What are you banned from? Why?

What are you banned from? Why?
S.M.:
The short answer … banned from sustainable employment in Japanese academia.
Just some thoughts on the matter, some more random than others …
Generally speaking, Japanese institutions, especially colleges, are run according to a strict hierarchy, the structure of which doesn’t seem to be closely correlated with merit, and like all institutions, tend to depend on opaque, rule-driven ‘morality’, rather than the empathy-driven morality of learning / nurturing communities.
Forget that baloney about Japanese culture excelling at group work. The Far Eastern virtues of ‘harmony and traditions’ are not so different from the Western counterpart of ‘individuality and freedom’ … just buzzwords for ruling elites to herd the majority into a superficial compliance to authority … ‘authoritarianism’ being the operating word.
The biggest difference is the tool of choice by which the ruling elite control the disposable human capital beneath them … and the oxymoronic titles of these two books alone should be enough too spell it out:
1 — For the West, Chomsky and Herman’s “Manufacturing Consent” [1]
2 — For the East, Edited by Vlastos, “Invented Traditions of Modern Japan” [2]
Schools, corporations, religions, governments, think-tanks, and even some NPOs — in either the Far East or the West, are not democratically run. When was the last time you, the reader, were elected to the board of directors on earned merit alone?
For those haven’t seen this movie about the dysfunctions of ‘corporations’, I hope you take a peak, and just imagine similar dysfunctions to all groups, since the dawn of civilization, larger than local communities.
(YouTube video titled “The Corporation – Feature, Documentary”) [3]
Large populations of we herding primates are organized into hierarchies, and those at the top are largely there through the privilege of inheritance, or the dark triad [4] behaviors of self-entitlement.
As pointed out in the documentary, through morally questionable legal gymnastics, corporations have been granted ‘personhood’. But when when the social dynamics of a collective entity are compared with a relatively normal single individual, the collective lacks a collective moral autonomy that individuals are expected to aspire to mature. The collective ticks off the traits of a psychopath. The priority of the corporate collective is legally constrained to profiting the shareholders, not the stakeholders … a zero sum game that is won by externalizing losses to competitors, the infrastructure, and/or the environment.
For the big picture … I would agree with the documentary, and go a bit further, in saying that homo sapiens, is by nature, most optimally a social primate that hopefully matures into a responsible member of a community … thus ALL institutions (corporate, government, religious, educational, etc.) eventually undergo mission drift / mission creep into corruption and eventual failure. With our current technological capacity lacking both an equivalent moral capacity and unlimited natural resources, I can’t help but to expect our sins to catch up with us in a catastrophic neo-malthusian meltdown. The task of the morally autonomous human should be to prolong that day of reckoning, altruistically if necessary.
But back to a more parochial picture, In either culture, if the boss says ‘black is white’, you either ignore the cognitive dissonance and respond in the affirmative like a machine-man should, or you are out. Corporate or private, I’d say Japanese institutions are about as ‘democratic’ (community-driven) as American institutions … which is not very much.
What is particularly frustrating about ‘educational’ institutes is the blatant hypocrisy of the gap between professed values (empowering the individual to reach their full potential, and building compassionate, critically-thinking, problem-solving communities — who are also able and willing to hold authority accountable) and actual goals (identifying ‘talent’ through standardized testing, funneling that talent into institutions of appropriate power and prestige — and therefore further enhancing the power and prestige of the identifying / funneling ‘educational’ institute, thus moving up the ladder of ‘being more selective’ (exclusive) than competing institutes, and therefore more powerful) … a damned zero-sum game of winning at the expense of others.
There are too many examples of how this plays out over time by looking at the feeding-funneling ground of U.S. Ivy Leagues. Just look at dog-eat-dog, self entitlement of the dark-triad [4] driven individual who is moving between educational and for profit institutions, and clambering to climb to the top of either … ‘Really Graceful’ does an excellent job here.
(YouTube video titled “FOLLOW THE MONEY: Public School | a reallygraceful documentary”) [5]
What ‘Really Graceful’ says about the Education system is mirrored by Japan’s, and I dare say the systems in China and most of the Corporate Capitalist world.
Although hierarchies may be the default organization of social primates when they exceed small communities, Japanese institutions are notorious for one’s status based on the old boy’s network, gender, ethnicity, or simply age.
Hundreds of years of ‘mission creep’ [6] have reduced the original Confucian meritocratic ideals of institutions to a kabuki-show-cover for concentrations of power decided by families, connections, and blind ambition. That being said, as the political situation in my native U.S. is demonstrating, this kind of social dynamics may be par for the course, world wide.
For a good example of the corruptive dynamics of ‘mission creep’ [6] or ‘Mission Drift’ … just look at the breeding ground of high flying Wall Street CEO’s, Harvard University. Former Goldman Sachs CEO “Blankfein Says He's Just Doing 'God's Work'” [7]… and being a Harvard University graduate, that makes sense. After all, the school’s founding charter in 1636 stated clearly "To be plainly instructed and consider well that the main end of your life and studies is to know God and Jesus Christ." But with the U.S. having the world’s largest prison population (many such prisons for profit, not rehabilitation), an opioid epidemic fueled by Big Pharma, Washington Post owner and richest man in the world Jeff Bezos … timing the pee breaks of his minimum wage workers, unprecedented levels of homelessness, and so on, and so on … a few of us might be excused for meekly asking whether “Harvard and Yale have Drifted from their Original Mission”. [8]
One writer I’ve come to trust is Matt Taibi, whose first paragraph in his ‘Rolling Stone’ article “The Great American Bubble Machine” [9] is now verging on becoming a cultural meme the ruling elite would just as soon ban from public school OR college text books … “The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it’s everywhere. The world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. In fact, the history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled dry American empire, reads like a Who’s Who of Goldman Sachs graduates.”
The current model of economics has little to do with educational ideals … and schools, as institutions, are not run by meritocratic ideals, or even educational ideals. Schools tend to be run like most other neo-liberal businesses … depending on zero-sum games and economies of scale to outsource losses rather than absorb them.
