I know a couple of ALTs that are gems and work extra to help their schools, I also know of a few others that are horrible "teachers". Both are paid the same wage.
The BOE doesn't care about quality, if there is a foreign face teaching English they are happy.
A bit extreme. Education being a business, the bottom line is always going to be filling your quota and making a profit. But to say that teachers or educators don’t care about quality is not true.
If MEXT cared about quality, they would require ALTs to have qualifications.
For that matter, they'd require all English teachers to have TESOL quals and to speak English at a proficient level.
ESL in Japan isn't about education, it's about box-checking.
There are not enough teachers to fulfill that criteria nor is there enough budget. Schools are having an extremely difficult time just finding qualified Japanese teachers. I have a 69 year old JTE who kept her certificate all these years and never taught. It’s not just foreign teachers. Schools need more budget to attract teachers and teachers need more family and free time. It’s unfortunately the way it is.
Yes, one of the biggest issues is that teachers are overworked and underpaid, and school budgets keep getting cut.
But what I mainly meant is that a lot of the teachers teaching ESL didn't chose it, and were roped into it, and thus didn't focus on SLA or ESL pedagogy in their teacher ed programs.
Since MEXT doesn't take ESL seriously, there are few requirements for those who teach it, and most of the teachers teaching it aren't really qualified.
It is rare to meet a Japanese English teacher in the school system who has a solid ESL qualification.
And yes, unfortunately that's the way things are, and will continue to be, since MEXT doesn't really care about ESL education.
I'm not really disagreeing with you. But Japan doesn't teach ESL. If anything, it would be EFL. I'm sure that's what you meant, but there is a big difference between the two. And so, the focus of curriculum is vastly different.
Some of the more recent downfalls, though, that I have observed is younger teachers never having been abroad and experienced using English in daily life. I personally think it's a financial situation along with the weakening yen, though Covid, etc probably effected this as well. So whereas younger teachers in the past had overseas experience, newer teachers do not.
We could, of course, encourage MEXT to help English teachers study abroad. It's a good idea. But in the meantime, having native teachers interacting with JTEs is very important. I think many in this subreddit overlook the importance of ALTs / NETs spending time using the English language with the JTEs. It really has a great effect on those JTEs when they teach their classes.
>But Japan doesn't teach ESL. If anything, it would be EFL.
Yes, I know - but people tend to use ESL as the umbrella term, and there is no discernible difference between them in terms of pedagogy, which is what we were discussing. You didn't need to correct me.
I agree, except qualifications aren't necessarily needed to be a good and effective ALT, but starting English education at first elementary grade IS necessary, but isn't happening.
Oh? So someone who has no real understanding of second language acquisition processes and no knowledge of pedagogy or best practice can still be an effective teacher?
Better tell the schools and universities then, as we’re all wasting our time and money on education.
In 1987, almost 99% of all ALTs and CIRs were part of the JET program, but the rules and responsibilities for the local areas (自治体), the high salaries, strict conditions (like round-trip tickets), housing support, vacation and sick days, a dedicated coordinator, accepting decisions from CLAIR if issues happened, and the costs and time for screening and interviews were seen as 'too much.' Some local areas spent much more than required, while others spent the very minimum, leading to disparities often referred to as 'YMMV' issues. As time passed, many local areas, and then larger ones, including prefectures, cities, and other BOEs, began dropping out of the JET program. They reasoned that a corporate ALT (anyone deemed suitable) could match a JET's performance, naively believing they could maintain quality while saving money.
There are a number of other factors, too. Since 1987, the number of foreigners living in Japan has grown considerably, so finding someone locally with a visa is much easier than it was in 1987. Further, now that JET is well known, they have way more applicants than they have slots, this wasn't true 37 years ago. And then the bubble burst in 89.
Generally correct but I heard the competition in the 1st year was 200 to 1 and got even more competitive from there. But then there were only 1000 or so JETs, and no email, cell phones, or Starbucks. lol
I'm not sure about the first year but I had heard down the wire (so I take it with a grain of salt) that in the early 90s they had more jobs than applicants. That was after the bubble, though, and maybe it was just one year.
JET in the early days was a bit different than today - when I heard they extended it to 5 years I just about fell out of my chair.
