Nationalism in the classroom Part 2
Doesn’t seem to be the season for whale hunting, so the only Japan story in the international news today must be about nationalism I guess- probably connected to school textbooks. Let’s have a little look through the International Herald Tribune, shouldn’t take long…
yes, here we are, this time it’s the Okinawans who are complaining and protesting about dodgy representations of Japanese history. At least it didn’t involve the Chinese this time…
First of all, let’s make it clear that the average Japanese school textbook is not half as nationalistic as the average Chinese or Korean one, and even the museum in the Yasukuni Jinja shrine where the war criminals are buried is not as one sided as the museum where the Japanese kept political prisoners in Seoul (it was called the National Museum of Evil Japanese Things, I believe), although it’s no Imperial War Museum London either. And from the other side the average British expat who says that the reason why England is so great is because people aren’t nationalistic is, apart from the inherent contradiction in what they are saying, forgetting that the tabloid newspaper The Sun outsells teachers’ favourite left-leaner The Guardian 8 to 1 or so.
And yet, and yet… you do get the classic small minded “Japan has four seasons, do they have four seasons in your country?” questions, the totally ‘innocent’ “I’m worried my neighbours might be Chinese” stories and the old guys who are only studying English so they can tell foreigners how great Japan is Japan. And those are just the things that do come out, in a country where manners and lack of fluency means the truth often stays in. Still, for whatever reason I have heard less offensive remarks in 4 years in Japan than I heard in 4 months in Blackburn, UK. I do have a inkling that those feelings are lurking deep inside some of my sulky students though, a conclusion that goes back to one time when I saw it all come out…
I have had one experience with a Chinese student in the UK that made me look at all my students a bit differently and made me come to the conclusion that such nationalistic feelings do have an impact, but one that can lie underground when everything is going swimmingly and then flare up when things go wrong, you feel stressed or, in the worst cases, when your life falls apart.
Having a low Elementary class that was exactly half mainland Chinese and half Spanish speakers (mainly Columbians) I had a real hard time keeping the communication in English and resorted to the Yellow Card (warning for speaking your own language) and Red Card (chucked out till next lesson for speaking your language again) system. I always had to brandish a few yellow cards, but the response to a second reaching to the shirt pocket usually meant an actual red card was not necessary. In fact, it was only ignored so many times in one class that it left me no choice but to bring it out for real once. The Chinese student who had to leave for the last 15 minutes of that class accepted his punishment, but not before giving a five minute half-shouted speech on how Columbians hate Chinese, much to their shock and mine.
Digging around a bit after that incident, it turned out that the accommodation staff etc. in that UK language school often had complaints from Chinese students that centred around paranoid theories like “I have problems with my (host parents) because they hate Chinese”, not something I ever heard about other nationalities but again might be lurking in the less bolshie nationalities too.
This was a few years ago before the Chinese looked like they were going to rule the world again, so if things don’t go as swimmingly with the Chinese economy as everyone expects you can expect the anti-Japanese riots to get a whole lot less official and a whole lot more passionate.
To see my tips on how to deal with that in your own small as a teacher and foreigner abroad, click on the “Nationalism” category below.