => DOGE
I think it should be pronounced "doggie" to give it the appropriate dignitude that it has earned.
Posted by: Snarki, child of Loki | December 17, 2024 at 11:40 AM
Muskie and Rammie
I'm not sure why this is, but people who are successful in business seem prone to thinking they will therefore be good at other things as well. Other things like, for example, government.
Or, it might be more accurate to say, people who are successful at making a great deal of money, which overlaps success in business but is not exactly the same.
I'm not sure if other disciplines are prone to this to the same degree. I can't really think of notable examples outside of the absurdly wealthy.
I wish they'd cut it out. Go enjoy your ten, eleven, or twelve (!) figure hoard and leave the rest of us alone.
Galt's Gulch, right? Go there. Deny us your productivity and have a ball. We'll muddle through somehow.
Posted by: russell | December 17, 2024 at 12:20 PM
The US students, on the other hand, have a very relaxed attitude towards deadlines. Part of it is that they are studying in a residential situation, so they might not understand the Japanese penchant for lists and schedules, but that doesn't really explain the failure of any kind of organizational skills, so I suspect they are also showing some of the same COVID hangover, manifesting itself in a different way.
COVID hangover, bigly. We talk about this a lot in staff meetings. The first years are all very quick to let us know if they are under the weather and unable to perform their best, or if they need to take a day for self care. And it's not their fault. This is exactly what was modeled to them during their teen years and after.
And all of the instructors I know who were in grad school during that time and just starting to teach are all fully on board with this. This is all they have known as well. They take it upon themselves to make allowances and to try to accomodate those who are not in class on any particular day, making sure that no one misses any information, and eroding any of the work they have done to build a learning community in their classroom.
The rest of us are all just hoping that this is not the new normal, and that we will get back to having students who can sustain effort, talk to each other, and not opt-out whenever they are feeling stressed.
I do worry, however, about the teacher shortages, and the fact that most new teachers leave the profession within the first three years. I fear that a lot of the veteran teachers - especially those who went through school themselves before the NCLB years - have left the profession and the bulk of those who remain have never known anything but the new regime of standardized content delivery and students on the struggle bus.
We shall see.
Despite this, though, I still have hope for our young adults. They still want to take on the world and make a better social future, they just need more help to get up to speed and a few formative experiences to galvanize them and get them out of themselves and back into the world.
Exchanges are good for that. I have the tremendous advantage of teaching in a very diverse classroom environment, so the domestic students who were sheltered and isolated during the COVID lockdowns are busy working with other students who were at IB boarding schools during that time, who were not being sheltered in the same way, and who felt the time as a sort of pressure cooker, so we do start to see some of that cultural exchange happening, and the IB students get their own regimented approaches to thinking and writing broken down and opened up a bit in the process.
It's not as fast or dynamic as it was pre-2020, but it's still happening.
Posted by: nous | December 17, 2024 at 01:29 PM
I grew up in the "sink or swim" era, which was particularly pronounced in engineering school. We got the "half the people in this room will be gone at the end of this semester" speech on day one of the introductory class for electrical engineering my sophomore year.
I don't have the same contempt for today's kids that many people my age do, only because it's, as nous mentioned, how they grew up. I'd be the same way if I were born however many years later. I was the product of my environment, and so are they - not to mention that it's the world they inherited from people my age +/-15 or so years.
Honestly, they should be f**king pissed at us.
Posted by: hairshirthedonist | December 17, 2024 at 02:25 PM
I'm not sure if other disciplines are prone to this to the same degree. I can't really think of notable examples outside of the absurdly wealthy.
The one example that leaps to mind is academia. People who have achieved full professorships, especially outside the STEM fields, seem to assume that the real world will necessarily work the same way that their models do. And not only give advice on that basis, but think they should be in government implementing policies based on their (almost inevitably flawed) models.