When I was younger, I mistakenly put teachers on a pedestal, and aspired to a profession as either a teacher or writer. But I am a slow learner, and it took a while to find that teachers are neither ‘good’ nor ‘bad’ as people. There is as much quality, or lack of, as can be found in any institutionalized counterpart in the arts or sports or any profession. In idolizing teachers, and therefore schools, I had made the “fundamental attribution error” [10], and indulged in that error for much too long.
Schools, as institutions, are no different from banks.
Scholars, academics, and administrators are not saints.
Hell, even saints are not saints.
But there is even less acknowledgement of quality in Japan’s educational institutions than in American counterparts.
Unlike some schools in the U.S., no matter how moving, or how consistent, or how effective a teacher may be, there is little acknowledgement of that by peers in Japan. You will not see a ‘Teacher of the Year’ award in most Japanese schools … nor any equivalence of ‘The Great Courses’ series [11] so popular in the U.S. — here crammed into one of my book cases, about $10,000 invested in what many Japanese schools see as worthless … or as a marketing gimmick at best.
(Picture of a bookcase containing dozens upon dozens of books.)
When my school was in the process of moving from Hino, West Tokyo, to the more upscale and trendy Shibuya of downtown Tokyo, I verified that books were seen by the school’s administration as mere shop-window accessories. It was less than a year since the Great Tohoku Earthquake had left a wake of devastated communities north of Tokyo, but rather than donate books to those communities and schools from my own school’s library, I watched in ‘shock and awwww’ as volumes of Shakespeare, Dickens, Hawthorne, Plato, Russell, and thousands of books in Japanese, were unceremoniously fed into a garbage truck, shredding and compressing those works into easily disposable trash. Standing there alone, watching the process, I felt like I had been sucker punched in the gut.
As for quality teaching, you will not even get a pat on the back by administration or colleagues for doing a good job. It is taken for granted that anyone who is a ‘sensei’ is above reproach, and not held accountable for quality, other than as a ‘managerial’ stick-or-carrot tool to get rid of trouble-makers or outsource costs.
In Japan, even more than most countries, innovators are trouble-makers for those most comfortably nestled in entitled positions of authority. As Noam Chomsky has pointed out about the U.S. economic/political system, the rigidly authoritarian, centralized power structures of Japanese institutions tend to be self-interested rather than goal oriented, and that ‘self’ is not even the whole institution, but rather those most comfortably nested at the top.
The problem with this kind of social dynamic, though, might be summed up best with best-selling author and anthropologist Jared Diamond’s final lines about the failed Norse colony in Greenland about 500 years ago …
‘Thus, Norse society’s structure created a conflict between the short-term interests of those in power, and the long-term interests of the society as a whole. Much of what the chiefs and clergy valued proved eventually harmful to the society. Yet the society’s values were at the root of its strengths as well as of its weaknesses. The Greenland Norse did succeed in creating a unique form of European society, and in surviving for 450 years as Europe’s most remote outpost. We modern Americans should not be too quick to brand them as failures, when their society survived in Greenland for longer than our English-speaking society has survived so far in North America. Ultimately, though, the chiefs found themselves without followers. The last right that they obtained for themselves was the privilege of being the last to starve.’
Diamond, Jared. Collapse (p. 276). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
I’ve thought of the psychology of classroom dynamics as one metaphor for the group dynamics involved. Whereas small learning communities can be relatively egalitarian and empathy-driven, larger groups (probably Dunbar’s number or more) tend to depend on rule-driven moralities. But when empathy for the individual becomes irrelevant, rules become niche opportunities for ‘dark triad’ personality types, fake news or bread and circuses for the whimsical play of pareidolia [12], and blind spots for those suffering from prosopagnosia [13].
Despite being well below Dunbar’s number, I could not find an education ‘community’ at my school. Only a gang of “kyuryo dorobo” (salary-thieves) [14], desperately trying to look gentrified under the cover of ‘institutionalization’.
Over the course of 36 years teaching in Japanese colleges, and at least 15 as a tenured Associate Professor, in weekly department meetings, or monthly academic assemblies, I have never, NEVER, heard or taken part in a discussion about educational values or goals.
Never.
Schools appear to be basically business opportunities for people who are not normally business oriented. Schools have become more conservative gate-keepers to the ‘real world’ of business which, at the very least, is ideologically constrained and driven by the market. Though petty politics seem to be part and parcel of the nature of homo sapiens, where businesses can not afford the luxury of racism, schools can.
Culturally and institutionally embedded racism, gender discrimination, and age descrimination are among the many tools used to enforce conformity to an authoritarian hierarchy.
I can’t attribute this exclusively to Japanese schools though. Former colleagues, co-workers, and doctoral cohort members at an American university in Japan have not been of any help other than a ‘gambatte’ here and a ‘I hear you’ there. And while working at least a dozen years at Temple University Japan, an American school, I’ve seen enough pettiness and bullying to realize it is the nature of the beast.
Meh … maybe I’m just an ass. Just barely getting by with a little help from my friends, mostly Japanese.
And another reason I can’t play the racist card so easily is because it is not just foreigners who are suffering. By chance (or is there really any chance?), today’s lead story on one of my news feeds, a translated subsidiary of Japan’s most widely read newspaper, The Yomiuri Shimbun.
(Picture of a newspaper article with the title “Banking no longer most popular career”.)
In a country like Finland, education has been the most popular career choice among college students.
But most of Japan’s ‘best and brightest’ (as I suspect America’s) choose the financial sector. It is a VERY competitive country, and foreigners are not the only ‘losers’ in a zero-sum game.
Among the other easy pickings of opportunists include the elderly (several times a week, an educational short is shown on NHK television about how the elderly can avoid getting scammed), the working poor (1/6 of families containing school children according to the government’s own statistics), minorities among Japanese - news reports of police officers sent down to Okinawa and using ethnic slurs against the Ryukyu people, anti-discrimination laws protecting the Ainu being passed only as recently as the 1990’s, and the huge gender gap. Even high school students have to form a labor union to fight predatory part-time companies [15].
Of course there is nothing preventing the marginalized from being just as driven by opportunistic instincts — the same as the ‘winners’.
