From August 26 th to September 5 th , 2016, I went to Bangkok, Thailand. There were three major events during this visit. I will report in order.
1. A visit to “Bilingual class”, Parents Association (Sharing group)
This Japanese supplementary class was founded in 1997 by Japanese parents, and is operated by JMHERAT (Japanese Mother Tongue and Heritage Language Education and Research Association of Thailand). Japanese children who currently live in Thailand, and children of Thai and Japanese international marriage parents study there. They have Japanese class once a week on Saturdays at Japanese association in Thailand. There are 25 students enrolled, from the age of 3 to age of 13. It is operated as a volunteer work, so there are only a few Japanese language education experts. And sometimes, the classes are taught by parents. So, there are many things that they don’t know and many things that they need to work on, but it is meaningful that there is a place where the children can share information and experiences that are related to Japanese language. Classes consist of kindergarten, lower grades, mid grades, and higher grades. In the kindergarten class, teachers read books to children, and they do handicraft work using Japanese language. In the lower grades class, they mainly study through athletics and learn names of body parts, body motion and words for measurement. They also pick up some events and try to connect language and letters. In the mid grades class, they make “my album”. They collect pictures that best describe themselves and make their own album. They also ask their parents to write letters to them, and include that in their albums. There were only two students in the higher grades class, but they were working on activities that require high Japanese skills; reading a map with the theme of “the town and me”, walking around in the town to know what are on the street, looking for the words in town, and comparing Japan and Thailand to see the differences between these countries.
On the day I visited there, they didn’t have classes due to the summer festival, but 17 students were at the festival. The students did yo-yo fishing, played quoits, and ate Yakisoba with their parents. And it was nice that I had an opportunity to talk with the parents.
Also, they make it a policy not to aim “the age-appropriate level of Japanese skills”. It is reasonable considering the fact that social class and Japanese skills vary widely among the students. Another good point is that they don’t force the students to “only use Japanese”. If the students couldn’t understand something in Japanese, they can ask or explain in Thai. This flexibility is very important. So, Thai parents can easily come and observe the class. Every student differs in the language that he/she is good at, so if the students are forced to speak in only Japanese, there will be students who can’t keep up with other students in the class. That will be a total loss. It is also important to have communication with parents who can’t speak Japanese well.
In the higher grades class, and among the teachers, they use LINE to communicate, but I couldn’t ask much about it.
( Japanese Mother Tongue and Heritage Language Education and Research Association of Thailand (JMHERAT) )
This school is aiming to be certified as International Baccalaureate school, and is one of the top schools in Thailand. I visited 7 th grade and 9 th grade classes there.
In the 7 th grade class, they were writing an interview article about job on the assumption that the students could interview their future selves. Then making presentations using Power Point. In the 9 th grade class, they read the novel “Red Cocoon” by Kobo Abe, and prepared presentations in the form of a movie about the story before or after the story “Red Cocoon”. Both classes are on a high level as I expected. The classes were taught in active-learning style, and the teachers were there to make adjustments and support the students. So, they don’t conduct a kind of achievement test to see the Japanese language levels of the students.
All the children have lived in many different countries along with their parents, and their Japanese language abilities are diverse. There are 18 students studying Japanese and they meet 5 times a week. Other classes are taught mainly in English. In the classes I visited, there were 7 students in the 7 th grade class, and 18 students in the 9 th grade class. It is a privilege to have such small classes. Classes in higher grades were taught to prepare the students for International Baccalaureate exams. However, the tuition of this school is 100,000 yen per month, which only few parents can afford. So, only the families in high social strata come to this school. It was literally an elite school.
I had a chance to talk with three students who have just graduated from the university.
1) The student was born in Thailand, and spent 1 st grade year and 2 nd grade year in Japan. From 3 rd grade to junior high school, the student attended Japanese school in Thailand. Then he/she went to high school in Thailand and graduated from the private university in Thailand with Japanese language major. The student had struggled with the classes in Thailand due to the weakness in reading and writing of Thai.
