Category Archives: Class Pages

English education in Japanese elementary school

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by Kaho Nagao

Since 2011, Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology decided to introduce English class to 5th and 6th grade elementary school students (MEXT 2002). The aim of this project is to produce people who can command English well and build up English communication skill. In this post, I will discuss whether should we introduce English or other languages education, and whether we should introduce bilingualism.

Before talking about the topic, it will describe that what is bilingualism. Bilingualism is people who can make them understood in two languages. Needless to say, there are some differences of ability depends on people and where they use these language, in school, between family, in society and so on. Now in Japan, most people who live in Japan use Japanese and even foreigner who live in Japan use Japanese to communicate with the society. Within Japanese society, English seems to be not needed, however, in the world what happen now?

On the earth, it is said that there are more than 7 billion people and quarter of them speak and understand English (Amelia n.d.). Thus, if you can understand English, we can communicate with more than a billion people. In addition, we can get much information and way of thinking that is if you only use Japanese or any other local languages.

On the other hand, if the government introduces the English education into elementary school, there are also some arguments. Some thinks that if English education start from when kids are little they cannot handle it and kids make many grammar mistakes and get confused, in addition, they cannot command either Japanese or English well. However, if so, many people who can speak English but non-native cannot speak English in a proper way. For example, in Sweden, English education is started in 3rd grade (Sweden English 1979) and most Swedish people can understand English. Since they are young, they are familiar with English TV, movies and music. ABBA, which is famous music group from Sweden, they sing very nice and easy to listen. Of course there are linguistically difference between Japanese and Swedish. Swedish may be near to English compared to Japanese.

From now on Japanese society is heading to aging society and more and more people may go to abroad and come into Japan. At that time we need to communicate with somehow. At that time, English become one of the ways, so when the government especially MEXT realize it and make more useful policy, it is going to be more good to children and Japanese society.

References

Amelia English in the World http://www.amelia.ne.jp/user/reading/dialect_01_03.jsp

MEXT http://www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/shingi/chousa/shotou/020/sesaku/020702.htm

Hiroshima university. English education in Sweden http://ir.lib.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/metadb/up/ZZT00001/CaseleResBull_9_39.pdf

Multicultural Society and Multiculturalism in Europe

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Anonymous student post

David Cameron criticized ‘state multiculturalism’ at a security conference in Munich, on February 5, 2011. In particular, he emphasized that it failed to promote a common identity based on certain values such as democracy, the rule of law and equal rights. Therefore, he claimed a stronger national identity was required to prevent violent extremism. Also, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and former president Nicolas Sarkozy of France identified with Mr. Cameron’s criticism of multiculturalism. Nowadays, Europe appears to be backing away from multiculturalism, particularly after the September 11 attacks.

With a growing influx of immigrants, multiculturalism was considered as a key to solve problems caused by policies based on assimilation and as a way to promote a harmonious relationship between host culture and immigrant culture. Many European countries conducted their immigration policy using multiculturalism as a way of new social integration. However, the trend of social ostracism against Islam and Muslim has developed connected to national security following a series of several terror attacks in 21C. Their culture and religion are not understood in a multiculturalist way, rather, people think they are at risk because of them. Also, some controversial issues have been brought up constantly since multiculturalism was introduced; whether young Arab women should be allowed to wear hijab in public school, how the honor killing or early marriage of some specific immigrant groups should be dealt with in host societies, and so on.

The question of how to integrate immigrants into a host country has always been a big issue. Neither assimilation nor multiculturalism provides a perfect answer. If assimilation is reinforced, isolation and dissatisfaction of immigrants who are not assimilated will become a social problem. European leaders who have declared multiculturalism will no longer support or focus on shared values and identities not their own cultural traits. However, it seems like they force such integration values from above. In this process, immigrants may experience frustration and exclusion from mainstream culture. On the other hand, if multiculturalism is too emphasized, people like Mr. Cameron think that it is divisive rather than unifying. Also, they argue that multiculturalism intrudes on the national identities of their countries. Therefore, it is important to harmonize the national policies of assimilation and multiculturalism.