The really dangerous gap, not just in Japan, but in most large scale industrial societies, is between our own altruistic tendencies and our opportunistic tendencies. But as a Taoist saying goes, the more laws governing the people, the more evil the people become. Hierarchies and rule-driven morality end up making more problems than they solve … making more niches for Dark triad personality types to hide and pounce.
But back to that lead story about work ambitions of college students. Notice the Winter Olympics medal standings beside the lead article?
I would much rather have seen a photo of the moment when Nao Kodaira wrapped her arms around the stressed-out Lee Sang-hwa. If I could find myself ‘loving’ a nation-state (and that is a big ‘if’), that would be the Japan I could learn to love, but I suspect Kodaira’s touching gesture came despite Japan’s educational system, not because of it.
(Picture of Nao Kodaira and Lee Sang-haw.)
And back to the short reason for MY ban … everything that could have gone wrong in the scenario behind “12 Angry Men” [16] … with myself playing the part of the immigrant juror.
Update: Wednesday, Feb.28, I just received the following from Quora admin:
Your answer to What are you banned from? Why? is getting views. Answers with good credentials get more views and help readers. Update your credential.
So I guess that means I should be updating a resume to fit this answer? (sighing) I presumed that part of my answer included enough of those qualifications so I would not slip into a vulgar display of self-promotion, but will comply with Quora’s suggestion, though it may be just a bot doing its algorithmically determined job.
At the risk of later repetition in my answers, to get my ‘qualifications’ out of the way, here is the short version of my resume. Feel free to skip ahead to read my answer … or not.
1 - For about 36 consecutive years, over half my life, I have been both a trainer, facilitator, and educator in Japan. I DO make a distinction between the three, and if you would like to know why, Wiki is a great place to start.
Although I first started teaching at conversation schools, most of that time has been teaching in colleges and universities including Waseda [17], Tokyo University of the Arts [18], Nippon University (Nichidai) [19], Komazawa University [20], Musashi University [21], and the list goes on. I have turned down a part-time job offer from Keio University [22]. Those of you familiar with Japanese Universities will recognize a few Japanese ‘Ivy League’ names on my short list.
2 - I had been a full-time, tenured Professor at Jissen Women's Educational Institute [23], having reached the rank of ‘Associate Professor', when I chose to resign under protest from what I considered racist-tinged behavior on the part of my ‘colleagues’ and administration. At the very least, they were guilty of harassment as a breach of Japanese Labor Law. Nearly three years later, and I am still looking for work that provides at least enough income to pay the rent, but find it odd I can’t even find part-time work in English skills oriented academia, and in the world’s most heavily populated Metropolitan area. Will leave it to the reader to do the math.
2 - I have also taught classes, as a volunteer, from private kindergartens such as たまだいらようちえん [24] to corporate in-house technical high schools such as Hino Motors [25] which are not under the auspices of highly centralized MEXT (The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology).
3 - I have taught at public high schools sakushin-gakuin-high-schoolに関するnabinnoのはてなブックマーク and have given presentations as a volunteer at various public elementary schools and Jr. High Schools in the Hino City area.
4 - Though not a particularly outstanding student, I have an undergraduate degree in biology with a concentration in Marine sciences, a Master’s Degree in Education, T.E.S.O.L., and matriculated into, though did not finish, a Doctoral program in Education at Temple University Japan where I also taught liberal arts, biology labs, and speaking / writing skills in the undergraduate program for over 10 years — Temple University, Japan Campus.
5 - I have published original research regarding Education in Japan (though mostly in in-house academic journals that are not peer-reviewed), and have given several academic presentations in Japan, Korea, and the U.S. regarding that research, one of which was an award winning poster session.
6 - All textbooks used in Japanese public schools (elementary through High Schools) must pass through a MEXT textbook committee associated with each subject. From 2006 until 2011, I was one of maybe 3 native speakers of English in Japan on the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology English Textbook committee. I resigned only because I became too busy and stressed-out with the duties associated with a tenured position in a dysfunctional college.
7 - Even though I resigned from the MEXT textbook committee, I am on the mailing list of P.A.L.E. (Professionalism and Administration in Language Education), a special interest group within J.A.L.T. (Japan Association of Language Teachers). Though mostly merely a lurker, it is through the sporadic newsletters that I am somewhat familiar with the diminishing and precarious status of non-native Japanese language instructors.
8 - From the news, and my sporadic volunteer activities with a labor union, I have increasingly become aware of the precarious nature of employment for all teachers in Japan, regardless of nationality or ethnicity. I have been to Tokyo District court a few times as member of that union supporting other marginalized teachers.
9 - Other peripheral volunteer activities have included workshops with the mental health care out-patients via the Hino City Government — as well as English communication classes for the office staff, supporting a loose coalition of local activists supporting the severely handicapped (pic updated Monday May 7, 2018) …
(Picture of S.M. with the aforementioned local activists.)
several trips to rural Cambodia supporting teachers and students, frequent trips and support for a roving soup kitchen supporting the homeless (S.M.’s answer to Is it true that in Japan there are no beggars?), and 13 years as a volunteer judge/advisor for Japanese University E.S.S. (English Speaking Society) All Japan English Speech Contests at schools such as Tokyo University 3 times), Waseda, Keio, Sophia, Soka Daigakku, Hosei University, Takasaki City University, and my own former place of employment, Jissen Women’s College.
Now that that my qualifications are out of the way, on to the answer.
For the longer explanation:
The context ... I was the only full-time, non-Japanese, tenured professor (Associate Professor of English) in an English Communication Department of a Japanese Junior College ... Jissen Women's Junior College.
The ban(s) ...
1 — Banned by The English Communication Department from conducting community outreach work or volunteer activities — even with other departments at the same school, or with students in my own classes — without permission from my Department's Japanese 'colleagues'.