AFAIK, BOEs don't "save money" by going dispatch, at least in pure yen terms. What they gain arm's-length distance from the ALT.
As you note, they don't have to look after them. No supervisor, no responsibility, so a lot of time savings (and thus money).
BOEs, like most businesses, want to be able to drop workers as soon as they can if budgets become an issue. They absolutely don't care about the aims of JET Programme, and the schools even less so.
The answer is simply, Money.
If you want a JET is as many schools as possible... the Japanese government is now spending that much money across hundreds, or more likely thousands, of school districts. I highly doubt the government has that kind of money on something they don't take very seriously.
Why doesn't the government just get rid of ALTs completely and spend the money on something that benefits the students more than random foreigners with random degrees?
i've been an ALT for over 10 years and apart from my first year i've been T2 in my classes doing pretty much f'all. I do random activities and powerpoints here and there but i don't feel any value being used out of me. My wife is also shocked by how much holiday we get in summer (half of July and all of August). It's a waste of tax payers' money but at the end of the day we are on this salary for a reason so.
Oh, this one's actually easy:
You first have to break the mindset that native speakers are the best to teach their own language. And that's just the FIRST hurdle.
This is usually followed by "Government isn't willing to spend money on qualified/licensed teachers", and the last one is "What makes you think a qualified teacher can come and teach English if they possess ZERO Japanese language ability?"
The last one isn't an issue. I taught ESL to immigrants to the US and my classes regularly had a dozen different L1s. You don't need the L1 to teach, but if you do, it it can help.
But you're 100% right about the other points.
Working as an Assistant Language Teacher (ALT) is a highly rewarding experience where you are directly involved in the development of children while simultaneously enriching both your students' lives and yours. We feel providing a positive impression of English and foreign cultures today is just as important as developing the student's English language ability. ALTs inspire children to gain the confidence and desire to develop their dreams of tomorrow.
Though your time in the classroom and in school are always the main focus, it is not the only time ALTs can make an impact. The ALT experience also offers the opportunity of becoming a part of the local community. By participating in town festivals, local activities, and other events, the ALT can also provide a good impression of foreigners and foreign culture to all Japanese citizens.
As an ALT, you have the opportunity to be involved in various types of experiences, learning more about Japan, its language, culture, and making new friends along the way. It provides you a positive impression of Japan and a once-in-a-lifetime experience that will stay with you the rest of your life.
Clearly, you don’t know much about BOEs and how they think. Some like JET because it’s easy and they get a foreign teacher. Others, most don’t like it because then they have to take care of the ALT and help them figure out things with living and support that a dispatch company normally takes care of. Which is why BOEs go with companies.
Also, if they don’t like the ALT then they can complain to the company and ask for a new ALT. They can even request that ALTs look white, be from America or have a specific accent.
As much as others will disagree, Filipinos are not native English Speakers. So BOEs might sometimes ask for a native Speaker. They might complain about a South African English accent (this actually happened to someone I knew. Her accent was hard to understand. She pronounced Black as Bleck.)
Anyway, those are reasons why BOEs don’t. They don’t care about quality but someone that they like (personally, accent and someone who won’t complain), they can choose the type of ALT they want too.
So many down votes from people who don't actually understand how to be a good ALT...
The biggest fundamental issue with the whole program is that neither the schools or the ALTs actually understand how to properly leverage an ALT to the best benefit of the students. This post touches on that in a way that's clearly lost on the people down voting it.
You can't really blame the ALTs for this, it's not their field of expertise, but the dispatch companies and BOEs have a lot of responsibility for why it's not generating the results they are looking for.
Wonderful.
Now, considering that foreigners aren't the rare commodity they once were and the idea that ALTs are 'introducing foreign cultures to Japanese students' has been roundly rendered obsolete, what value do ALTs actually *provide*?
And none of this wishy-washy 'dreams of tomorrow' nonsense, please; we're talking about ALT, not EPCOT.
You underestimate the desperation to live in Japan.
Not signing= no job or visa; no visa= getting kicked out of Japan. Which defeats the whole purpose.
>and everyone is happy?
That's quite the leap. A lot of people's general unhappiness, from what I've seen, isn't due to salaries. It usually stems from not liking the work itself.
Sure, let them government just whip out that golden check book....