Posted by: wj | December 17, 2024 at 02:40 PM
I think getting the immersive experience you mention is particularly difficult for American students. The reality is, almost anywhere you go, educated people will speak English. Probably fluently; even indistinguishably from native speakers. Even not particularly educated people (taxi drivers, shop keepers, etc.) probably are reasonably able to interact in English.
As a result, merely travelling to a different country/culture doesn't give you the immersion one might expect. You have to be imbedded somewhere where everyone, even if they are able to speak fluent English, is talking another language -- say enrolled in school or living with a family.
Posted by: wj | December 17, 2024 at 02:47 PM
Speaking of DOGE-ies
https://newrepublic.com/post/189490/maga-victoria-spartz-doge-republican-majority
She's not the typical MAGA looney, but it is sad that her experiences don't translate to unerstanding
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Spartz
The rest of us are all just hoping that this is not the new normal, and that we will get back to having students who can sustain effort, talk to each other, and not opt-out whenever they are feeling stressed.
Good news is I ran the pre-entrance seminar for our incoming students and out of a total of 70, 63 came. Last year, out of 50, about 20 showed up. So, maybe turning a corner.
The infuriating thing is that my colleagues don't understand how much socialization in secondary school shapes the students. I've suggested to them that we have to think about events and other possibilities to let them hang out with each other and they look at me blankly like I'm a martian.
Posted by: liberal japonicus | December 17, 2024 at 06:05 PM
I've suggested to them that we have to think about events and other possibilities to let them hang out with each other and they look at me blankly like I'm a martian.
Suspicions confirmed! 😁
Posted by: wj | December 17, 2024 at 06:14 PM
Suspicions confirmed! 😁
A Musketeer...
Posted by: CharlesWT | December 17, 2024 at 06:29 PM
I think getting the immersive experience you mention is particularly difficult for American students
While this is true to a certain extent, embedding with a family or having to live as something other than a tourist goes a way to opening eyes. Even if a person stays with a family in an English speaking country, it is a chance to see how a society can be ordered differently. Of course, it won't grant enlightenment and there are students who go overseas and seeing different ways of doing things only entrenches their prejudices ('you people have your toilets and showers in different rooms, why don't you do it like Americans?' sort of thing), but it can also create a learning opportunity.
A bit rantish, but I saw a shared tweet about how South Koreans rejecting martial law showed the power of an armed populace and a reply that said well, you know that South Korean gun laws are some of the strictest in the world, so I'd rethink your idea of an armed populace. I'd like to think that a lot of US problems could be avoided if Americans had a modicum of experience in other countries.
Posted by: liberal japonicus | December 17, 2024 at 10:22 PM
I'd like to think that a lot of US problems could be avoided if Americans had a modicum of experience in other countries.
It would, I think, require a lot more Americans getting out of the country, even if only as tourists. Just to get an exposure to the fact that our way is not the only way. Being a tourist is far from an immersive experience, but even that tiny exposure could wedge open minds a tiny bit.
As it is, way too many American's only exposure (if any) is Canada. Which, with apologies to any Canadians, feels about as similar to the US as it is possible to get. And most don't even have that. Which makes invincible ignorance easy to maintain.
Posted by: wj | December 17, 2024 at 11:40 PM
Unfortunately, there is a mindset on the Right that the mere possession of a passport (unless you are a part of their elite) calls your patriotism into question* ('Why should you want to leave the country even temporarily? Don't we have everyting and better than anyone else?'). Knowledge of foreign languages is seen as even worse** ('They should learn American, not we their crappy tongue! Who do they think they are?')
But being unable to find the US on world map...
(one in seven USians is what I read).
I wonder whether the flat earthers put the US at the center.
*some years ago at least one red state tried to make a US passport an invalid ID as far as elections are concerned. It was rather obvious that those behind that thought that only liberals had one.
**when Dubya's gang looked for US personnel for running Iraq, knowlegde of Arabic is said to have been an exclusion criterium. Too much risk of empathy with the natives.