To be clear about community outreach activities, (and repeating my qualifications listed previously), this was not in affiliation with any particular religious or political institution … I was on the board of directors of the Hino City government NPO TOKYO International Communication Committee, a volunteer English teacher at a local Kindergarten, たまだいらようちえん [24], volunteered as a communication facilitator for mental health care outpatients, work with a traveling soup kitchen supporting the homeless in Shinjuku … Soup no Kai, held community/student workshops with Junior Chamber International Japan, helped out with a local circle supporting the severely handicapped, took 4 trips at my own expense to rural Cambodia to work with teachers and students, volunteered as an in-house technical high school English teacher for Hino Motors, and volunteered (refusing to accept monetary honorariums) as a speech contest judge for All Japan Intercollegiate Speech Contests sponsored by the highest ranked schools in Japan … Tokyo University, Waseda, Keio, and Sophia, among others.
I take volunteerism as a natural extension of an educator’s pedagogic toolbox — not just as some information to pass down to the students from the Ministry of Education, but as the obligation of an educator to facilitate, and act as a role model.
I was a member of an English Communication Department. But other than the traditional top-down, sage-on-stage, one-way ‘communicating’ all too common in higher education, all too clearly, I saw my own limits as a collaborative facilitator. I was teaching college students, mostly young women.
My gaps were many … gender, age and pop culture awareness (older than their parents), national culture (raised in the U.S.), and individual differences (I like fishing and playing guitar). To communicate those values central to a liberal arts education, I had no choice but to try and connect my students with those I consider worthy role models in the Japanese community.
After all education should be a community, not an institution … right? At least some individuals within the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology — for which I also worked as one of maybe three or four textbook proofreaders in the whole country at any single time — seems to agree. And the Ministry has also tried time and again to instill those same behavior patterns among teachers, mostly to no avail.
The response by my Japanese colleagues was that such community outreach activities were irrelevant to my duties as an employee of the department and full time faculty member of the school, to exclude me from any real decision making processes, and to insist that my priority is restricted to the role of a native-speaking English informant and support for the ‘real’ teachers … presumably full-time, ethnic Japanese department members.
The department chairman insisted that the Dean of the entire University was ‘wrong’ in insuring me that I had equal rights and responsibilities as other tenured Japanese faculty members. Even after repeated requests to have the Dean and the Department chairman meet to decide my status as stated in my tenured contract … they mutually refused to meet and formally decide my status. Convenient tactics on their part. Ha. The oldest trick in the book … divide and conquer.
I refused to follow this ban on volunteerism on at least 8 grounds:
* I was told by the Dean that I was an 'equal' member of the Department, though I had no 'equal' part in making such department ‘rules’ ... and had no 'equal' right to question them.
* Japanese colleagues were not bound by the same ‘rules’. Some are more 'equal' than others.
* Such ‘rules’ were contrary to the institution's stated ideals as stated on its glossy, catch-copy homepage ... University Ideology.
* Such ‘rules’ are particularly contrary to the need for volunteer work still necessary for dealing with the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, not to mention covering those current social problems the government and infrastructure of Japan can not deal with ... the homeless (despite a seemingly contradictory problem of a decreasing and aging population), high rates of work induced suicide and mental health care problems, insufficient support for the aged, terminally ill, severely handicapped, and orphans, and a growing digital divide and wealth gap resulting in the hollowing out of the middle class and growing numbers of working poor — the government's own statistics state that 1/6 of Japanese children are at the poverty level or below.
* Such ‘rules’ are contrary to educational goals and obligations as expressed by MEXT:Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, the highest level of authority regarding education in Japan.
* Such ‘rules’ are contrary to Japan's signing of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (United Nations).
* Such ‘rules’ are contrary to the common sense of any adult capable and willing to foster the personal growth of young people, and contrary to any socially mature adult's sense of obligation to help nurture a sustainable local community.
* Such ‘rules’ compelled me to ‘obey department colleagues’. Say what? How can ‘obey colleagues’ NOT be an oxymoron? Even as the only tenured ‘Associate’ Professor with a graduate degree in T.E.S.O.L., by what academic virtue did my department ‘colleagues’ presume to have the right to tell me how to teach, which language to use, and when to use it? For any other academically credentialed professors reading this … how would you feel about ‘colleagues’ outside of your own academic discipline who presume to micro-manage your classes?
* I was a slow learner. It took several years to figure out what ‘communication’ means when being directed to this non-Japanese member of the department. I will spell it out for you in a Japanese language lesson which I call ‘The 5 M’s’ approach to managing foreign teachers (though it is equally applied to other Japanese of lower rank within institutions).
1 - Meilei - to give orders
2 - Marunage - to pass the buck
3 - Mukanshin - to completely ignore
4 - Madogiwazoku - to marginalize someone to a seat by the window
5 - Murahachibu - to completely cast out of the community
Why ... ?
* Officially — ‘Volunteer activities are not part of our program this year.’ (As explained by two successive Department Chairmen) and you, as a foreign instructor, do not have equal rights of tenure as Japanese colleagues.
* Officially — ‘You do have all the equal rights and responsibilities of Japanese colleagues.’ (As explained by the Dean of the University).
* More likely — I was the only full-time, non-Japanese, tenured professor in an English Communication Department of a Japanese Junior College ... Jissen Women's Junior College — managerially problematic because the willfully contradictory status was designed only to make me compliant to orders, without any of the rights of tenure or educational obligation to the students.
2 — Banned, subsequently, by the Board of Directors from:
* receiving any classes the following academic year
* taking my scheduled research sabbatical
Why ... ?
* Officially — for refusing to sign a document prepared especially for me, demanding that I follow above stated Department ‘rules’ regarding community outreach activities and volunteer work.
* More likely — I was the only full-time, non-Japanese, tenured professor in an English Communication Department of a Japanese Junior College ... Jissen Women's Junior College.
The ‘dead silence’ detail …
Upon being called into a conference with the Dean and Assistant Dean and presented with the document, I was told to either sign it, or forfeit my impending 1 year research sabbatical to Cambodia. I pointed out that if I signed that document, I would be forfeiting my right and my obligation to help my own seminar student prepare for the upcoming Tokyo Jr. College English Speech Contest.
Even before my ten years of tenure at the school, as a part-timer, I had been asked, and accepted, the role of volunteering to be the coach of each year’s contestant. My full-time colleagues appeared to not have either the interest, temperament, skills, or educational priorities to do so, and so I stepped up to the plate.
