Language minority students in Japanese classrooms
Encyclopedia
Minority students can be found throughout the entire Japanese education system. An incomplete list of possible cultural and or language minorities represented in Japanese schools include:
Okinawans and Ainu
are considered to be speakers of Japanese
, and as a result are not considered language minorities. Descendants of Koreans and Chinese who have lived in Japan for many generations also speak Japanese as their first language
. However, other non-Japanese-speaking children, such as the children of Japanese World War II orphans raised in China
, who have been returning to Japan in the past decades, have introduced an element of language minorities to schools in Japan since the late 1970s.
in 1990 states the following:
ist model.
Education in Japan
is compulsory for Japanese students up through the ninth grade. All children of Japanese parents automatically receive notification when they are about to begin school. However, for children of foreigners living in Japan, only those children whose parents have informed the local town office that they want their children to be enrolled in school receive a notification. As a result, the onus for educating language minorities in Japan falls on the local school or school board and not the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology
(MEXT).
A 1996 MEXT study group decided: there is no need for [language minorities'] native language education (Vaipae, p. 199 in Noguchi and Santos).
had the lowest number of these students, while Gunma
had the highest concentration.
(L1) and in Japanese - the second language
(L2) - at their schools.
Cummins and Swain (1986) argued that by not allowing for L1 support in the L2 environment of a minority-language-student will significantly affect the student's linguistic, cognitive, social and psychological development.
In the Cummins & Swain model, bilingualism within each bilingual child must be seen as complementary languages. Providing support to the L1 will allow for cognitive transfer to the L2. (In immersion
programs, the opposite has also been shown: as those majority-language students are together learning in their L2, the L1 also improves significantly.)
Yet, for minority language students in an L2 classroom situation, learning in an L2 does not imply that knowledge transfer will occur. It is possible that instead of having bilinguals or monolinguals, schools could produce half-linguals - half-literate in one or two languages. Early research by Cummins (1979) has shown that an ability to use the L2 in the playground does NOT imply that the student has the academic language to perform in the classroom. A distinction between Basic Interpersonal Communicative Skills
(BICS) and Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency
(CALP) needs to be made therefore by educators and administrators to assist minority language students in the classroom.
Furthermore, Japanese children learn a writing system that involves both phonetic syllabaries
(hiragana
and katakana
) and a pictographic writing system (kanji
). Minority students who enter Japanese schools are starting with a large deficit in reading skills. The student must catch up and then keep up without the prerequisite knowledge-base of the spoken language.
Cook (1999) writes: [t]he moral for teaching is to make the L2 non-threatening and to allow the learner to persevere long enough to feel the benefits.. Yet, Cummins (cited in Fujita, p. 17) writes: [s]chools reflect the societal power structure by eradicating minority students’ language and identity and then attributing their school failure to inherent deficiencies.
Since there is no goal for maintaining either the L2 of returnee children nor the L1 of minority language students, with the exceptions of a few schools, immersion (or bilingualism) is not a Japanese educational reality. However, for the majority of minority language students in Japan, submersion is more appropriate (see Language immersion
for more information on submersion in the classroom).
With much linguistic support from society, school, and the family, returnee children are able to at least make the transition to the L1
(Japanese) channel, with various shades of ease and difficulty. For non-Japanese students, the situation is much different.
(L1) culture and in doing so have a tendency to minimise minority language students' home language, culture and identity. Decisions to ignore the home culture and language of minority students, or of the Second language
(L2) of returnee children, create a number of problems within the language minority student related to self, including cognitive development
and language proficiency
. (See also Richard, 2001.)
Vaipae discusses an American junior high school student who is without any language support from his school. The student was a bilingual (Spanish and English) and biliterate eighth grader when he arrived in Japan. Unfortunately, the school provided no Japanese as a second language instruction. She writes: [i]ronically, he received a failing grade in English because he could not read the Japanese instructions on the term test. Although his parents had requested that the readings of the Chinese characters be provided in the easily-mastered hiragana
syllabary, the [Japanese] English teacher refused to provide this linguistic support, pointing out that it would be unfair to other students if the tests were not identical.
Another struggling minority student in Japan, a Peruvian sixth-grader, tells Vaipae: [i]n my country I had a good life... everything goes as I like, for instance, soccer, volleyball, swimming, running, talking and studying. I was really good at these things and I also had many friends. Now I am good at nothing.
