Giving consideration to CLD children.
I had a chance to give a speech at “Kansai District Seminar”, which was held by The Society for Teaching Japanese as a Foreign Language at YMCA Osaka branch, on September 6th, 2014. The subject of the speech was “Japanese language education in the Age of Globalization -giving consideration to social minority group- “.
Below, I excerpt “1. Introduction” part from the 6th Kansai District Seminar Journal 2014.
- Introduction
The purpose of this paper is to give and share an opportunity to think about: what must be considered and how far it needs to be considered in the area of “Japanese language education”; should “Japanese language education” remain unchanged in this age of “globalization”.
In order to meet the needs of the times or to be a step ahead of the times, The Society for Teaching Japanese as a Foreign Language has seen and dealt with the problems in Japanese language education. That can be clearly seen in the annual conferences, and the editing policies and the features in their journals, Teaching Japanese. However, when you think about the “CLD children”, which is the main topic of this paper, you will come to realize that this problem has difficult aspects and is totally different from Japanese language education for adults who have specific purposes to live in Japan. We all know that it is an important and urgent task in Japanese society today, but we may be inactive for dealing with this problem by saying, “It is difficult to handle the problems of the youths,” or “That’s out of my field.” It is very complicated when teaching a language to children whose mother tongue is not yet fully developed, and who are still developing both physically and mentally. When teaching young children, close attention is required so their mother tongue will not be lost. Moreover, cross-cultural education and developmental psychology issues are involved, and also parents’ thoughts come into play. Many of the school officials and the researchers are reluctant to deal with the issues on the CLD children, excusing themselves as being fully occupied with their routine works and research on “Japanese language education to university students” or “Japanese for specific purposes (JSP)”. We know that there are foreign-oriented children struggling at public schools, but we will not be able to solve the problem with perfunctory interests and sense of justice since we have never experienced such situation. It is obvious that the knowledge and the experiences of Japanese language education for adults will not be a big help when solving such problems. Furthermore, the cabinet has begun to consider “the acceptance of 200,000 immigrants every year” (as quoted in the Sankei news on March 13, 2014); such political movement may force us into a corner and we may end up stop thinking.
Even so, the number of CLD children born and growing in Japan is increasing, and we need to do something immediately. In journals, Teaching Japanese, the problems of the youths have been taken up for discussion many times (Ito 1999; Ishii 2006, etc.) At conferences, many panel presentations and research presentations on this topic have been given. However, I tempt to deal with this topic today, because I have been involved in this problem for almost 10 years. Also, I assume there may be people who distance themselves from foreign students, because they are not the experts. Therefore, I would like to organize some basic knowledge about bilingual education and help people understand it. By doing so, I hope people will, if not some sense of commitment, have some concern for CLD children (when they meet CLD children, they may have positive attitude and may even encourage CLD children). When talking about the language education to foreign-oriented (or rather “immigrant”) children whose mother tongue is not Japanese, I believe attention needs to be paid to something more than the “education” of “Japanese language”, or else we will miss a big and precious thing. I would like to start imagining an ideal language education for CLD children instead of just dealing with the problems promptly. I also expect further development in the research of this field, so discussions maybe held based on the experimental studies. This society is “The Society for Teaching Japanese as a Foreign Language”, but focusing rigidly on the “education” of “Japanese language” is not enough. As CLD children are exposed to Japanese during the critical period, it is certainly natural and correct to anticipate their whole-person development and cognitive development when we think about their overall bilingual education, both their first-language or mother tongue and Japanese, the local language. Rather, I believe that is the demand of the time and the society.