After about 12 years or so of doing this, I petitioned to have my speech coaching ‘volunteer’ duties re-designated as one of my committee responsibilities, since volunteerism was no longer officially part of their program … and as counterparts at other schools also have their duties counted as ‘work duties’, not volunteerism.
My request was granted, but being as opportunistic as they were, authority was immediately handed over to a Japanese colleague heading a new ‘Kyoiku-inkai’ (Education Committee), which I was not invited to join.
During the time I had been doing this as a volunteer, I was also a member ot the Tokyo Jr. College Speech Contest Committee, and so I had the benefit of receiving communication about the contest directly at the committee meetings, and was able to have nearly a year to prepare multiple students (in the name of equal opportunity) for the contest … and all of that editing, re-writing, and bringing out the best of the student took that whole year.
But now my duties had become ‘official’, and subject to receiving information on my colleague’s definition of ‘a need to know’ basis. This meant that I would now have to ask permission from my Japanese superior to ‘volunteer’, and it was only under his auspices, and at his convenience, and on his terms that I was allowed to do the same work I previously did on my own free will. All of the same responsibility, but with an added layer of bureaucratic hierarchy insuring I would not have the right to receive the direct and timely information necessary to do my job. My colleagues saw this as an opportunity to further marginalize me and concentrate institutional power into their hands.
I no longer was given the courtesy of information about the speech contest until a month or two prior to the contest … as the new Education Committee did not consider it a priority to inform me of the theme or schedule of the speech contest in a timely manner. Neither making my job easier, nor bringing out the best in students was the priority of my colleagues. Putting an uppity foreigner in his place was.
But back to the conference with the Dean and his demand that I sign a letter compelling me following orders from my colleagues.
‘In the school’s 120 year history, has any other faculty member been asked to sign such a letter prior to taking a research sabbatical?’ I asked.
‘No’ was the curt reply.
The paper laid on the desk in front of me, waiting to be signed. I looked at the Dean and reminded them that as this forbids me from volunteering …. and I was specifically told by my colleagues, I no longer had the right to help even my own seminar student with the upcoming speech contest. I told them that I would sign the document … if one of the two sitting before me promised to step up and help that student prepare for the speech contest.
‘Would either of you agree to take my place and help that student’ I asked?
Silence.
I have a digital recording of that meeting, and that’s all you can hear — a deafening silence.
I refused to sign the document.
I said that my obligation was to the student(s) … not to blindly following orders deliberately designed to marginalize me from performing my duties as an educator. Not by coincidence, ‘witholding information from an employee which is necessary to complete their work obligations’ is against Japanese labor law.
The student came to me for help. As no one else was either able or willing, I did so. A lot. Something for details of another Quora answer later. But for the sake of context, I will say this. She wrote and spoke about being a victim of the Great Tohoku earthquake, and the real meaning of family and friends.
Though we had spent a good 50 hours or more, editing, revising, recording, and analyzing videos of her practice … on the moment of her performance, the memories of a crumbled hill-top house, watching in horror as the tsunami engulfed the harbor below, and the desperate attempts to bypass the deadlocked transportation grid … all came out in a torrent of tears. But she kept her cool, and she kept her pace so as to not exceed the time limit.
Half of the audience, myself included, were in tears … the judges were flummoxed.
This was just supposed to be a display of English skills, not a real speech. They couldn’t just throw the meticulously detailed point sheet for judging out the window. But they couldn’t ignore the real thing, transcending typically rote memorized performances.
They compromised by awarding her 2nd place in the contest.
The school’s administration promptly used her result as a photo op for marketing purposes.
Though her speech was about her finding the meaning of ‘family’ and ‘friends’, about the community that defines the social primate, it was made perfectly clear that I was not part of that ‘education’ community.
Shortly after the speech contest and photo-op, I was notified that for disobeying department orders and for not signing the document compelling me to do so, that I had forfeited my upcoming research sabbatical and would be relieved of all teaching duties the following year.
That’s when I began seeing a psychiatrist, got put on anti-depressents to hold down suicidal thoughts, and exercised my right to a medical leave of absence.
The results ...
* After receiving notice that I would be given no classes nor allowed to take a research sabbatical, I secured a lawyer, joined a union, and took a medical leave of absence for harassment induced mental stress (and subsequently, hip-joint replacement surgery).
* In the ensuing two years, despite several meetings, my labor union could reach no agreement with the school, and my lawyer advised me that even though I would likely win a legal suit against the school, the Japanese judicial system is weighted in favor of institutions, and my victory would likely be a long and costly, pyrrhic victory. In the Japanese legal system, if it is ‘individual vs. institutional entity’ … the individual is pretty much ‘guilty, unless proven otherwise.’ I later realized, if one follows a strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of language determining what we see … that this village mentality might be correlated with the fact that the Japanese words for ‘individual’ (koujin) and ‘citizen’ (shakaijin) are only a couple of hundred years old … and presumably the rights and obligations of the two.
* Thinking I would just put it all behind me and find work elsewhere, I resigned a ‘tenured’ position … in protest … against institutionally sanctioned harassment, a breach of Japanese Labor Law, and a general disregard for human dignity and human rights as befitting an institution of higher learning.
* Now, five years since resigning, I have reached the age of 64, for some mysterious reason, I have not been able to find even a single class of part-time college work in one of the largest metropolitan areas on the planet. After having lived over half my life in Japan as a college teacher, I have been unemployed for three years now.
* I am still on a nightly dose of anti-depressent and sleeping pill, and still see a psychiatrist once a month for my prescription.
* I keep busy with community out-reach, volunteer activities, one of which is Soup no Kai, a roving soup kitchen supporting the homeless. In 2017, this NPO received the ‘Social Contributions Award from the Tokyo City Metropolitan government. S.M.'s answer to Is it true that in Japan there are no beggars?
* I continue helping out with speech contests. Though I am no longer employed, I still consider myself an educator, and my honor and duty to help young students when I can … and as my policy for about 10 years now, as a volunteer. In 2017, I was a finals judge for the Soka Daigakku (Soka University) E.S.S. (English Speaking Society) All Japan English Speech Contest. The Ikeda Cup - 創価大学 英語研究会SEA
* In early 2018, I was again invited to be a preliminary judge for an All Japan English Speech Contest held by the English Speaking Society (E.S.S.) of Japan’s highest ranking university, The University of Tokyo. Between meetings and e-mail with the student organizers, pouring over 81 speech scripts and videos, and writing remarks for each of them while judging … I must have spent about a hundred hours on the project.