JET is already a bit of a pork belly project anyway, what's adding a few billion more Yen to the pot?
Even if that happened, a lot of the people who get hired by the dispatch companies would not get hired by JET, that's why a lot of them are not on JET and are working for the dispatch companies in the first place. So, instead of having the bad dispatch company job they would just have no job.
Having worked with BOE trying to wrangle ALT in the past it's perfectly understandable why they would want to outsource that to a third party. Generally speaking I think just about every board of education would prefer to hire directly assuming the candidates were at the bare minimum basically competent and cooperative. But the reality is that the linguistic and cultural barriers often lead to some HR nightmares.
This isn't something that's entirely the ALT fault either as many BOE are quite poor at communicating effectively. But once those relationships turn sour it can become very difficult to salvage. And many start out on the wrong foot.
Even in terms of JET you get some people that bafflingly make it through the selection process who can't manage to show up to work on time for example. It's not fun having to tell a 24 year old adult that yes it isn't our responsibility to wake you up in the morning and that just because nobody told you explicitly that you were supposed to show up for work every single day that doesn't mean that you have the day off and that if you aren't sure you need to call someone and confirm your schedule. And I'm not getting called in for one off "I accidentally went to the wrong school, I accidentally thought I started an hour later than I actually started" or other minor issues like that. Those tend to happen and it's expected but it was cases where this person had basically just ingored their job multiple times and made absolutely zero effort to know their schedule that were giving the BOE lots of grief and convincing them to go third party.
And not mentioning the obvious problems like, drunk driving, pot, etc.
I know a couple of ALTs that are gems and work extra to help their schools, I also know of a few others that are horrible "teachers". Both are paid the same wage. The BOE doesn't care about quality, if there is a foreign face teaching English they are happy.
A bit extreme. Education being a business, the bottom line is always going to be filling your quota and making a profit. But to say that teachers or educators don’t care about quality is not true.
If MEXT cared about quality, they would require ALTs to have qualifications. For that matter, they'd require all English teachers to have TESOL quals and to speak English at a proficient level. ESL in Japan isn't about education, it's about box-checking.
There are not enough teachers to fulfill that criteria nor is there enough budget. Schools are having an extremely difficult time just finding qualified Japanese teachers. I have a 69 year old JTE who kept her certificate all these years and never taught. It’s not just foreign teachers. Schools need more budget to attract teachers and teachers need more family and free time. It’s unfortunately the way it is.
It seems to be you're arguing the problem isn't so much with the jet program specifically, but with the government underfunding education in general
Yes, one of the biggest issues is that teachers are overworked and underpaid, and school budgets keep getting cut. But what I mainly meant is that a lot of the teachers teaching ESL didn't chose it, and were roped into it, and thus didn't focus on SLA or ESL pedagogy in their teacher ed programs. Since MEXT doesn't take ESL seriously, there are few requirements for those who teach it, and most of the teachers teaching it aren't really qualified. It is rare to meet a Japanese English teacher in the school system who has a solid ESL qualification. And yes, unfortunately that's the way things are, and will continue to be, since MEXT doesn't really care about ESL education.
I'm not really disagreeing with you. But Japan doesn't teach ESL. If anything, it would be EFL. I'm sure that's what you meant, but there is a big difference between the two. And so, the focus of curriculum is vastly different. Some of the more recent downfalls, though, that I have observed is younger teachers never having been abroad and experienced using English in daily life. I personally think it's a financial situation along with the weakening yen, though Covid, etc probably effected this as well. So whereas younger teachers in the past had overseas experience, newer teachers do not. We could, of course, encourage MEXT to help English teachers study abroad. It's a good idea. But in the meantime, having native teachers interacting with JTEs is very important. I think many in this subreddit overlook the importance of ALTs / NETs spending time using the English language with the JTEs. It really has a great effect on those JTEs when they teach their classes.
>But Japan doesn't teach ESL. If anything, it would be EFL. Yes, I know - but people tend to use ESL as the umbrella term, and there is no discernible difference between them in terms of pedagogy, which is what we were discussing. You didn't need to correct me.
I agree, except qualifications aren't necessarily needed to be a good and effective ALT, but starting English education at first elementary grade IS necessary, but isn't happening.