Also remember how both Kerry and Romney were targeted for speaking French and temporarily living in France.
Posted by: Hartmut | December 18, 2024 at 03:41 AM
some years ago at least one red state tried to make a US passport an invalid ID as far as elections are concerned.
The complaint has always been that a US passport identifies you as John Smith, but leaves open the question of state and local residency. The latter are critical in the US, with our large ballots and many location-specific races.
In my blue state, a passport is sufficient ID when voting in person if already registered. A passport alone is not sufficient for the registration process; some evidence of residency must also be provided.
Posted by: Michael Cain | December 18, 2024 at 11:46 AM
The complaint has always been that a US passport identifies you as John Smith, but leaves open the question of state and local residency. The latter are critical in the US, with our large ballots and many location-specific races.
Thus a driver's license is the ID of choice everywhere. Everybody** knows those are impossible to forge.
/s
** Certainly every bartender.
Posted by: wj | December 18, 2024 at 12:19 PM
which is WHY a utility bill should be the go-to voting ID, but RWNJs object.
Posted by: Snarki, child of Loki | December 18, 2024 at 01:47 PM
...some evidence of residency must also be provided.
I should have added that there are provisions for various sorts of edge cases: homeless, temporarily resident out-of-state, etc.
Posted by: Michael Cain | December 18, 2024 at 04:08 PM
Have commentators here experienced this kind of language immersion?
[Raises hand] Yes, former exchange student here - one year in the US, time of my life.
Posted by: novakant | December 18, 2024 at 06:43 PM
I spent my junior year of high school in Rennes, the capital of Brittany in France. The program was called School Year Abroad; it's still going strong.
There were 60 of us Americans, juniors and seniors mostly from New England prep schools. We each lived with a French family and had our classes in the Institut Franco-Americain, which I'm told still exists although SYA has other digs now. We took math and English from American teachers who came with us; French lit and history from local teachers, entirely in French of course. During school vacation periods we went as a group on excursions to places like the Pyrenees (skiing), Avignon and Marseilles, a little island called Belle Isle, and of course Paris. It was a memorable year. Most of us made local friends our age. All of us were fluent in French by the end of it.
Now, 50 years later, some of us still have ties to France. (One of us imbibed French wine culture in addition to French wine to the extent that he made a career as a wine importer.) I can still read French for pleasure, speak more or less conversationally, and follow about half the dialog in French movies without looking at the subtitles.
My main legacy from the experience: a lifelong love of George Brassens, whose songs contain more wisdom and humor than any other body of work I know. I still remember the lyrics to most of them.
--TP
Posted by: Tony P. | December 18, 2024 at 08:00 PM
Ahh, Tony, c'est chouette! For me, it wasn't a home stay, I was an assistant des langues in Poitiers, right after I graduated. I had changed my major multiple times and was getting sick of school, so I looked and I could finish in a term if I went into linguistics because all of the language courses I had taken would transfer and count. My classics teacher was head of the FL department and since I had 2 years of French and there weren't any other applicants, I got to go.
I did a homestay with the family of the assistant who was at our university, she lived in the banlieue of Paris and I studied at the Alliance française in Paris for a month before taking up my post. I thought I was doing well, but I arrived in Poitier late on a Friday night and went to the Lycée Camille Guérin where I would be staying in the residence. There was no one at the school except the groundskeeper/janitor who showed me to my room and gave me an explanation that could not understand at all (it was telling me that I could get my sheets on Monday) The next day, I found that there were 6 other assistants, three brits (two women), a german (female), an austrian (a guy) and a russian. The Russian was in her late 40's but the others were all out of uni like me. They had been out at a "boum" (google tells me the word is out of fashion) and had some french guys from the University chat them up and the next morning, they came to the residence and said they were going on a picnic, which began an amazing year. The guys were all on a handball team and we'd go to their games and cheer them on, if they had an out of town game, we'd pile into the couple of Peugeots they had and there was always some sort of party afterwards.
