Interview

Thom Simmons

Thom Simmons has been teaching in Japan for over 13 years and is currently a lecturer at Nihon University. Simmons has been very active in JALT at both local and national level and was elected as JALT President in January this year. (February 2000. Simmons served as JALT President until July 2002.)

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On Japan

ELT: What brought you to Japan?
TS: Big airplane. I had a clinical doctorate and I wanted to practice in Asia and that was that.

What advice would you give to prospective educators thinking of teaching in Japan?
Look before you leap. There are lots of success stories, people with good positions, but I also see a lot of horror stories. People get here and find it is not what they wanted or what they agreed on and they are then bullied and threatened into working under the impossible situation they find themselves in. It doesn't matter whether it is a public or private agency - it happens. Others find the atmosphere fine but the pay so niggardly when it is used here in Japan they have little money to do anything. Others are worked to a frazzle and on and on it goes. Usually, what are basically bad employer practices in the UK or USA are going to be true here as well. A deal is a deal, indentured servitude is outlawed. Employers can not unilaterally fire you, heap more work on you, cut your pay, throw you out of company sponsored housing, seize wages etc, without permission from a court and the proper due process -- unless they are acting outside the law. It is very important to get in touch with the Labor Administration here so that you are aware of your rights and responsibilities. You are covered under the Labor Standards Law or Labor Union Law and those laws need to be employed to prevent abuses.

Second, don't show up broke. You may end up getting backed into a corner and forced to accept poor working conditions. When you leave you may end up hating the place and that is no good either. Teaching in Japan is deteriorating in many areas. Teachers are being laid off, job markets are shrinking. There are many situations where Japanese women and non-Japanese are singled out for abusive practices. We hear the encouraging story occasionally and we need more of them documented but recent events at a number of schools, public and private, indicate that the courts are divided over what the law means and the resultant confusion is being exploited by unscrupulous employers. Not a good time to come to work in Japan.

How does working in the Japanese university system compare with those of other countries you have worked in?
Lots of similarities. There is a major shift to temporary or limited employment. It is causing a lot of folks to give education in any field a miss and I can not blame them.

There are also some very big differences. Tenure is earned in the States and terminating employment according to age is illegal. Permanent employment, not tenure, is the norm in Japan, with little critical peer review or research required for most Japanese males. But the assumption of permanent employment is markedly restricted for Japanese women and non-Japanese. Research overall seems to be a very minor priority in Japan unlike the States. It must be pointed out though that there are research universities and education schools so the emphasis on research is a function of the type of institution. However, it does not seem that the billions of dollars spent every year in the States at tertiary institutions will ever be matched here in Japan. For that reason, the huge industries that have been born at tertiary institutions in the States (biological, chemical and telecommunications-based industries for example) are not part of the academic landscape here in Japan.

Degrees are usually done at separate institutions in the States. Most degrees are done at the same institution here. My professors in the States might have, say, a BA from Rutgers, an MA from Cornell and a Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon, and yet they were teaching at another university. As far as I know, this is also true of New Zealand, Australia, Canada and Britain. Here in Japan it is often the case that faculty have received all their degrees in one school and may be teaching at that same school -- no cross-fertilization, no mix, just tepid stew. It is a big problem that places emphasis on politics and not education and research.

Another difference, publications are usually juried and open to anyone who qualifies in the States and Britain. There are a lot of internal publications in Britain but there is a good balance between the publications that are usually no more than internal bulletins and good juried publications. It is quite the opposite here. Internal-only publications are the norm. Blind peer review juries are unusual. Getting a paper published from outside the university is usually only done with a faculty member at that university. It is not the same thing at all. Another big difference that I see is the very low priority placed on libraries.

These observations are pretty much well known and widely shared.

On Japanese Students

How are Japanese students different to the other nationalities you have taught?
Not what the political propaganda machine and the press would have us believe. Thirty to forty years ago their parents and grandparents were hungry, they wanted to learn, they studied. Now the students are pampered. They go through the exam driven nonsense at secondary schools and below and then they hit the four-year vacation. They are meeting schools that care nothing for their education and the employers return the favor by not hiring them, or they are confronted with faculties that will flunk them. They may wake up if given ample warning. Usually the first harsh year will do it for many students but most just muddle through and if the schools stand by passively, automatically graduating them -- the job market will have its own pitiless answer for this sloth. Employers are less and less willing to pay for their employee's education if they show up clueless the first day.

It is generally acknowledged that the level of English proficiency among Japanese -- despite the amount of money spent on ELT in the country -- is below average compared to other countries. What are your views on this?
They can not read it, speak it or write it. I might put first year university students somewhere between the 1st and 8th grade reading levels in the States, speaking below 1st grade and writing somewhere between kindergarten and 3rd grade. How it compares to other countries? You'd have to delineate the countries. I know high school students who speak a foreign language fluently in the States and then many who don't. You need to stipulate the school and the country. Here it seems pretty uniform.

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