(A picture of the front part of a brochure that says, “The 12th English Oratorical Contest for the University of Tokyo E.S.S. Trophy 第12回東京大学E.S.S.杯争奪英語弁論大会 Monday, February 12th, 2018 Yasuda Auditorium, The University of Tokyo 主催:東京大学E.S.S. 後援:外務省、ブリティッシュ・カウンシル”.)
(A picture of the inside part of the aforementioned brochure showing the elimination judges of the aforementioned contest.)
* 東京大学ESS杯争奪英語弁論大会 (The English Oratorical Contest at The UT) The contest was relatively successful, and the E.S.S. president has agreed to donate my judge’s fee to helping the Rohingya Muslim refugee crisis. I was pleased with his decision. But now that the contest has finished, the student organizer of the event has refused to answer my e-mails of inquiry regarding the status of that promise. I will think long and hard about future volunteer activities with college English Speaking Society events.
* (EDIT … about a year later, 2019, I have indeed exchanged letters, and was invited again to a judge, again accepted, and again … kicking myself in the head wondering if my time was well spent. Now have written over 150,000 words of comments for the 51 speech contest applicants … but only 3 of the 10 finalists, and 2 other applicants were interested in reading those observations and suggestions.)
* Again, I questioned the VERY sloppy judging criteria chosen by the student speech contest committee. I pointed out that the criteria does not reflect how public speaking skills are learned or taught, does not reflect salient features of effective public speaking, and does not reflect the highest ideals of a public speech or a communication community. Two years ago, the head of the committee begged me to NOT compare his goals to his predecessor (who gave a speech about the importance of good posture for ‘success’), but this year, the committee strongly insisted that the highest priority of the contest is connected to neither educational nor social problem solving goals, but to follow the will of their seniors. Yep, Tokyo University students, the future top managers of Japan Inc. are just doing a role-play practice of “Invented Traditions” [2] while exchanging name cards to form their elite, oligarchic, and self-serving social networks.
* For those interested, you will see some very good speeches in the recent past by copy-pasting the kanji for Tokyo University’s Todaihai — ‘東大杯’ — into YouTube. You might notice that this tradition seems to have come to an end as of this year, 2019. I would like to think I had something to do with ending this corrupt and invented tradition. Here is an example of a great speech. She was the last winner of what may be the last Tokyo University All Japan English Speech Contest, and though I had some good chats with Sara about her speech, on-line and at the contest, I haven’t seen or heard from her since. I fear that her alma mater, Keio University, and intended graduate school, Stanford, may be following the same path of Mission Drift as Harvard and Yale.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tdIBXPB5eYI
* Meanwhile, I occasionally check the glossy home pages peddling ‘education’ in Japan, back at my former school, I see there is no longer a full-time, non-Japanese, native-speaking faculty member in the English Communication Department.
* I spend a lot of time reading and watching Youtube videos … mostly documentaries (love David Butler on physics), TED, and so on.
* As for Quora, I find myself writing fewer answers, but reading much more, and chatting one-on-one in comments or messaging.
* And when I tire of words, I pick up my guitar and practice bossa rhythms and jazz arpeggios … planning to play for no one but myself. Just therapy.
Reflections on the big picture …
Japanese institutions are somewhat overlapping in-groups, but traditionally place a priority on compliance to a collectively assumed authoritarianism.
Communities are small enough to keep an empathy-driven morality. But like other large, hierarchical groups following authoritarian priorities, morality here tends to be provisional, parochial, and situational. Institutional culture takes priority over individual moral autonomy. Institutional morality tends to be driven by rule and ritual, not empathy. To further explain:
Oxford anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar has a very interesting theory correlating the size of the human pre-frontal cortex with the number of people we can effectively work with as a group. For the sake of brevity, I’ll define that as the number of people we can recognize by face, name, and individual characteristics and temperaments including unique skills, interests, traumas, and hopes. His studies indicate somewhere between 150 and 250 people as the optimal size for groups … and I would infer that this number of recognizing each other as individuals correlates with morality being driven by neural pathways associated with empathy. Cross cultural studies seem to replicate his results.
By implication, once we exceed Dunbar's number, groups necessarily form hierarchies, which in turn are held together by a combination of provisional rules, traditions, and force … not empathy. As Hannah Arendt chronicalled in the Eichmann war crimes trials, this excuses the cog-in-the machine-human from moral responsibility or autonomy with a simple ‘just following orders’.
And as the post-war behaviorist experiments of Solomon Asch, Stanley Milgram, and later, Zimbardo’s Stanford prison experiment showed, the average American was just as likely as the average Nazi prison camp guard to allow institutional authority to override empathy.
I would say a lot, if not most of our cognitive dissonance, isolation, and marginalization in large scale populations, from corporate states to nation-states, is the gap between empathy driven morality and rule-imposed morality. A cultural defining historic event of Japan, the Forty-seven rōnin, hinges on this conflict of values. But I would argue that this is a conflict in human nature everywhere, and just as contradictory in what my fellow Americans will say in their pledge of allegiance, and what Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky, or William Blum reveals about what goes on behind the curtains.
Representatives of institutions have no qualms about lying, deception, stalling, any machiavellian tactic … all rationalized as necessary on behalf of the group, but more likely just subconscious, opportunistic behavior. Dark triad [4] behavior. Again, this is not unique to Japan. Just look at the recent U.S. presidential election as one example.
Marginalized individuals have little recourse against blatant institutional disregard of law. Institutions are cynically all too knowledgeable that the legal system is weighted in their favor … one lie at a time, one stall after another, can draw out any legal challenges for years — long enough for those responsible for malfeasance to have retired or transferred to another branch or committee deep within the institution.
Even small institutions have their ‘deep state’. And the cost to the institution? Financially, a minimal loss, and at most, only a brief moment in the public forum before all is buried under bread and circuses. For example, compare your memories of the Pyongyang Winter Olympics (or any world wide sporting event) and the case of Matsuri Takahashi. Case closed.