What is the best way to integrate immigrants into host countries is the question for European society that needs to be sought constantly. The coexistence of cultures does not mean understanding each other’s culture unconditionally. Of course well-balanced immigration policy can promote coexistence, but social atmosphere that is respecting and compromising towards other cultures is also necessary. The beliefs of each culture should be respected as much as possible, and society needs to reach an agreement by communication and compromise whenever some parts are in conflicts with host culture.

Reference:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12371994

The Death of Language

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by Bun Kin

Today, half of the six thousand or so languages are spoken by fewer than ten thousand people. On the other hand, only a small number are spoken by hundreds of millions of people. Researchers believe that no language can survive unless one hundred thousand people speak it.

However, actually the death of languages is not a new thing. Since languages diversified, at least thirteen thousand of them were born and disappeared without leaving any sign. What is new is the speed at which they are dying out. For example, over the last three hundred years, Europe has lost about twelve languages, Australia has only twenty left of 215 languages, and Brazil has lost 500, three-fourths of total languages. This was brought by colonial conquests, whose territorial unity was linked to their linguistic homogeneity.

The effects of the death of languages are serious for several reasons. First, as each languages dies, a part of human history comes to an end. Because we can’t completely understand the origins of human language or solve the mystery of the first language.

Second, the destruction of multilingualism will lead to the loss of multiculturalism. Because a language is not only the main instrument of human communication, it also expresses the world view of those who speak it, their imagination and their ways of using knowledge. And last, the threat to multilingualism is similar to the threat to biodiversity, because many of the worlds endangered plant and animal species today are known only to certain peoples whose languages are dying out. As those people die, they take with them all the traditional knowledge about the environment.

The 1992 Rio Earth Summit made a specific plan to protect biodiversity. Therefore the need to protect languages began to be appreciated in the middle of the twentieth century, when language rights were included in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Since then, a number of methods have been adopted and projects have been launched to safeguard what is now thought to be a heritage of humanity. These plans and initiatives may not prevent languages from dying out, but at least they will slow down the process and encourage multilingualism.

The language is not just the main instrument of human communication, it is also the world view, the imagination and the ways of using knowledge of human. We can’t prevent the death of languages, however it belongs to one of very meaningful and important thing for human to heighten conscience about language.

Accepting immigrants in Japan

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by Yuri Kasai

From Asian countries such as the Philippines, Korea, and China, many immigrants have come to Japan. After World War II, the Japanese government accepted many Nikkeijin (日系人), who have one Japanese parent or Japanese parents under the Immigration Control Act of 1952 and taking part in the convention of international immigration. Since the 1970s, in the bubble economy, there were four categories of immigrants, according to sociologist Hiroshi Komai. Firstly, many immigrants such as Filipinos, Koreans, Taiwanese and Thais have come for entertainment work and they can get an ‘entertainer’ visa. Secondly, refugees from Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos have come to Japan for the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees between 1970s and 1980s. The third category consists of Japanese group who went to Manchuria during the World War II. The fourth category consists of businessmen in Europe and the US.

Japanese Immigration laws are more limited to European countries and the US because Japanese society has not accepted immigrants historically. After the crackdown of the bubble economy, the number of immigrants from Europe and the US dropped. However, globalization has been widespread today and immigrants have grown again while international companies come to open their brunches in Japan. The Japanese immigration system needs to be amended because we need to accept more immigrants than before.

In Japan, 24 percent of the population is over 65 years of age, and in 2055 this aged people is estimated as 40 percent of Japan’s total population. We will need more care workers and nurses. We already lack the number of care workers and nurses because these jobs are tough for long working time and heavy tasks. They have a low salary and they struggle to work as care workers and nurses. We need to foster more care workers and nurses and to give higher salary to them.

