In Japan, there is a great deal of emphasis on "the group," and a lot of effort is put into maintaining relations within the group. I'm not going to go into tedious detail on this aspect of Japanese culture because it's an incredibly easy thing to find information on, if you're really intrigued. Instead, I'm going to focus on how it affects me in the English teaching field, and how it worked to create my first great frustration with something Japanese (conveniently enough, Frustration the Second, occured on the same day).
*When I mention "the group" that is any group that a given person can belong to (family, a school class, a company, a group of friends, etc.).
One important thing to note, is that Japanese emphasis on the group focuses on maintaining group harmony and placing what's good for the group ahead of many personal wants. Sometimes this can lead to people not speaking up alone, for fear of saying something to misrepresent or upset the group, and leads to The Committee. Rather than assuming they speak for everyone, Japanese folks will often discuss things with members of their group (sometimes rather exhaustively) before offering a thought or opinion--this is what I call The Committee. However, say what we will, but the Japanese Committee does have it's strengths. When they do implement a change, the fact that they're all behind it and agree and are more concerned about maintaining group harmony than getting every little personal desire means that said change will probably be implemented quickly and decisively. I have to respect that, mostly because I do get tired of hearing everyone argue about crap. Nonetheless, when it gets in the way of me conducting class, The Committee can draw my ire almost as inane arguments. So then, an example...
Today (12.8.03) was, amazingly, my first time visiting a class at my Monday school (a school I often don't get out to because of the numerous holidays on Monday). Asked at the last minute to do a self-introduction, but without any of my usual aids, I tried to come up with something that would engage the students more than just passively listening to me for 10 or 15 minutes, because, let's be serious, students listening to someone speak in a foreign language for that long are going to pretty much consider that a free "check out" time, even in Japan. So, placing them in groups (because, like it or not, that's often the only way to get them comfortable doing anything), I wrote some things on the board, quickly, like "from?," "sisters?," "height?," and so on and their task was, as a group, to guess the answers to those questions about me. These were third year jr. high school students (9th grade), so it wasn't a very taxing request. After eventually jotting down answers, I had each group have one person ask me one of the questions. For instance,
On the board, "From?" The group's task, ask me, "where are you from?"
After which, I would address that topic and we'd move on. This activity was supposed to try and keep their brains turned on while also giving them a clear idea of what I'd be talking about in advance, which would make it easier to understand. However, once asked to ask me a question, The Committee reared it's most grotesque of heads, and I was left with little recourse but to sit and wait for one group to formulate a simple question they learned years ago and have probably used hundreds of times. I would be given numerous false starts as a student finally started to look confident, looked up, paused, then dropped back into the huddle to be lost in the bog of babble until finally a hesitant, "how tall are you?" was issued. Now I know about The Committee and we've become pretty well-aquainted recently, but this quickly became a taxing issue today as a 10 minute exercise turned into a 25 minute Patience Decatholon (okay, so technically there were only nine groups).
I understand the "cultural differences" argument, and I think that on the whole, I roll with it fairly well, but sometimes this Committee drives me nuts (like I said, we've butted heads a few times, and not only in the classroom). There are some younger kids who are moving toward the more independent approach to life, and that general trend is a little bothersome to some older Japanese folks. Now before you go condemning them, understand that they legitimately do just have a different social system, and a lot of it works okay for them. So, while I naturally don't think it's so bad that some kids are breaking out of the mold a little, I do understand and sympathize with the concerns I've heard. But I'd still like to see that mold shattered in the English classroom.