Update: Limbaugh Still Stupid

Here Rush Limbaugh makes fun of Japanese refugees for recycling in their shelter. His caller thinks it is pretty funny. That conversation doesn't hurt my feelings or anything, it just shows the divide in the world views going on. Not between Japan and America but between the ignorant people who participate in this dialogue. It took me a second to think about why it would seem odd for people in a shelter to divide their garbage. Everyone does it every day in Japan. I imagine it makes life a lot more livable in the shelter. It would make sense to get quickly decaying things like fish bones and orange peels out of an enclosed place packed with people and to take bulkier but non-rotting items like cans and containers out later. But I forgot what I always forget about Rush world, it is for exceptionally lazy people. Where putting one thing in one box and another in the box next to it is oppressive labor.

To understand their further joke about it being ironic that a country making electric cars would have thousands of people killed in a natural disaster- wait I will give you a second to stop laughing at how funny that is- would require slithering into a world view almost too low to penetrate. I would wager that most people that are environmentalists, don't believe in a deity that meets out ironic punishment by angry destruction. I have never met anyone, besides the most borderline kook, who even uses the word Gaia seriously. Whatever. All they have done, as usual, is place their view over a supposed liberal one and then comment on how it seems odd. Yes it does, because we don't think like that. In Sendai there is a large porpoise killing operation and shark fin fishery. I strongly oppose those things but I don't feel any sense of relief that the people involved in it are suffering. That isn't fair. I haven't seen any commentary from the radical left- to the extent that that exists- saying that anyone feels that it is, and I am on their mailing lists.

Until I am re-exposed to him, I often forget who truly stupid and gutless, metaphorically, that Limbaugh is. What an undeserving person of a public voice. What a loser dressed up like he won.

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Earthquake Proof Housing-For Poor People

Since most of the world is poor people, this National Geographic piece is filled with useful information. This is actually what I majored in in college and would still like to be doing. Anyway. I think this is how we should be thinking about architecture and urban planning going forwards, as we all get Third Worlded.

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It Wasn't Not Capitalism!

Thank you David Cay Johnston for pointing out what anyone with a cursory interest in economics- which we all should have as we are pulled around by it- should understand; that once you pay public workers, be that in benefits or wages, the money is theirs, not still yours.

Is it that hard to understand? If you go to a Yankees game once, you can not forever claim that A-Rod is taking Madonna on dates with your money. Bill Gates isn't giving out vaccinations with your money. You paid for a service they supplied, which they negotiated a contract to work for, it is their money. Is that difficult?

To not understand this simple point is either willful ignorance or a deep misunderstanding of the economic system which you claim to be so strongly allied with.

If you skip the whole article, I will point out what shouldn't need pointing out; health benefits and vacation days are not presents from your boss, they are compensation. Workers negotiate a mixture of salary and benefits and that becomes the conditions that they work under. To pretend that it is the bosses magnanimity that grants vacation and benefits is insulting. But, what really is new there. The new, angry conservative makes their bones in the insulting. They wallow in it like a dog on a rotting corpse and then prance around talking about how good they smell.

If we are to believe that corporate CEO's wages must be kept high to insure interest in the position from qualified people, are we supposed to think that the government wants to discourage qualified teachers and public workers? Almost assuredly, they do. Or just want to roll the dice on getting them on the cheap, which is the situation I am in.

Yet again, there is no internal logic in the conservative position.

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Train in Vain

I think this is only 100% correct. I couldn't get George Will's absurd piece about trains being unAmerican, but then again I am so confused on what exactly is unAmerican and what isn't anymore. To me, trains are not only a part of my everyday life, but are much more democratic than flying. Flying to me, feels like being contained in a giant, terrifying pre-school. It seems the exact opposite of freedom.

JR just built a new Shinkansen line direct from Kagoshima to Kansai. It opens next week. My wife's grandfather, a lifelong JR employee, has a ticket on the first run. It is a strangely emotional thing. Think about how wonderful this is though; when I go to Kagoshima for summer break, all I have to do is walk down the street for ten minutes. Get on the subway for Kyoto Station. Ride that for about ten minutes. Buy a $150 ticket for the next train available. Walk on, sit down, read a book, drink a beer, watch the world go by and walk off a few hours later on another island at the bottom of the country. No IDs. No metal detectors. No tiny seat. No terror. No delays (probably.) What is this conservative hang-up about trains? It seems arbitrary, like the whole vindictive styrofoam thing. It probably has bigger meaning though.