More results, the BIGGER picture ...
While Japan is the 3rd or 4th largest economy in the world, its Universities are ranked somewhere around 70th place. While acknowledging that 'rankings' are to be taken with a grain of salt, where there is smoke, there is fire.
I would say that the priority of compliancy over the critical attitude towards authorities fostered by the liberal arts, drops Japan even further. At least a few other professionals both inside Japan Humanities under attack | The Japan Times ... and outside Japan, seem to agree Japan Dumbs Down Its Universities.
According to the Hofstede Index, Japan - Geert Hofstede, management of higher education in Japan is what drops it down to such abysmally embarrassing levels. But I would also say that management is inextricably tied to a culture of deference to authority.
With the ruling LDP's enfranchising of 18 year olds with the right to vote this year, BUT the new State's Secrets Law, change to the Peace-Time Constitution allowing 'pro-active, military defense', and a neo-lib climate that taxes basic food items for the growing numbers of working poor while giving tax breaks to the corporations ... this empowerment of youth may simply be a token of 'rights' that will soon have to be repaid as an 'obligation' to serve in a ramped-up military.
Scary times ahead.
Still, trying to do my small part for the marginalized in Japan ... most recently helped out with a mobile soup kitchen for the homeless in Tokyo ... S.M. | Facebook ... but of course, whether we are talking about the homeless, the high suicide rate, the falling demographics, or the falling business standards in Japan (Season of Scandal Hits Japan With Company Confession Flurry), or enough fissile plutonium stored in Japan alone to make 1,300 nuclear warheads ... are NOT a concern for Japanese 'Institutes of Higher Learning' ... which begs the question, what, exactly are their concerns? Despite the glossy homepages, my guess is that they are either simply for-profit businesses, or quasi-governmental meat grinders churning out a literate but compliant (no questions please) workforce.
As for me, I take my cue from a former Dean of Helsinki University I once heard at a forum at Tokyo University. "The purpose of the 21st century university should be to solve 21st century problems."
My problems are not restricted to marginalization and dehumanization of based along ethnic lines. By the government’s own statistics, 1/6 of Japanese children live at the poverty level or below, (and though now somewhat dated info) the single greatest cause of death in the work force between the most productive ages of 20 and 44 is suicide … Suicide in Japan … and these are examples taken from Japanese citizenry themselves.
The purpose of public education should be, though perhaps never was, socialization … raising collaborative, critical thinking problem solvers who are morally responsible to the community. But once past primary school, education, devolves mostly into a process of standardized testing and sorting … gate-keeping as a means of institutionalizing individuals. Disposable human capital. Standardization, institutionalization, and compliance are the highest priorities.
This leads to another theme altogether in my writings on Quora … how naive scientific reductionism is becoming the new religion, and how it may be a terminal one at that.
Standardization and institutionalization is far easier than fostering positive fundamental changes among the struggling youth. It is far easier to just give lip service to educational ideals rather than getting down and into the mud of the meaning of learning. It is far easier to go through the motions of teaching while actually serving as merely another functionary bureaucrat, a gatekeeper who uses standardized tests to identify the ‘talented’ … and pass them along to the next appropriate academic, professional, business, or political institution.
Anyone familiar with Chomsky’s understanding of pro-social anarchism … ?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yccBBzSHFAM
Or even better (or worse) …
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UZbW7lvGkuA&feature=youtu.be
the problem with Japan Inc., indeed, all humanity, I sum up as this:
Empathy-driven communities are conflated with rule and ritual-driven institutions, and institutions are presumed innocent until proven guilty. Individuals, regardless of injustices suffered from those institutions, are considered guilty until proven innocent. ‘Education’ has long since been conflated with ‘propaganda’, and neither the sanctity of the maturation process of the social primate, nor the necessity of empathy-driven communities for sustainability is respected by the ruling powers that be.
The failed idealist in me tends to agree with Stephen Hawking … Stephen Hawking: Greed And Stupidity Are What Will End The Human Race.
And the pessimist in me, with J. Robert Oppenheimer …
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lb13ynu3Iac
Lesson learned ...
Yokoso (welcome to) Japan!
A nice place to visit.
Update, Wed. Dec. 14th, 2016
Informed by Quora that this post will be sent to 1000 readers, I thought I would give an update. A couple of years have passed, and now 61, I am still unemployed, living off of borrowed money from Japanese friends, and the Hello Work unemployment system in the land of Hello Kitty … I have maybe 5 months left to pay the rent. Starting to sell off things through Yahoo auction.
But looking at the homeless I still work with, the systematic bullying of school children evacuated from the Fukushima meltdown, the continuing pace of corporate-driven suicides of Japan Inc., and the bigger world picture — Trump and his cabinet of deplorables, Brexit, growing right-wing extremism in Europe, the tragedy of Aleppo, the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya muslims in ‘democratic’ Burma — I should be grateful for still having a handful of friends, and for now … a roof over my head and food in the fridge. Outside of that, I am finding it harder to justify my continued existence.
If nothing else, as a permanent outsider depending on a small community of culturally and ethnically different friends, I can empathize further with the minorities I attempted to help through my volunteer activities, and those minorities I will never have an opportunity to help. But how far can empathy carry me when I will no longer be able to pay my own rent?
Hmm … just found the 6th ‘M’.
My life as the Mandelbrot set unfolding — a microcosm of the forever-war between the authoritative right hand of man, and the would-be progressive hand on his left. Cognitive dissonance — built into our genes, we bi-polar apes. Meh … maybe this is just a fancy way of saying ‘what goes around, comes around.’ Karma, baby.
(A picture showing the Mandelbrot set.)
Update … April 27, 2017
I have about a month go left for unemployment insurance, still no sign of work. But it appears I am not the only one falling victim to the ‘Education Scams’ of Japan Inc. …
Cautionary tale: Bern on how no protections against harassment in Japan’s universities targets NJ regardless of Japan savviness and skill level
[1] The book “Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media” written by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky. In the book, the authors argue that the mass media of the USA is not trustworthy, because it has to rely on corporations to sponsor it and the government to provide them with sources without alienating them. In other words, the American media is a propaganda machine.