2) The student lived in Japan until the age of 9, and in Thailand after the age of 9 till now. The mother suggested science majors, but the student was anxious that he/she might have forgotten Japanese, so he/she majored in Japanese language, hoping to clarify some uncomfortable feelings he/she had about Japan. The student had asked the father to send some Japanese Manga books, and had studied Japanese using the internet, but really studied Japanese at Chulalongkorn University majoring in Japanese. He/She now works at a Japanese company, adjusting the communication gap between Thai employees and Japanese employees. He/She has good memories about living in Japan when he/she was young, but does not wish to go back to Japan now.
3) The student majored in science, because everybody suggested to do so. But he/she wasn’t good at mathematics, so decided to study Japanese, taking advantage of being Thai-Japanese. (It seems like there is such common idea that science major is superior in Thailand.) When there was a big flood in 2013, the classes were canceled at the university, so he/she stayed in his/her room reading books by Haruki Murakami. He/She wrote his/her thesis on it. He/She has passed JLPT 1 st grade.
From their stories about their experiences, I recognized how the children crossing borders face new environment, and go through struggles, especially in the aspects of languages.
During my stay in Thailand, I joined a sightseeing tour to Kanchanaburi. I joined a typical sightseeing tour, and could enjoy cave temples, elephant-back riding, and rafting, but didn’t have any chance to hear the history of Thai-Burma Railway. I went to the sight where the movie “The Bridge on The River Kwai” was shot, but all I did was taking a picture of the bridge, and saw the parking lot and souvenir shop. I did ride the railway for 30 minutes, but what I regret the most is that I couldn’t visit the War Museum.
From a train window
Tapioca fields
What I thought after this visit to Thailand
I wonder if I would remember these students I met in Thailand when I see Thai-Japanese children growing up in Japan. We are insisting on the importance of bilingual education, with the mother tongue of the parents. But we face many difficulties that we must overcome. The reason why there are quite many Thai-Japanese bilingual children in Thailand is because of the high value of Japanese language in Thailand. But in Japan, not much attention is paid for Thai language . Thus, many children of Thai parent(s) grow up to be Japanese monolingual in Japan. Among the international marriage couples, in most of the cases, the husband is Japanese and the wife is Thai. There is also a gender biased problem such as when Thai women come to Japan, they lose the right to decide the child’s mother tongue.
There was a case of Noriko Cardelon in 2009, in which Filipino parents were deported due to illegal stay in Japan, but their child, who only spoke Japanese, was allowed to stay in Japan as an act of special measures. If you look at this from a different point of view, this policy allows children who can only speak Japanese to stay in Japan. Then, what if that child could speak Filipino? Probably she was deported. Now, there are parents who raise their children to be Japanese monolingual, so they will be allowed to stay in Japan. It is a strategy and craftiness of the vulnerable people, trying to make use of their current situation. But it means the loss of the mother tongue between the parents and the children. The problem is the environment that forced the parents to choose such strategy. If this problem is left untouched, the children may end up being double-limited and may struggle to overcome it. Or there may be cases that monolingual children in Japan start looking down on their parents who can’t speak Japanese well. Or the bond between parents and children may be lost, because they cannot have deep discussions.
The number of “Children crossing borders” regardless of their own will is definitely increasing. And the factors affecting the linguistic environment of the children vary in each case and is hard to find a formulaic solutions. But we need to face this problem since this phenomenon is observed more and more. Linguistic diversity involves the difficulty in communication and it costs a lot. But now, we live in a society where your neighbors speak different languages, or your family members speak different languages. If you try to assimilate into one dominant language (Japanese in case of living in Japan), many people may suffer from the loss of their mother tongues. It is not easy to find a solution like a cure-all, but we can’t pretend as if we don’t see the problem. It will lead to loneliness, alienation, parting, hatred, or even to a social problem such as violence in the future. Nobody thinks it is possible to adopt a policy that bans international marriage in this age. To become bilingual by maintaining and improving the mother tongue and acquiring Japanese, it requires one’s big effort. But also help and support of the parents and the adults around him is essential. If there are children who are willing to become bilingual, please praise and encourage them. They may be anxious and unconfident. Thus, we will be able to raise highly skilled professionals who can tolerate different cultures and who are emotionally stable.