Raise kids the Asian way

UCLAri
Mon, 24 Oct 2005 11:12:46 +0000

But, when we’re talking about numbers of students being taught the language, the fact that EVERY Japanese student is being taught English, and only a self-selected sample of Americans are learning Japanese, you start to see why I’m arguing the failure of the sytem.

Maybe fewer expatriate Americans are learning Japanese at the level the Japanese are learning English, but when you consider that every Japanese person has had 7+ years of instruction in English, and yet few show any real English ability, I think there’s a problem. Again, we’re talking about numbers of people actually learning the language and achieving any sort of ability. Since every single Japanese student will take English, and a very small percentage actually learn anything, I find that far more frightening than the maybe 1% of Americans learning Japanese not becoming as proficient as your neutral ground Japanese examples.

But again, maybe the goal isn’t actually to teach the language. Sure doesn’t seem like it where I teach.