[2] The book “Mirror of Modernity: Invented Traditions of Modern Japan” edited by Stephen Vlastos. This book has a collection of 18 essays, which argue that traditions such as Bushidou, the Wa and so on were actually invented during the Meiji Era (1800s). In other words, these traditions are newer than people think.
[3] The documentary film “The Corporation” makes two important points. The first point is that corporations were created for the sole purpose of making as much profit as they can. The second point is that corporations are not regulated enough and penalized enough for their crimes, which means that they will make as much profit as they can by breaking laws, harming and exploiting people and so on and they will practically get away with it.
[4] The “dark triad” refers to the malevolent personality traits of narcissism (grandiosity, pride, egotism and lack of empathy), Machiavellianism (manipulation and exploitation of others, an absence of morality, unemotional callousness and a higher level of self-interest) and psychopathy (continuous anti-social behaviour, impulsivity, selfishness, callous and unemotional traits and remorselessness). Beware of coworkers who exhibit these personality traits, and especially beware of bosses who exhibit these personality traits.
[5] The mini-documentary “FOLLOW THE MONEY: Public School” discusses the history of compulsory schooling, the corporations that funnelled billions of dollars into the public school system in the name of philanthropy, and how that philanthropy led to legislation that resulted in a government monopoly over schooling in the USA. YouTube comments towards the mini-documentary reveal that many parents are not only aware that the public school system is not good for their kids, but they have taken the step of homeschooling their kids instead.
[6] “Mission creep” means “The gradual addition of new tasks or activities to a project so that the original purpose or idea begins to be lost”.
[7] “Blankfein Says He's Just Doing 'God's Work'” is a New York Times article. He is trying to say that bankers do good things for society, but the tone of his arguments indicate a sanctimonious attitude.
[8] “Harvard and Yale have Drifted from their Original Mission” is a Preaching Today article. It points out that these universities originally taught Christian values, but they no longer do so. While that may not sound like a big deal to people who are not Christian, it ties into the point that mission creep can happen to any organization, religious or otherwise.
[9] “The Great American Bubble Machine” is a Rolling Stone magazine article. It examines The Goldman Sachs Group. More specifically, it examines some of the top members of the group, its methods, its history, and the role it played in causing the Great Depression, Tech Stocks, the Housing Craze, $4 A Gallon (of Oil), Rigging the Bailout and Global Warming. In short, this corporation has caused problems for the USA and the world before, and it will cause them again if nothing is done about it.
[10] “Fundamental attribution error” means “the tendency to believe that what people do reflects who they are”.
[11] “The Great Courses” is a series of college-level audio and video courses produced and distributed by an American company called The Teaching Company. It consists of video lectures given by professors on many different subjects.
[12] “Pareidolia” is the phenomenon of recognizing patterns, shapes, and familiar objects in a vague and sometimes random stimulus. For example, if you look at a cloud, you will often say that it looks like someone's face. This is because your brain is trying to make sense of something that simply doesn't make sense. Similarly, it's easy to become distracted by or misinformed about rules that make no sense to you. Also, it becomes easy to dismiss anything that contradicts what you want to see or believe as “fake news”.
[13] “Prosopagnosia” (also called “face blindness”) is a neurological condition characterized by the inability to recognize the faces of familiar people. Someone who has this can spend time with family members and close friends many times, but every time they see their family members and close friends, they look at them in the face and can't recognize them. Similarly, if you are ignorant about a number of rules, you can spend of lot of time examining them and not recognize them every time you see them.
[14] “Salary thief” is a slang term that applies to workers (employees/employers) who work for Japanese companies. It means a worker who does not contribute anything to the company, but they collect a salary anyway. In other words, a lazy or unproductive worker. In the USA, an equivalent term seems to be “goldbricker”.
[15] “High school students form union to fight 'black baito' companies” is a Japan Today article. In the article, five high school students have formed a union to fight companies that give high school students part-time work and break labour laws. These students have figured out that if they don't take care of themselves, nobody's going to do it for them.
[16] “12 Angry Men” is a 1957 film starring Henry Fonda. In the film, an eighteen-year-old boy is on trial for murdering his father and will be put on the electric chair if he is found guilty. Almost all the jurors except for one believe he is guilty. That one juror spends the rest of film explaining why he doesn't think so, and eventually wins them over.
[17] Waseda University is a Japanese private research university in Shinjuku, Toukyou. According to the Japanese University Rankings 2019, Waseda University is in 13th place.
[18] Tokyo University of the Arts is one of the most prestigious art schools in Japan and is located in Ueno Park, Toukyou. According to the Japanese University Rankings 2018, Tokyo University of the Arts is in 151st+ place.
[19] Nihon University is a Japanese private research university in Chiyoda, Toukyou. It is also the largest university in Japan. According to the Japanese University Rankings 2019, Nihon University is in 111-120th place.
[20] Komazawa University is a private university in Setagaya, Toukyou. It is one of the oldest universities in Japan. According to the Japanese University Rankings 2019, Komazawa University is in 151st+ place.
[21] Musashi University is a private university in Nerima, Toukyou. According to the Japanese University Rankings 2019, Musashi University is in 92nd place.
[22] Keiou University is a private university in Minato, Toukyou. According to the Japanese University Rankings 2019, Keiou University is in 14th place.
[23] Jissen Women's Junior College is a junior college in Hino City, Toukyou. It is a part of the Jissen Educational Institute.
[24] Tamadaira Kindergarten (Chinese characters: “多摩平幼稚園”, Simple syllabary: “たまだいらようちえん”) is a kindergarten in Tamadaira, Hino City, Toukyou. It admits children from 1-years-old to 5-years-old until they graduate to elementary school. Activities include baked sweet potato parties, classical music concerts, athletic meets, summer festivals and curry parties.
[25] Hino Motors, Ltd. is a Japanese manufacturer of commercial vehicles and diesel engines and its headquarters are located in Hino City, Toukyou.
== Sources ==
* https://www.quora.com/What-are-you-banned-from-Why
* S.M.'s Profile
== Other Language ==
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