Hirataka, Koishi, & Kato (in Noguchi and Fotos) studied the children of Brazilian workers in and around Fujisawa
in Kanagawa
where they lived with their laborer parents. The parents of the children from the study speak L1-Portuguese
and have little to no Japanese language ability. The schools that the subjects attend provide very little L1 language support. Portuguese remains the L1 at home, but the students' productive abilities in Portuguese has attrited
in varying degrees depending on among other things, age of arrival in Japan and parental support. Japanese is the language of the school and the surrounding community. As a result, children are shifting from Portuguese to Japanese. Communication between parent and child is increasingly difficult.
Cummins & Swain write: there may be threshold levels of linguistic competence which a bilingual child must attain both in order to avoid cognitive disadvantages and to allow the potentially beneficial aspects of becoming bilingual to influence his cognitive functioning (p.18).
Richard (2001) argued that as Japan welcomes unskilled laborers for the menial 3K jobs: kitsui, kitanai and kikenna—in English, Dirty, Dangerous and Demeaning
—not to mention the thousands of foreign female sex workers, that Japan also has a legal and moral obligation to welcome those workers’ children.
- other Asian, particularly Korean, ChineseChinese people in JapanChinese people in Japan consist of migrants from China to Japan and their descendants. They have a history going back for centuries.- Population and distribution :...
, FilipinoFilipinos in JapanFilipinos in Japan formed a population of 202,592 individuals at year-end 2007, making them Japan's fourth-largest foreign community, according to the statistics of the Ministry of Justice. Their population reached as high as 245,518 in 1998, but fell to 144,871 individuals in 2000 before...
, ThaiThai peopleThe Thai people, or Siamese, are the main ethnic group of Thailand and are part of the larger Tai ethnolinguistic peoples found in Thailand and adjacent countries in Southeast Asia as well as southern China. Their language is the Thai language, which is classified as part of the Kradai family of...
, MongolianMongolians in JapanThere is a small community of Mongols in Japan, representing a minor portion of emigration from Mongolia. , there were 4,753 registered foreigners of Mongol nationality residing in Japan, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, up from 2,545 in 2003....
and VietnameseVietnamese people in Japanformed Japan's eighth-largest community of foreign residents in 2004, ahead of Indonesians in Japan and behind Thais in Japan, according to the statistics of the Ministry of Justice... - Europeans
- North Americans
- Latin AmericaLatin AmericaLatin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
n, particularly BrazilianBrazilians in JapanThere is a significant community of Brazilians in Japan, consisting largely but not exclusively of Brazilians of Japanese ethnicity.-Migration history:...
and PeruPeruPeru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....
vian - Returnee childrenKikokushijoand are Japanese-language terms referring to the children of Japanese expatriates who take part of their education outside of Japan. The former term is used to refer to children who have returned to Japan, while the latter refers to such children while they are still overseas...
- bicultural children whose parents are from separate cultures and/or who speak separate languages
- Ryukyuan people
- Ainu peopleAinu peopleThe , also called Aynu, Aino , and in historical texts Ezo , are indigenous people or groups in Japan and Russia. Historically they spoke the Ainu language and related varieties and lived in Hokkaidō, the Kuril Islands, and much of Sakhalin...
Okinawans and Ainu
Ainu people
The , also called Aynu, Aino , and in historical texts Ezo , are indigenous people or groups in Japan and Russia. Historically they spoke the Ainu language and related varieties and lived in Hokkaidō, the Kuril Islands, and much of Sakhalin...
are considered to be speakers of Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
, and as a result are not considered language minorities. Descendants of Koreans and Chinese who have lived in Japan for many generations also speak Japanese as their first language
First language
A first language is the language a person has learned from birth or within the critical period, or that a person speaks the best and so is often the basis for sociolinguistic identity...
. However, other non-Japanese-speaking children, such as the children of Japanese World War II orphans raised in China
Japanese orphans in China
Japanese orphans in China consist primarily of children left behind by Japanese families repatriating to Japan in the aftermath of World War II. According to Chinese government figures, roughly 2,800 Japanese children were left behind in China after the war, 90% in Inner Mongolia and northeast...
, who have been returning to Japan in the past decades, have introduced an element of language minorities to schools in Japan since the late 1970s.
Obligations
The International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families from the 69th plenary meeting of the United NationsUnited Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
in 1990 states the following:
- State of employment shall pursue a policy... aimed at facilitating the integration of children of migrant workers in the local school system, particularly in respect of teaching them the local language.