However, it is difficult for Japan government to use money for more public service because the government holds deficits financing for the pension. Therefore, Japanese government needs to invite more immigrants from Asian developing countries such as the Philippines and to foster immigrants to support our aging society. Especially, Filipino women can care well for elderly people because they have the culture to respect for elder people. Many Filipino women emigrates overseas such as in the US or the UK. They can speak English well and can adopt to an English-speaking environment.

In Japan, although Japan accepts many Filipino women with the skills of nurse or caregivers in the hospitals, Japan government mandates them to pass though each skill exam and Japanese proficiency exam. Because of it, many Filipino nurses or caregivers cannot pass through national qualifying exam and have to go back to their home country. However, they can study Japanese while communicating with patients after they can pass through their skill exam. I think that getting human resources is the urgent problem. The government needs to reconsider and deal with the aging society and the deficit finance for the pensions. Accepting immigrants is a good solution to aging society.

Reference
Komai, Hiroshi. 2000 “Immigrants in Japan. Asian And Pacific Migration Journal 9(3):311-326.

 

Thoughts on high-tech work

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Anonymous student post

High-tech work strives us towards one goal: efficiency. People use high-tech tools which enable them to work faster, practically, and from anywhere around the globe (ex. pc, email, social network, etc…). Companies replace monotonous task work (ex. assembly line) with automated robots and other high tech. Simply put, high tech work is utilized on both a micro and macro level. On a micro level, as noted in the beginning, individual workers equip themselves with high tech tools enabling them to collaborate and work with peers constantly while adapting to the rapid pace of the ever changing climate of business. On a macro level, companies utilize high technology for aiding profit maximization and cutting labor costs. Companies can collect and manage customer data allowing companies to specifically target advertisements towards a user, increasing the rate of consumption rate – Social network giants such as Facebook sell user data to potential advertisers. For labor cuts, as mentioned at the beginning, replacing for example assembly line workers with automated robots is an example.

High tech work – efficiency, speed, profit maximization, cost cuts – sounds good for those who are able to adapt. However, there are concerns, and those are: being permanently ON-LINE, and a means to an end. Let’s start with “permanently ON-LINE.” Although this is case dependent, high tech workers are most likely able to work anywhere (ex. from their mobile / laptops). This may lead to a situation where they end up being permanently  “ON-LINE”, slowly undermining their focus and health. Whereas once the goal was efficiency, the very tools that enable one to become “efficient” carries the risk of becoming the source of “inefficiency.” The second concern I have is that high tech work, or more specifically, the tools that enable workers or companies to embrace high tech work can become a “means to an end.” There are individuals and corporations that develop the contents, tools, applications that make high tech work possible, such as google, apple, microsoft and many other individual or small startups developing apps. There are numerous tools, apps which enables us to work more efficiently, but I wonder, “Do we need more?” “Isn’t this enough?” A lot of hardware and especially software these days tend to have too similar characteristics when compared, which leads me to think, “Is your goal just getting the product out there? Or are you really trying to make people’s lives better?” Whichever the answer, it might be time for the high tech industry to take a step back, and take a deep breath.

References

The third industrial revolution http://www.economist.com/node/21553017

This Robot Could Transform Manufacturing http://www.technologyreview.com/news/429248/this-robot-could-transform-manufacturing/

The headaches and the blessings of dual-citizenship

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by Jonas Horvei

It is said that humans are born. In some way this is true, nevertheless there is also heavy restrictions imposed on each individuals. Such restrictions could for instance be the place where you are born, your parents, the economic power your parents have, the passport you hold, and whether you have dual-citizenship or not. In a world that continues to become more and more globalized traveling abroad and working abroad are steadily becoming increasingly important for many individuals who want to experience life in a different country than where they grew up.

While of course the economic power of the individual and his family is often the biggest determiner, this time I want to talk about dual-citizenship and the challenges it imposes on the individuals. With increasingly more intermarriages, we also see a surge in people who are eligible for dual citizenships. While I think in many cases this can be an incredible blessing. For instance think of an American citizen that also holds the passport of Sweden. Normally for an American working in most places in the EU is an incredibly big challenge due to the Schengen agreement. With an additional passport to Sweden, such barriers are removed and almost all of Europe becomes a possibility both for working and traveling.