None of them spoke English to any degree, but I met them 10 years afterwards (there was a bit of renunion) and they all were fluent. One of them had done a working holiday in England, another had married a girl from California. I was convinced they learned English by listening to our crappy French and then substituting English words and voila! fluent English.
Sometimes, irregularly, I dream that I am back in Poitiers. I don't see or talk to anyone, but I'm at the ground or walking in the town or doing some totally quotidian thing. And when I wake up, I'm always inexplicably happy.
Posted by: liberal japonicus | December 19, 2024 at 05:35 AM
For anyone interested in sending their child abroad for a year or maybe hosting a student, I went with these guys (love the name as well):
https://yfu.org/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youth_For_Understanding
Sadly not present in the UK, probably lack of interest, figures...
Posted by: novakant | December 19, 2024 at 11:01 AM
The whole year abroad (called "foreign exchange student" then IIRC) simply wasn't mentioned as a possibility when I was in high school. A lot of options weren't -- nobody mentioned the military academies, let along how one went about gaining admission.** Other kids families may have known about such things. But if your's didn't, you got no clue.
I wonder how true that kind of ignorance of year abroad programs still is across great swaths of the US.
** I'm still pretty ignorant on this. I know each member of Congress gets to nominate one kid each year to each. But how do you get brought to the member's attention? Are there other paths? No clue.
Posted by: wj | December 19, 2024 at 01:31 PM
Regarding deadlines (so on topic, barely)...
By the time I graduated from high school, I knew that the answer to the Conan question "What is best in life?" is "Finishing your semester project a week early so you can enjoy the lamentations of your classmates." Held true in college, and even more in graduate school.
This month I finished granddaughter #2's birthday illustration on her birthday. But I've finished the holiday illustration early, except for mounting the copies.
For everyone who celebrates a holiday around this time, I give you the glorified doodle "Little monster characters decorate a tree".
http://mcain6925.com/obsidian/xmas-2024.pdf
Posted by: Michael Cain | December 19, 2024 at 03:02 PM
I wonder how true that kind of ignorance of year abroad programs still is across great swaths of the US.
I have no idea what it's like now, but back in the day it was much more common for European teenagers to go to the US (or elsewhere) than the other way around. I have a hunch that this is probably true today as well (though the US might have lost a bit of its attractiveness).
It was maybe a bit of a middle class thing to do, though my organisation made efforts to be inclusive. Also, the host families needed to be fairly stable financially since they were not paid (at least in thd case of the non-profit providers). But it wasn't in any way elitist either.
The congressional sponsorship program was one way back then, I think you applied and it was a bit like a scholarship. But as far as numbers were concerned it was minor.
Apart from YgU, which I mentioned, there was also the AFS which has a very long tradition:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AFS_Intercultural_Programs
https://afs.org/
And then there were commercial providers like EF (Education First) but their reputation was and is a mixed bag.
Anyway, for me it was a formative experience and I strongly believe in the whole idea of intercultural exchange as a means to achieve a more peaceful world, even if that sounds a bit romantic. But one is much less likely to assign negative stereotypes to people with whom one has shared a year of one's life (let alone fight a war against them).
Posted by: novakant | December 19, 2024 at 05:47 PM
"Little monster characters decorate a tree".
Fun!!
Posted by: russell | December 19, 2024 at 05:52 PM
"Little monster characters decorate a tree".
Fun!!
Seconded!
And TonyP and lj, I loved your comments about your French years. lj, the ending of yours is beautiful. Thank you.
Posted by: GftNC | December 19, 2024 at 06:48 PM
Russell: "I'm not sure if other disciplines are prone to this to the same degree. I can't really think of notable examples outside of the absurdly wealthy."
Economics professors, law professors, politicians.
Posted by: Barry | December 23, 2024 at 08:31 PM