Trains. Make them. Build them. Ride them. Please. Florida, I am looking at you here.

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Interesting Names Update

Yesterday I was looking back over old school related blog posts. Wow. Anyway, I realized I hadn't done an update of unusual surnames at this school in the two years that I have been here. If you have missed out on it, I have a minor, unexplained obsession with Japanese last names; especially crazy ones.

I'll just give you a brief recap of why Japanese surnames are so varied. With the exception of the very powerful, Japanese didn't have last names until the fall of the feudal system in the 1860s. Under the Meiji they were told to give themselves last names. That hasn't been enough generations for the rarer names to eleminate themselves. That sounds ominous.

One category I am getting stricter on is the combination of a place specifier, i.e. 原、谷、山, plus a qualifier for it. Because, really you could stick any two kanji together and some are going to sound rarer to others.

Under the category of easy to read but strange, we have the all-time champion, now, at this school:

上圡：　Uedo. I have never seen another Uedo and was convinced it must have some crazy reading. Nope. Uedo.

We also have 龍：　Ryu. But as a last name. Is that odd? It seems so to me. "Hello, my name is dragon. Fuck you."

There are two brothers both named 薬師寺：　Yakushiji. Which is a famous temple in Nara. Other teachers say it isn't so rare, but I have yet to find any others.

There is a 2nd year named 島子：　Shimako. Very easy to read. I want that last name. 'Island Child.' Not bad.

There is a 征禄：　Seiroku. Never seen that before.

There are two sisters with a slightly unfortunate reading of their last name　槍山：　Yariyama.

Maybe related, maybe not, we have a young lady named 泊：　Tomari.

Outstandingly bad-assed name 三星：　　Mitsuboshi. 'Three Stars.' Maybe they can grow up to be a chef.

Possible rare name champion 伝宝：Denpo. Here is the thing; Those aren't even the actual kanji for her name. The real kanji won't come up in any computer or cell phone, even if you look under other readings. They have to be written out by hand, so she just uses these.

There is a 古舘：　Furutate. Which you don't see very often.

We have 中条：　Chujyo. Whow is as unique as his name.

The 3rd year teachers have my grade book right now, so I will have to come back with more later.

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Huckaboo

I wanted to talk about how Mike Huckabee's defense that saying that President Obama had grown up in Kenya had been a slip of a tongue had no internal logic, but Media Matters beat me to it. And why not, that's their J-O-B.

Think about it. What if I said, "Mike Huckabee clearly has an issue with white people after growing up in a township in aparthied era South Africa idolizing Nelson Mandela and dreaming of playing rugby. Wait. Did I say South Africa? A slip of the tongue. I meant 'Arkansas.'"

But nothing makes sense if you change it to say Arkansas. Except for the apartheid. Hahahaha. I kid. Nothing about his statement makes sense when you switch Indonesia for Kenya. Also, it leaves out the huge central element of him growing up with his father and grandfather, which he didn't. Isn't it a giant detail of the President's life that he grew up without a father? Doesn't saying that you meant to say that he spent time in Indonesia have to be coupled with the fact that you know he was estranged from his father? Nothing in that argument makes sense.

What does make sense is that Mike Huckabee is a bit more despicable than I thought him to be. I think this indicates that he knows exactly what he is up to and who he is appealing too. He will now run around the Right Wing stupidverse saying how everyone is just blowing this whole thing out of proportion around poor ole Huck. His audience already got what they wanted out of it. The corrections don't matter.

I want to talk about this in more detail at some point. I think FOX caught on to this a while back. It doesn't matter at all what you say. You put out the storyline you want. Lightly correct it later and keep going. No one who wants to believe it will heed the correction.

UPDATE:

Here is an even better piece on it describing how thoroughly stupid Huckabee's take is. I find it very hard to see it as anything other than a thinly veiled call to racism. What is this odd conservative obsession with Churchill anyway? I remember it being written about during the Bush presidency but what is there in it? President Obama moved a Churchill bust and installed a Lincoln bust. We all know that he would be criticized for doing the opposite as well. Does Huckabee find something wrong with Lincoln? Does anyone in England really care? Try this headline on:

Democrat Pres. Bows to Europe, Replaces American Hero with Foreign Leader.