Unfortunately for many of the dual-citizenship holders, this can also be a source of frustration. This frustration is based on the fact that many countries do not recognize dual-citizenship and forces the holder to pick either one of them while renouncing their other passport. Like a person from Japan and America will have to pick either Japan or America as their passport due to Japan not recognizing dual citizenship. So for a person who feels closely tied to both of these countries making the right decision is not such a simple matter. As each passport holds a different value one. It often makes me sad to hear my friends in China often having to pay deposits amount to almost 10,000 dollars just to go on a vacation abroad, it is simply unfair and makes traveling and migration for people without rich backgrounds very difficult.

While we all might think sometimes, being a dual citizenship sounds as this amazing treasure and key to freedom in terms of traveling, and in terms of opportunities to working abroad. Regardless of that think the fact that many countries still do not recognize dual citizenships easily becomes a source of frustration and the making of difficult choices especially of those who do feel attached to more than just one of the countries which they hold a passport to. Whether all countries should recognize dual citizenship or not I am not really certain if it is the right solution. With the increasing amount of globalization, I think the ideal solution would be to soften the barriers and make them less restrictive so that people can travel where they want, work where they want as long as they have the skill and migrate where they want regardless of which country one holds a citizenship of. Unfortunately, this is unlikely to change anytime soon, maybe never as long as discrimination and racism is a part of our daily life.

So meanwhile, for those of you that hold citizenships from different countries, different countries which both recognize dual citizenships as a right should treasure how lucky you are and the freedom you have to move, work and live your life in so many places compared to many others. In many ways, I am jealous of dual-citizenships holders. Still after reflecting on the whole thing, it seems that it is not always as nice it sounds like and I might have been reserving my judgments too soon. When you are forced to pick one passport over the other you might never in truly know if if you made the right decision or not.

Immigrants Should be Commended for their Bravery

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Anonymous student post

The attitude towards immigrants from nationals that I’ve most often seen is one of “you’re welcome.” As if the immigrant owes something to the national. The national presumably allows the immigrant to stay in their country. The immigrant is treated as a guest, and has higher standards in some regards held to him/her. An immigrant has legal barriers to overcome in almost every country. “You want to work here and help our society like a good citizen? Well we’re not going to make it easy for you, jobs are for citizens—never mind the merits of the job candidates!”

Immigrants have to be outcasts for their entire new life. Only their children, grandchildren or even beyond will get a more equal treatment in the eyes of their new society. Immigrants deal with discrimination on paper from the laws limiting immigrants rights, and tangibly in their day-to-day lives. Barnard mentions the attack on Marcelo Lucero, an Ecuadorean immigrant, who was stabbed to death in a hate crime. Barnard mentions, “Many [immigrants] fear the police because they are in the country illegally; some give false names…”. Dealing with prejudice effects the entire immigrant family negatively. The typical immigrant has many more issues to deal with than someone who is nationalized. They need to learn a new set of laws, adapt to new culture, and possibly learn a new language.

Immigrants should be commended for their bravery in leaving their home country to find a life in a new one. They deserve at the very least to be allowed to work in the new country. Why would we disallow someone from being a service to society? The idea that jobs are “taken” by immigrants is a negative aspect of immigration is comically ludicrous. Jobs are not a finite resource, and for each job that is taken there is less work to be done. Society will always naturally find a place for improvement, and new jobs wont ever stop being created. It is harmful to society as a whole to stipulate who can get a job on a basis outside of merit.

In the studies of bilingualism, Portes shows: “…fluent bilinguals [outperform] limited bilinguals and English-only students in standardized tests and grade point averages, even after statistically controlling for parental status and other variables.” Immigrants who are fluently bilingual have cognitive advantages that could further merit their place in the workforce. According to Rumbaut, 97% of the world’s population are “stayers” only about 3% are immigrants. The immigrant minority has a clear disadvantage and we should not have them thank us and beg us to stay. Rather, the immigrants should be commended for their ambition taking heed in a new country. When immigrants come to a country, they are suffering for the benefit of society. The nationals should be thanking the immigrants.

