Posted on 02/22/2011 3:14:08 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Kayla Chung sits in her advanced Japanese language class at Rosemont High School but learns nothing about how to read or write the language.
That's because Chung's teacher – a long-term substitute – does not know Japanese.
"All we do is sit in class, watch movies on Japan and take notes," said Chung, 16, who is in Japanese III. "I'm pretty sure that's not how Japanese is supposed to be taught."
The situation at Rosemont highlights the difficulties schools face when offering specialized programs that have relatively few qualified teachers.
Rosemont's popular Japanese language classes were previously taught by a woman who went on maternity leave in August. The substitute the school hired to fill in for her quit in November.
.... An art teacher with a background in Asian studies was brought on in December and will remain until April when the regular teacher returns from maternity leave.
The substitute, who is also teaching Japanese I, II and IV, does not know the language and instead focuses on the culture and history of the country.
.....Chung, the Rosemont student, said she will sit out Japanese III for the rest of the year knowing she won't be able to talk with the school's Japanese exchange student any time soon.
"I feel like we are just getting BS work so we can get class credits," Chung said. "To me, these credits don't mean anything because I'm not learning what I should."
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
Maternity leave from August to April? Wow! What’s up with that?
In modern Educationism, “real teachers” don’t need to know anything and those who actually know something are locked out of teaching.
Gojira!!! hey, are you a fellow big lizzard fan? What about Giant Robot?
Great point!!
And to add to that.
Can you imagine how LARGE the health care union will be?
The reasons for that are buried deep in American history, but what it amounts to is that AFTER the Japanese-Americans were released from the government's camps they sought to more fully assimilate their children so that this was less likely to happen to them in the future.
So, nobody taught their kids Japanese language. A few did, but the overwhelming majority didn't.
Even the ladies brought back by GIs from the Orient didn't teach the kids Japanese either. The few Japanese immigrants or long term business representatives here didn't get into the teaching of Japanese. Japanese Americans in Hawaii may well have let their kids learn the local Creoles but they made sure they used English as their FIRST and ONLY language for purposes of education.
By the time you get through the years where the Ise are mostly gone and the Neisei have taken over and dominated JA culture, that third generation ~ and even moreso with the fourth and fifth generation ~ flocked to the professions of accounting, law, medicine, architecture, and to the arts. Japanese American artists and musicians abound in America and live in every city and town.
Those folks don't become Japanese language teachers, or even teachers!
Credentials aren't a problem ~
She must have been off starting with the June summer let out. Soooooooo.....let's say she comes back the end of April and then gets off again the first part of June -- that must be the ONE month she has to teach in a school year to keep some benefit.
Truly shameless.
Jus' the way it is although Japanese is quickly catching up by absorbing tens of thousands of English words.
Chung is a pretty common KOREAN name, and not often a CHINESE name in America, although there are Chinese and Koreans named Chung.
Thank you for the information.
It seems like something so obscure that the school should not offer it.
That sounds like a good solution to me but the school would be admitting (and publicizing) their incompetence, plus the Japanese kid might correctly demand to be paid.
An added benefit might be that the kids could learn all the Japanese swear words.
Can you learn Japanese at your home school?
Yes! It sounds like she doesn't need to get her self-esteem from one of those fraudulent "My Child is an Honor Student" bumper sticker that teacher's unions pass around to make tax payers and parents think education is happening in public schools. The smart (really intelligent) kids know it's a scam.
So VERY true!!! I used to teach in the Continuing Ed/Corporate Division for 2 local colleges but wasn’t “qualified” to teach on the academic side. What a joke! In other words, I WAS qualified to teach adults and those in industry who actually used and needed to learn the programs that I was teaching (non-credit) but I WAS NOT qualified to teach the same subjects to mush-heads attending on either government or mommy & daddy’s money for credit.
“She must have been off starting with the June summer let out. Soooooooo.....let’s say she comes back the end of April and then gets off again the first part of June — that must be the ONE month she has to teach in a school year to keep some benefit.”
Not her fault it was probably negotiated by thug unions.
Japanese is clearly related to the language currently in use in Korea and much of Eastern Siberia. It's oldest vocabulary is substantially Turkic in origin. It is also a relatively recent language with its earliest literature suggesting it was BROUGHT TO Eastern Siberia, Korea and Japan by Western Chinese Turkic speaking conquerors about 1600 years ago.
An older theory has it arising in place among the existing Jomon and Ya Yoi cultures, but more recent work with ancient Sakha/Yakuts royal accounts/journals pins this language down to what is now the largest Russian province/republic in the Far East.
That population differs from those around it in that they herd cattle as well as horses, yaks, goats, sheep and reindeer! For all practical purposes they were part of the Chinese civilization to the East and were their technological equal. They traveled North and South from Siberia to Eastern India and appear to be identical to the Sakha mentioned in the Mahabarata.
These are the people who migrated from Siberia to Korea and Japan to escape the climate anomaly that brought the Dark Ages.
The public schools are not the place to learn Japanese. Best bet would be to find a Japanese Buddhist Dojo and see if they have someone who teaches.
Huh, so Japanese does have ties to Indo-European via Turkic. Japan did borrow China’s symbols, but apparently didn’t use the Chinese meanings.
You can buy a full set of Pimsleur, Japanese language CDs for $470, and the class could listen to them together. They could get rid of the “teacher” and save tons of money.
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