Tell me that they wouldn't run that in a heartbeat and that would be the issue of the day. Then if he switched them back they would go on about what a weak flip-flopper he was. As a member of the Left, I think we should just push what children Conservatives are. What little babies. Ignorant, whiny little babies.

Oh. I forgot. Is Huckabee, in his book, saying that the American story isn't one of aligning ourselves with freedom seeking people everywhere? Are we not the City on the Hill. Maybe I misunderstood. Our sympathies should lie with the British Empire. The worst elements of the British Empire. That is 'our story' as Americans. Weird.

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Hirakata, You're Cut Pat II

This was to be the thrust of the last thing but I got off track when I went to scan pages out of the text book.

Last month Hirakata City, only 40 minutes from my house instead of an hour and 40, had openings for 6 new ALT jobs. Hirakata does direct hire and not dispatch. Direct hire provides a steady salary instead of paying by the day and cuts out the middleman, gaijin wrangling, useless companies. Companies like mine. It would have also been a $300 a month raise and a paycheck for the summer break which I am not paid for. On the downside, I very much love my school now and was not anxious to change.

But these things become a matter of ego don't they? Even if a girl you don't like tells you you are ugly it still ratchets down your confidence. So I went to apply on the last day they were accepting applications, sneaking out of school and returning to the campus where I was an exchange student in 1999, now converted into public buildings.

The process worked like this; One submits an application at the board of education. This office is n the old Kansai Gaidai administration building, which was a nice building. ( It has been Japanese officeized. I would spend time on this but that is not the point of the piece. Just imagine putting a lot of dusty cardboard boxes full of useless paper in random corners, hanging up a lot of public service posters, and carting in busted up old metal office desks. There.) After
this application is received you are given a number. I was N17. I was told that there would be a test at 10am the following Thursday and an interview on the Monday following that at a time that would be specified at the test. Why is when these occur important? As I said earlier, I work dispatch. Most people with my job do. We are paid by the day and get no personal days. At my company if we don't miss any days in a month and aren't late or have to leave early we get a $100 bonus at the end of the month. Taking days off for this process, including dropping off the application, would cost me $460. This is a large barrier to even applying. Who is it not a barrier for? People with irregular work. I think there is probably a pool of good teachers who don't have regular work, but you are limiting the field. How did I get around this? I am brazen. I just left work to drop off the application. On the day of the test I had a full schedule of classes but I met with the teachers and told them the situation and asked them not to mention anything. The day of the interview, I thought I was pushing it a little so I informed the vice-principal and all of the teachers that I would be out in the morning. I sent my work a mail detailing the situation. I will elaborate on this a bit later. (If someone from my company or the school board reads this, this is a work of fantasy. )

I say all of this because all through the process, on both sides; or employers and or prospective employers, we aren't really treated like full humans. Every marathon or grappling competition I have taken part in has been on a Sunday as most people work during the week. he school board doesn't want to work on the weekend so they put the burden, the financial burden on us. Should I point out again how much less money we make than these people?

The weekend before the test, I took the GRE as my 5-year window had expired. As usual with me, I did very well on the verbal- 97%- and barely passable on the quantitative- 30%. I had a total score of 1,200, which isn't terrible. I wanted a 6 on the essay but I got a 5. The Hirakata test was scheduled for an hour in the old reception hall at Kansai Gaidai. I remembered are welcome party there in 1999 when Tanimoto Gakucho sang "Old Susanna" for the Alabama contingent. Odd to be here now hoping for a $300 a month raise. After having took the GRE the test was pedestrian. I finished in about 20 minutes and went back through the whole thing about 3 times. There was very little math and it was basic compared to the GRE. The grammar was so easy as to be laughable. There was an essay section that was remarkable only in its limit to 700 words. I might be guilty of overconfidence but I have the GRE and its very real scores to show me the level I was preforming at.

My interview was scheduled for the following Monday at 10am. We were separated into groups of 6 and told that it would be a group interview. We would need to answer the first question in Japanese and give a 3 minute demonstration lesson on our assigned topic. Our group was assigned the relative clause. The example sentence was "The scientist who wrote 'Silent Spring' was Rachel Carson." I think that this is a terrible example sentence. If you are just introducing this grammar, you have to explain 'scientist', that 'Silent Spring' is a book and that 'Rachel Carson' is someone's name. In 3 minutes.