Oh? So someone who has no real understanding of second language acquisition processes and no knowledge of pedagogy or best practice can still be an effective teacher? Better tell the schools and universities then, as we’re all wasting our time and money on education.
In 1987, almost 99% of all ALTs and CIRs were part of the JET program, but the rules and responsibilities for the local areas (自治体), the high salaries, strict conditions (like round-trip tickets), housing support, vacation and sick days, a dedicated coordinator, accepting decisions from CLAIR if issues happened, and the costs and time for screening and interviews were seen as 'too much.' Some local areas spent much more than required, while others spent the very minimum, leading to disparities often referred to as 'YMMV' issues. As time passed, many local areas, and then larger ones, including prefectures, cities, and other BOEs, began dropping out of the JET program. They reasoned that a corporate ALT (anyone deemed suitable) could match a JET's performance, naively believing they could maintain quality while saving money.
There are a number of other factors, too. Since 1987, the number of foreigners living in Japan has grown considerably, so finding someone locally with a visa is much easier than it was in 1987. Further, now that JET is well known, they have way more applicants than they have slots, this wasn't true 37 years ago. And then the bubble burst in 89.
Generally correct but I heard the competition in the 1st year was 200 to 1 and got even more competitive from there. But then there were only 1000 or so JETs, and no email, cell phones, or Starbucks. lol
I'm not sure about the first year but I had heard down the wire (so I take it with a grain of salt) that in the early 90s they had more jobs than applicants. That was after the bubble, though, and maybe it was just one year. JET in the early days was a bit different than today - when I heard they extended it to 5 years I just about fell out of my chair.
AFAIK, BOEs don't "save money" by going dispatch, at least in pure yen terms. What they gain arm's-length distance from the ALT. As you note, they don't have to look after them. No supervisor, no responsibility, so a lot of time savings (and thus money). BOEs, like most businesses, want to be able to drop workers as soon as they can if budgets become an issue. They absolutely don't care about the aims of JET Programme, and the schools even less so.
Yes, it's just that easy...
Money.
The answer is simply, Money. If you want a JET is as many schools as possible... the Japanese government is now spending that much money across hundreds, or more likely thousands, of school districts. I highly doubt the government has that kind of money on something they don't take very seriously.
This: **on something they don't take very seriously.**
Why doesn't the government just get rid of ALTs completely and spend the money on something that benefits the students more than random foreigners with random degrees?
i've been an ALT for over 10 years and apart from my first year i've been T2 in my classes doing pretty much f'all. I do random activities and powerpoints here and there but i don't feel any value being used out of me. My wife is also shocked by how much holiday we get in summer (half of July and all of August). It's a waste of tax payers' money but at the end of the day we are on this salary for a reason so.
Oh, this one's actually easy: You first have to break the mindset that native speakers are the best to teach their own language. And that's just the FIRST hurdle. This is usually followed by "Government isn't willing to spend money on qualified/licensed teachers", and the last one is "What makes you think a qualified teacher can come and teach English if they possess ZERO Japanese language ability?"
The last one isn't an issue. I taught ESL to immigrants to the US and my classes regularly had a dozen different L1s. You don't need the L1 to teach, but if you do, it it can help. But you're 100% right about the other points.
Or at least set up a more rigid qualifications/experience and training system for ALTs.
This!!
Working as an Assistant Language Teacher (ALT) is a highly rewarding experience where you are directly involved in the development of children while simultaneously enriching both your students' lives and yours. We feel providing a positive impression of English and foreign cultures today is just as important as developing the student's English language ability. ALTs inspire children to gain the confidence and desire to develop their dreams of tomorrow. Though your time in the classroom and in school are always the main focus, it is not the only time ALTs can make an impact. The ALT experience also offers the opportunity of becoming a part of the local community. By participating in town festivals, local activities, and other events, the ALT can also provide a good impression of foreigners and foreign culture to all Japanese citizens. As an ALT, you have the opportunity to be involved in various types of experiences, learning more about Japan, its language, culture, and making new friends along the way. It provides you a positive impression of Japan and a once-in-a-lifetime experience that will stay with you the rest of your life.
Who let Chat GPT loose?