- States of employment shall endeavor to facilitate for the children of migrant workers the teaching of their mother tongue and culture.
- States of employment may provide special schemes of education in the mother tongue of children of migrant workers.
Reality
Despite the presence of large numbers of non-Japanese or non-Japanese speaking students in the Japanese school system, the education system is designed to teach all students equally, despite their abilities, in what is known as the assimilationCultural assimilation
Cultural assimilation is a socio-political response to demographic multi-ethnicity that supports or promotes the assimilation of ethnic minorities into the dominant culture. The term assimilation is often used with regard to immigrants and various ethnic groups who have settled in a new land. New...
ist model.
Education in Japan
Education in Japan
In Japan, education is compulsory at the elementary and lower secondary levels. Approximately 98% of all students progress to the upper secondary level, which is voluntary . Most students attend public schools through the lower secondary level, but private education is popular at the upper...
is compulsory for Japanese students up through the ninth grade. All children of Japanese parents automatically receive notification when they are about to begin school. However, for children of foreigners living in Japan, only those children whose parents have informed the local town office that they want their children to be enrolled in school receive a notification. As a result, the onus for educating language minorities in Japan falls on the local school or school board and not the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology
Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (Japan)
The , also known as MEXT or Monkashō, is one of the ministries of the Japanese government.The Meiji government created the first Ministry of Education in 1871....
(MEXT).
A 1996 MEXT study group decided: there is no need for [language minorities'] native language education (Vaipae, p. 199 in Noguchi and Santos).
Numbers
Noguchi (in Noguchi and Fotos) wrote that the number of language minority students in Japanese schools surpassed 17,000 in 1998 (p.15). Of these students, the majority speak Portuguese, Chinese, Spanish, Tagalog, Korean, Vietnamese or English (in descending order). According to a MEXT survey that Vaipae studied, another 39 other languages are represented in Japanese public schools (p.187). Most of these students are concentrated in industrial centers and urban areas, however, all prefectures had language minority students. AkitaAkita Prefecture
is a prefecture of Japan located in the Tōhoku Region of northern Honshu, the main island of Japan. The capital is the city of Akita.- History :The area of Akita has been created from the ancient provinces of Dewa and Mutsu....
had the lowest number of these students, while Gunma
Gunma Prefecture
is a prefecture of Japan located in the northwest corner of the Kantō region on Honshu island. Its capital is Maebashi.- History :The remains of a Paleolithic man were found at Iwajuku, Gunma Prefecture, in the early 20th century and there is a public museum there.Japan was without horses until...
had the highest concentration.
Needs
The language needs of these children vary from student to student, and is dependent on a number of factors, including: length of stay in Japan; contact with Japanese prior to, during and after school; their parents own ideas about the Japanese language and Japanese schooling; and services available to them in their first languageFirst language
A first language is the language a person has learned from birth or within the critical period, or that a person speaks the best and so is often the basis for sociolinguistic identity...
(L1) and in Japanese - the second language
Second language
A second language or L2 is any language learned after the first language or mother tongue. Some languages, often called auxiliary languages, are used primarily as second languages or lingua francas ....
(L2) - at their schools.
Cummins and Swain (1986) argued that by not allowing for L1 support in the L2 environment of a minority-language-student will significantly affect the student's linguistic, cognitive, social and psychological development.
In the Cummins & Swain model, bilingualism within each bilingual child must be seen as complementary languages. Providing support to the L1 will allow for cognitive transfer to the L2. (In immersion
Language immersion
Language immersion is a method of teaching a second language in which the target language is used as the means of instruction. Unlike more traditional language courses, where the target language is simply the subject material, language immersion uses the target language as a teaching tool,...
programs, the opposite has also been shown: as those majority-language students are together learning in their L2, the L1 also improves significantly.)
Yet, for minority language students in an L2 classroom situation, learning in an L2 does not imply that knowledge transfer will occur. It is possible that instead of having bilinguals or monolinguals, schools could produce half-linguals - half-literate in one or two languages. Early research by Cummins (1979) has shown that an ability to use the L2 in the playground does NOT imply that the student has the academic language to perform in the classroom. A distinction between Basic Interpersonal Communicative Skills
Basic Interpersonal Communicative Skills
Basic interpersonal communicative skills are language skills needed to interact in social situations, for example, when speaking to a friend on the telephone...