The solution to immigration through failure

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by Alexander Austad

Immigrants in Norway make up for about 13% of the population in Norway, and it is estimated that this number will be nearly doubled by 2050.

Since the 1980’s, like many other countries, Norway has seen a huge increase in immigration, meaning that the issues that we are seeing with immigration are still very new. There are questions being asked left and right about how societies are supposed to deal with this, and these questions are naturally often related to jobs, cultural adaption, education and accommodation. Now, we need to figure this out, but it is not at all strange that we haven’t solved everything yet. In fact, it would be strange if we already had everything under control.

It’s amazing what has happened even just the last few years, as everything is changing all the time. It’s hard to keep up with everything, and we are always looking for answers to it all, and we want them as soon as possible, or now, preferably. This thirst (and need) for solutions mixed with something as delicate as immigration creates the part of politics that will leave you with the biggest headache, and as the problem of increasing immigrants is like a ticking clock, it breeds an infinite amount of different opinions. But we need solutions, right?

I’m not saying that we should just drop everything and take a break, but I find that some people’s attitude towards this issue imply that we should already have the answers, and hence that we are failing. We are indeed failing, but not because we should already have the answers. Have we, as mankind, gotten where we are today by intuitively making the right decisions on new issues from day one? No, we have been failing over and over again, and this issue of increasing immigration is no exception.

I just say we keep at it, and as a reply to the German chancellors uttering about German multiculturalism having utterly failed, I say great! Then we can rule out an option that didn’t work and work towards a new idea. This is awfully optimistic, but if you think that this issue should be solved by now, well, that’s just not realistic.

Since the world is so well connected now, we are able to learn from each other’s failure and success, and we see increasing trends in using models from other countries. I am sure we will see working models for immigration, multiculturalism and what have you, but we might have to keep on failing for a few more decades.

Language is the Key to Work

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Anonymous student post

According to Rumbaut (2008), there at least 191 million people who are immigrants all around the world. But many of these immigrants work with low paid work, such as blue collar work, even though they may have a university degree. This blog post will mainly focus on Scandinavian immigrants who have higher education and have to accept a low paid work to earn money. What’s the reason behind this?

First I want to introduce a story about a taxi driver who immigrated to Scandinavia. This taxi driver is from Iran with an education in medicine, he was a general practitioner back in Iran but in this new country, he couldn’t get any job as a general practitioner. He applied to many hospitals, but no one replied. In the end he took a job as a taxi driver so he could support his family.

I don’t know if this is a true story or not, I just remember that I read this story in a newspaper one morning ages ago. The main point in this story is that if you can’t speak the language properly you will not be able to get a job that fits your education. This is also very true with second generation of immigrants. 1/5 of second-generation immigrants that attend a university don’t always find a job fit for their education, and are instead forced to take low-paid work. Why can’t the immigrants get higher-paid work? The answer, I think, lies in the language difference. If the immigrants can’t speak or write properly they have it harder to find a job that fits their education.

Many second-generation immigrants attending the university have a hard time using the language fluently (academic writing and speaking), because many of these people lack the advanced vocabulary of the language. Why? I think this is mainly because these immigrants don’t have the chance to use “advanced” words in their daily life, for example, they can perform a conversation with friends that have similar vocabulary, but rarely do they get the chance to use “advanced” words in a “normal” conversation. If they use an “advanced” word in a conversation with friends or family, they may not understand the word and ask for an explanation or a substitute for the word.

But is the language everything? For the taxi driver it meant the difference between low-paid and high-paid work. He couldn’t speak the language fluently and got low-paid work. This is one of the bad sides; the society misses a lot of valuable resources because the immigrants can’t speak the language fluently, and will probably never do either. From this, another question rises, how can the society take advantage of these highly skilled workers even though they don’t speak the language fluently?