Clearly, you don’t know much about BOEs and how they think. Some like JET because it’s easy and they get a foreign teacher. Others, most don’t like it because then they have to take care of the ALT and help them figure out things with living and support that a dispatch company normally takes care of. Which is why BOEs go with companies. Also, if they don’t like the ALT then they can complain to the company and ask for a new ALT. They can even request that ALTs look white, be from America or have a specific accent. As much as others will disagree, Filipinos are not native English Speakers. So BOEs might sometimes ask for a native Speaker. They might complain about a South African English accent (this actually happened to someone I knew. Her accent was hard to understand. She pronounced Black as Bleck.) Anyway, those are reasons why BOEs don’t. They don’t care about quality but someone that they like (personally, accent and someone who won’t complain), they can choose the type of ALT they want too.
Here's a tissue if you're done wanking, kid.
So many down votes from people who don't actually understand how to be a good ALT... The biggest fundamental issue with the whole program is that neither the schools or the ALTs actually understand how to properly leverage an ALT to the best benefit of the students. This post touches on that in a way that's clearly lost on the people down voting it. You can't really blame the ALTs for this, it's not their field of expertise, but the dispatch companies and BOEs have a lot of responsibility for why it's not generating the results they are looking for.
Wonderful. Now, considering that foreigners aren't the rare commodity they once were and the idea that ALTs are 'introducing foreign cultures to Japanese students' has been roundly rendered obsolete, what value do ALTs actually *provide*? And none of this wishy-washy 'dreams of tomorrow' nonsense, please; we're talking about ALT, not EPCOT.
Why doesn't MEXT just require all English teachers to have proficiency in English and TESOL qualifications?
You think the government has money?
They pay tons to dispatch companies, more than some JET wages, just the ALTs don’t get that money
But their mates own the dispatch company so it's all good
That would mean everyone living long term in Japan is out of a job as an ALT
[удалено]
They want to live in Japan
[удалено]
No job you get deported and working for low wages is a lot more wages then most of the world.
[удалено]
You underestimate the desperation to live in Japan. Not signing= no job or visa; no visa= getting kicked out of Japan. Which defeats the whole purpose.
So you want people south east asians to keep away instead of working for better wages in Japan?
[удалено]
How are the offers crappy if it is double or triple the average way for much less work?
>and everyone is happy? That's quite the leap. A lot of people's general unhappiness, from what I've seen, isn't due to salaries. It usually stems from not liking the work itself.
Sure, let them government just whip out that golden check book.... JET is already a bit of a pork belly project anyway, what's adding a few billion more Yen to the pot?
Because profit for big companies and kickbacks
No thanks. I know I work very hard for my better salary!
Seriously?
Even if that happened, a lot of the people who get hired by the dispatch companies would not get hired by JET, that's why a lot of them are not on JET and are working for the dispatch companies in the first place. So, instead of having the bad dispatch company job they would just have no job.
Having worked with BOE trying to wrangle ALT in the past it's perfectly understandable why they would want to outsource that to a third party. Generally speaking I think just about every board of education would prefer to hire directly assuming the candidates were at the bare minimum basically competent and cooperative. But the reality is that the linguistic and cultural barriers often lead to some HR nightmares. This isn't something that's entirely the ALT fault either as many BOE are quite poor at communicating effectively. But once those relationships turn sour it can become very difficult to salvage. And many start out on the wrong foot. Even in terms of JET you get some people that bafflingly make it through the selection process who can't manage to show up to work on time for example. It's not fun having to tell a 24 year old adult that yes it isn't our responsibility to wake you up in the morning and that just because nobody told you explicitly that you were supposed to show up for work every single day that doesn't mean that you have the day off and that if you aren't sure you need to call someone and confirm your schedule. And I'm not getting called in for one off "I accidentally went to the wrong school, I accidentally thought I started an hour later than I actually started" or other minor issues like that. Those tend to happen and it's expected but it was cases where this person had basically just ingored their job multiple times and made absolutely zero effort to know their schedule that were giving the BOE lots of grief and convincing them to go third party. And not mentioning the obvious problems like, drunk driving, pot, etc.
The admin that goes with managing thousands of foreign workers is just easier to outsource in many cases.
Cause direct hire pays more
Why don’t the government just stop the dancing monkey gravy train programme and spend the money on real teachers?