(BICS) and Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency
Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency
Cognitive academic language proficiency is a language-related term which refers to formal academic learning, as opposed to BICS. In schools today, the terms BICS and CALP are most frequently used to discuss the language proficiency levels of students who are in the process of acquiring a new...
(CALP) needs to be made therefore by educators and administrators to assist minority language students in the classroom.
Furthermore, Japanese children learn a writing system that involves both phonetic syllabaries
Syllabary
A syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent syllables, which make up words. In a syllabary, there is no systematic similarity between the symbols which represent syllables with the same consonant or vowel...
(hiragana
Hiragana
is a Japanese syllabary, one basic component of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana, kanji, and the Latin alphabet . Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems, in which each character represents one mora...
and katakana
Katakana
is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji, and in some cases the Latin alphabet . The word katakana means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana scripts are derived from components of more complex kanji. Each kana represents one mora...
) and a pictographic writing system (kanji
Kanji
Kanji are the adopted logographic Chinese characters hanzi that are used in the modern Japanese writing system along with hiragana , katakana , Indo Arabic numerals, and the occasional use of the Latin alphabet...
). Minority students who enter Japanese schools are starting with a large deficit in reading skills. The student must catch up and then keep up without the prerequisite knowledge-base of the spoken language.
Cook (1999) writes: [t]he moral for teaching is to make the L2 non-threatening and to allow the learner to persevere long enough to feel the benefits.. Yet, Cummins (cited in Fujita, p. 17) writes: [s]chools reflect the societal power structure by eradicating minority students’ language and identity and then attributing their school failure to inherent deficiencies.
Goals
Fujita (2002) argues there is no goal to maintain the L2 in returnee children because Japan as yet has no clear "consensus as to the purpose of learning English in Japan [...] Returnees were once thought to be able to trigger a change in monolithic Japanese educational system by introducing diversity however it seems that this has not happened" (Fujita, p. 19).Since there is no goal for maintaining either the L2 of returnee children nor the L1 of minority language students, with the exceptions of a few schools, immersion (or bilingualism) is not a Japanese educational reality. However, for the majority of minority language students in Japan, submersion is more appropriate (see Language immersion
Language immersion
Language immersion is a method of teaching a second language in which the target language is used as the means of instruction. Unlike more traditional language courses, where the target language is simply the subject material, language immersion uses the target language as a teaching tool,...
for more information on submersion in the classroom).
With much linguistic support from society, school, and the family, returnee children are able to at least make the transition to the L1
First language
A first language is the language a person has learned from birth or within the critical period, or that a person speaks the best and so is often the basis for sociolinguistic identity...
(Japanese) channel, with various shades of ease and difficulty. For non-Japanese students, the situation is much different.
Consequences
Noguchi and Fotos (2001) studied bilingualism and bilingual education in Japan in which many authors commented that schools reflect the First languageFirst language
A first language is the language a person has learned from birth or within the critical period, or that a person speaks the best and so is often the basis for sociolinguistic identity...
(L1) culture and in doing so have a tendency to minimise minority language students' home language, culture and identity. Decisions to ignore the home culture and language of minority students, or of the Second language
Second language
A second language or L2 is any language learned after the first language or mother tongue. Some languages, often called auxiliary languages, are used primarily as second languages or lingua francas ....
(L2) of returnee children, create a number of problems within the language minority student related to self, including cognitive development
Cognitive development
Cognitive development is a field of study in neuroscience and psychology focusing on a child's development in terms of information processing, conceptual resources, perceptual skill, language learning, and other aspects of brain development and cognitive psychology compared to an adult's point of...
and language proficiency
Language proficiency
Language proficiency or linguistic proficiency is the ability of an individual to speak or perform in an acquired language. As theories vary among pedagogues as to what constitutes proficiency, there is little consistency as to how different organizations classify it...
. (See also Richard, 2001.)
Vaipae discusses an American junior high school student who is without any language support from his school. The student was a bilingual (Spanish and English) and biliterate eighth grader when he arrived in Japan. Unfortunately, the school provided no Japanese as a second language instruction. She writes: [i]ronically, he received a failing grade in English because he could not read the Japanese instructions on the term test. Although his parents had requested that the readings of the Chinese characters be provided in the easily-mastered hiragana
Hiragana
is a Japanese syllabary, one basic component of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana, kanji, and the Latin alphabet . Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems, in which each character represents one mora...
syllabary, the [Japanese] English teacher refused to provide this linguistic support, pointing out that it would be unfair to other students if the tests were not identical.