There is a lot to unpack in this. First, the tendency in Japanese society towards the simplistically maudlin is well documented. I am not saying that to be a jerk. I like it sometimes. However we are given these strange examples all the time because they are thought of as touching, or at least echo something that older teachers knew of when they were younger. As I pointed out in my last post, I don't think you should saddle knew grammar with new words and distracting tidbits. Again, this is to be a 3 minute lesson.

The instructions were vague as to whether we had to teach this sentence or the grammar that it was an example of. I had been through a large teachers office fight about this grammar earlier in the year and had then done a demo lesson of it for the Higashi Osaka Board of Education that had won a (meaningless) first prize. I decided to go with the method that I used there as it brings students to this grammar through language that they already know.

"There are a lot of students at this school. Mia is a girl. Mia plays soccer. Mia is the girl who plays soccer." The sentences in bold I had printed out and laminated. I also had printed out and laminated two pictures of girls. All of my materials were magnetized so I could stick them on the board. One playing soccer, one playing basketball. I then ask "Who is Mia?" Everyone gets it pretty quickly. I don't explain that 'a' becomes 'the' immediately, but I don't think it is that important. Other applicants did. Once the students get this I move on. "Takeshi is a boy. Takeshi plays piano. Takeshi is the boy who plays piano." Again, picture of two boys. "Who is Takeshi?" I don't think mine is the only effective method, but I have decided out it after years of teaching this grammar. It seems the quickest path to being able to understand what this point is trying to get across.

Other candidates taught the Rachel Carson sentence. Not all of them did. I would say that 4 out of the 6 applicants had below average lessons. 3 of them used up their time writing the grammar out long hand on the marker board. I would say that, in my opinion, one other lesson was good. Three other lessons had major, major issues. The remaining lesson was not well conceived but well prepared and presented, if that makes any sense.

I should backtrack for a minute and say that the interview was before the demo lessons. We were asked to give a self-introduction in Japanese. The overall level was pretty low, but whatever. We were then questioned by a panel of people from the board of education and our answers were translated by an older gentleman who did, I must say, an atrocious job. One other person being interviewed is completing his master's degree in education, I believe. That was translated as "He hopes to master teaching." A lot of information was cut out of the answers. I remember thinking it was a little humorous and not being able to tell if he was editing for brevity or out of ignorance. I was asked a question by one other member of the panel whose English pronunciation I couldn't quite get. I had to ask him to repeat himself. He looked disturbed and had already started his stopwatch.

There were two other groups of 6. So 18 people up for 6 jobs. Going just by my group, and I understand that my viewpoint is self-serving and biased, there were 2 people who I would have given the job to. Two that I really wouldn't and two that...whatever. Assuming that applied across all groups, the numbers work out to six jobs. With confidence I sat back and waited for my letter of acceptance to come.

But you already know what happened don't you. On the expected day, I went home early and opened the letter. "You are the 11th out of 18 applicants. You were not selected for employment." Questions abound. I don't think anyone is required to give me a job, but I am curious how the selection worked.

My real concern in all of this is; How are teachers selected?
It is a mystery. There is no standardization and it all seems so random. A lot of garbage teachers have great jobs. A lot of great teachers have to scramble to make a buck. The arbitrariness of it all is a different form of torture. Was I not selected because of my test score? Was my lesson flawed? Did my interview rub someone the wrong way? I won't ever know, but I do know that the people making the selections know very little about how to do the job. That can't be a good process.

I have an idea. I think it is a good idea. It will never be implemented.

Have prospective ALTs for Osaka take the GRE. Have the scores submitted to the BOE to a general pool. Weight verbal and essay scores over math. Have 1,000 be a cutoff, and a 4 on the essay. Have this pool submit a CV and 2 letters of recommendation from former schools. If they have no experience, then from former employers. Then have them come in for interviews and demo lessons. Have these scheduled on evenings or weekends to allow everyone to participate. Have the panel that considers applicants include current English teachers.

Additionally, give this pool of teachers a path to being licensed. Have them take the JLPT. Provide them a way to advance. In the state it is now, the education system is creating a system that is both unstable and stagnating. Teachers don't advance for being good at their jobs and aren't fired for being bad. There is no difference. It is all arbitrary.

I reiterate that I think none of this will happen. If Japan is willing to take any constructive steps, then I hope they decide to get rid of English education entirely at the junior-high level because it is a false promise for everyone and a joke in practice.

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