Is multiculturalism really a “failure” in Germany?

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by Michelle L.

In our class we came upon the quote of the German chancellor Angela Merkel: “multiculturalism has utterly failed”

Unfortunately we did not discuss about the backgrounds and the deeper meaning of this quote. In this post I would like to take a closer look on this topic.

Germany‘s migration image has been changing tremendously since the end of the second world war. As of 2011, 19.5% of the German population had some sort of immigration background, meaning either being born in a foreign country as a non-German citizen or born to a foreign-born parent in German with or without German citizenship. Nowadays, the largest share belongs to the Turkish community (18.5%), followed by Polish (9.2%).

After the second world war, Germany was in need of labour to rebuild the country. People were encouraged to come to Germany and work there. This applies mostly to Turkish immigrants to former West Germany and Vietnamese immigrants to the former GDR, as for being a fellow communist nation. The government did not invest in language training or did not provide any service to make it easier to adopt for the migrant workers, since they were only seen as temporary cheap labour or so-called Gastarbeiter. Gastarbeiter is a German term for immigrant workers who came to Germany between the end of the war and the 1970s. Literally meaning “guest worker”, it refers to the temporary contracts after which the immigrant workers were supposed to return. In recent times this word got quite a negative connotation.

However, many people stayed and brought their family to Germany or married a German spouse. The government was not prepared for this. Since there literally was no effort in integrating the immigrants, those people were tolerated but not integrated in society. This continued for quite some time and the government somehow missed the turning point of Germany becoming a migration country.

Whereas other cities have a “China Town”, parts of Berlin seem like a Turkish parallel world. Even though some families are staying in Germany for the 3rd or 4th generation, many of them keep close ties to their home country and mixed slangs developed.

However, I do not think that multiculturalism has failed – it is the government who failed in creating opportunities to integrate immigrants into German society. It was only in 2005 that Germany introduced compulsory German language courses to immigrants, in case that the do not have sufficient knowledge of German to work. Moreover bilingual primary education only focusses on languages like French, Spanish and English. Most immigrant children therefore attend a regular school, where teachers are not prepared for them. This creates an environment where it is difficult for them to adopt. Since some districts in Berlin have a very dense immigrant population, people are more likely to stay in there national group.

I see Germany, my home country, as a multicultural society. Growing up in Berlin, I shared my class room with people from many different backgrounds. 24% of Berlin’s residents have a migration background and events in Berlin like “Carneval of Cultures” attract thousands of peoples. This percentage is still quite small compared to cities like Frankfurt (am Main), the heart of Germany’s financial sector and the most important international airport in Germany. The city is home to 42% of residents with immigration background.

Nevertheless, many “native” Germans are hostile towards immigrants. As of 2008, a survey found out that 53% think that “Germany has too many immigrants” and 50% think that immigrants like to stay along their fellows. In recent years, attacks on refugee homes increased and the National Democratic Party of Germany (a far-right German nationalist party) still manages to get many votes by promoting to “send all foreigners home”. Even though they were not able take part in any federal government, they are still active on a local level.

Recently, realizing the problem of demographic change (aging society) and the lack of high-skilled workers marked a shift in Germany’s immigration policies. However, it seems like the government is always only approving of immigration if it is in need. I hope that this attitude will change and Germany’s growing multicultural society will be seen as a benefit of our country.

References:
1) BBC News. “Merkel says German multicultural society has failed”. 2010. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11559451
2) Abalı, Oya. “German Public Opinion on Immigration and Integration”. 2009. http://www.migrationpolicy.org/pubs/tcm-germanpublicopinion.pdf
3) Statistisches Bundesamt. “Bevölkerung mit Migrationshintergrund – Ergebnisse des Mikrozensus”. 2011. https://www.destatis.de/DE/Publikationen/Thematisch/Bevoelkerung/MigrationIntegration/Migrationshintergrund.html