Another struggling minority student in Japan, a Peruvian sixth-grader, tells Vaipae: [i]n my country I had a good life... everything goes as I like, for instance, soccer, volleyball, swimming, running, talking and studying. I was really good at these things and I also had many friends. Now I am good at nothing.
Hirataka, Koishi, & Kato (in Noguchi and Fotos) studied the children of Brazilian workers in and around Fujisawa
Fujisawa, Kanagawa
is a city located in Kanagawa, Japan. As of 2010, the city had an estimated population of 407,731 and a population density of 5,870 people per km². The total area is 69.51 km²-Geography:...
in Kanagawa
Kanagawa Prefecture
is a prefecture located in the southern Kantō region of Japan. The capital is Yokohama. Kanagawa is part of the Greater Tokyo Area.-History:The prefecture has some archaeological sites going back to the Jōmon period...
where they lived with their laborer parents. The parents of the children from the study speak L1-Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
and have little to no Japanese language ability. The schools that the subjects attend provide very little L1 language support. Portuguese remains the L1 at home, but the students' productive abilities in Portuguese has attrited
Language attrition
Language attrition is the loss of a first or second language or a portion of that language by individuals. Speakers who routinely use more than one language may not use either of their languages in ways which are exactly like that of a monolingual speaker...
in varying degrees depending on among other things, age of arrival in Japan and parental support. Japanese is the language of the school and the surrounding community. As a result, children are shifting from Portuguese to Japanese. Communication between parent and child is increasingly difficult.
Cummins & Swain write: there may be threshold levels of linguistic competence which a bilingual child must attain both in order to avoid cognitive disadvantages and to allow the potentially beneficial aspects of becoming bilingual to influence his cognitive functioning (p.18).
Richard (2001) argued that as Japan welcomes unskilled laborers for the menial 3K jobs: kitsui, kitanai and kikenna—in English, Dirty, Dangerous and Demeaning
Dirty, Dangerous and Demeaning
Dirty, Dangerous and Demeaning , also known as the 3Ds, is an American neologism derived from an Asian concept, and refers to certain kinds of labor often performed by unionized blue-collar workers.The term originated from the Japanese expression 3K: kitanai, kiken, and kitsui, and has...
—not to mention the thousands of foreign female sex workers, that Japan also has a legal and moral obligation to welcome those workers’ children.
See also
- Education in JapanEducation in JapanIn Japan, education is compulsory at the elementary and lower secondary levels. Approximately 98% of all students progress to the upper secondary level, which is voluntary . Most students attend public schools through the lower secondary level, but private education is popular at the upper...
- Ethnic issues in JapanEthnic issues in Japan- Demographic :About 1.6% of Japan's total legal resident population are foreign nationals. Of these, according to 2008 data from the Japanese government, the principal groups are as follows....
- Demographics of JapanDemographics of JapanThe demographic features of the population of Japan include population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population....
- Koreans in Japan
- Chinese in Japan
- First languageFirst languageA first language is the language a person has learned from birth or within the critical period, or that a person speaks the best and so is often the basis for sociolinguistic identity...
- Language acquisitionLanguage acquisitionLanguage acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive, produce and use words to understand and communicate. This capacity involves the picking up of diverse capacities including syntax, phonetics, and an extensive vocabulary. This language might be vocal as with...
- Language attritionLanguage attritionLanguage attrition is the loss of a first or second language or a portion of that language by individuals. Speakers who routinely use more than one language may not use either of their languages in ways which are exactly like that of a monolingual speaker...
- Minorities
- MultilingualismMultilingualismMultilingualism is the act of using, or promoting the use of, multiple languages, either by an individual speaker or by a community of speakers. Multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. Multilingualism is becoming a social phenomenon governed by the needs of...
- Second languageSecond languageA second language or L2 is any language learned after the first language or mother tongue. Some languages, often called auxiliary languages, are used primarily as second languages or lingua francas ....
- Knowledge divideKnowledge divideThe concept of the knowledge divide refers to the gaps in standards of living and economic development that exist between those who can find, create, manage, process, and disseminate information or knowledge, and those who are impaired in this process...
External links
- History of Mindan (English)
- Online Newspaper covering Zainichi Korean and Mindan (English)