I have been meaning to write for awhile, but had not done so because I felt
that I was among too small a minority; the July issue's "Chapter in
Your Life" column suggests that I may not be. I am another who is about
to let his membership lapse. I have been a freelance ESL teacher in Japan
for nine years. At the beginning, in 1990, I was frightfully insecure in
a new career, in a new culture. My discovery of The Language Teacher
was a blessing. It gave me a meaningful perspective on what I was trying
to do: it gave me some language theory, it gave me practical teaching activities,
and more importantly, it guided me to further resources and to further education.
I now consider myself a professional; I am accredited; I teach in companies,
language schools, jukus, and at home; and I am grateful to JALT for helping
me get started.
The Language Teacher is still my sole contact with the profession;
like many others, I think, I am physically and functionally isolated in
my community and in my workplace from fellow practitioners. So I rely (more
than I should, perhaps) upon TLT to satisfy all my needs. Today,
however, there is little in it that satisfies, and no longer do I cut out
and save items from it. Have I outgrown TLT? I certainly shouldn't
have: the organ of a professional association should cater to all major
sectors of its membership, two of which are certainly neophytes and veterans.
Why then do I no longer find articles apropos? I think because its focus
has shifted away from the mass of teachers out here (that is, members, exmembers,and
potential members) and onto the lamentable, interminable woes of the secondary/tertiary
instructor. I admit that that is precisely the vocation of most of TLT's
current contributors (and of its staff -- who else has the free time!?).
But I then remind you that those are also the ones who wish dearly to publish
-- anything at all -- ere they perish. I believe that TLT's primary
function should be neither that of convenient place to publish nor of forum
to flog political issues.
I would further like to remind our editors that quality should be of
some concern; that quality is insight, and not something that can be measured
simply by the number of footnotes or length of bibliography. If that quality
is not forthcoming at an adequate rate, then I do not need to receive an
issue each month; a quarterly would be fine if it were a quality quarterly.
Like most teachers of English in Japan, I am working with no benefit package,
pension plan, valid contract or tenure, and I am not asking JALT to help
get me those things. What I want is logistical support for the teaching
process.
There are other things I would like to see in JALT, that would ensure
my loyalty. Why is there no interest group for corporate and commercial
instructors? (Lest you challenge me to start one, I retort that there has
been no information on the starting process included in the "Of National
Significance" [recently, "SIG News" -- ed.] column for as
long as I've been looking for it.)
I have another complaint to the organization as a whole. Why was my address
sold to 0061? Why cannot you selectively give out our addresses to firms
directly concerned in our profession? We are not the Book-of- the-Month
Club with its hundreds of thousands of members; if you cannot be very selective,
you are not serving your relatively clearly circumscibed membership. I do
want to hear from publishers and presenters; I do not wish to hear -- intrusively
and repeatedly -- from long distance phone companies or any other businesses
not directly related to our professional interests. I look forward to your
addressing these issues.
The editors reply:
We thank Charles Harper for his thoughtful points and welcome the opportunity
to address at some length issues that no doubt concern many members besides
him and ourselves. We hope that such a concerned and articulate member will
reconsider his decision to leave, and instead, explore some of the other
opportunities JALT offers for professional contact and support.
To deal with the questions most peripheral to TLT first . . .
We consulted JALT Business Manager David Neill, who kindly clarified a few
points about commercial use of JALT mailing lists: To forgo all bulk
mail from JALT list users, members can so request on the furikae
form when joining or renewing. When we asked him about possible dual lists,
one supplied to Associate Members only, for those who would like to receive
only education-related mailings, the other to Commercial Members as well,
Neill pointed out that there are currently only three Commercial Members:
two financial services, Banner and Magellan, who make little direct contact
with members; and IDC (i.e. 0061). Of all Associate and Commercial Members,
only IDC has received members' telephone numbers (once in 1996, and once
in 1999), with the strict proviso that they be used once, for one purpose
only: a telephone survey of members about JALT96 and JALT99 attendance,
performed gratis, in return for a short commercial plug at the end of each
call. Neill reminded us that there are many mail and phone lists -- of foreigners,
of teachers, of credit-card users, and so forth -- circulating through Japan,
compiled from various sources, jealously guarded and vigorously sought.
(We have found that the surest way to be contacted by all such telephone
services is to sign up with one of them.) Consequently, even repeated calls
to members from IDC would not prove their abuse of the agreement. He also
noted that members can request that the JALT Central Office not give out
their phone numbers. The facts that The Language Teacher runs ads
for IDC and that members are annoyed by frequent calls from teleservice
companies are not necessarily related.
In regards to article quality, Harper's editorial view- point is not
all that different from our own. We'd like to put before readers and prospective
authors a couple of excerpts from a discussion paper we circulated among
the Editorial Advisory Board members last spring:
We teach all different kinds of students in all different situations
and recognize the limits of repeatability and generality these circumstances
impose, taking the more self-assured studies less seriously than they take
themselves. On the other hand, as Chomsky remarked somewhere, the hall-mark
of science is not empiricism but insight, and we try to recognize it in
any form it may take . . . .Publication in our field resembles a monumental edifice less than a
conversation . . . . Voices join and leave, ideas are introduced and dropped,
but the conversation is one -- continuous and self-conscious . . . . Its
rules are simply "be polite, be interesting, and tell the truth."
From these three all else follows: Know your audience; don't tell them
what they already know; don't pass off others' ideas as your own; don't
speak up if you don't know what you are talking about. Use technical language
only to clarify, never to show off. Write as a person to other people,
not a committee to another committee . . . .Since TLT is the broadest element of JALT, it is especially important
that voices be heard here that cannot be heard elsewhere -- not only for
their benefit, but for our readers. Moreover, it is the members without
resources, without experience, without prestigious positions, without a
large circle of colleagues, without influence in JALT, who have the most
need of TLT and the least say in what appears in it. Many of us can remember
what it was like when TLT was all there was, and how much we depended on
it. These colleagues feel that way now.
Since July, 1999, when the first articles chosen by this editorial team
appeared, we have tried to publish articles based on teachers' practical
experiences. We have been especially pleased to publish a large number of
articles about students views of the classroom experience, since as teachers
we rarely hear them enough. While it is true that few of these articles
have the commercial school as their milieu, we feel that teachers have much
to learn from each other, whether or not we share occupational categories.
For example, few of us teach blind students, but as John Herbert observed
in "Led by the Blind" (TLT 23, 8), what he had to learn
to teach a blind student effectively made him a better teacher of all
students. We would like to have more articles from teachers of children,
for example, not only for the sake of readers who teach children, but because
of the special insights they can offer all of us, due to their unique perspectives.
The lack of articles specifically by and for commercial language teachers
troubles and puzzles us as well, as we expect there would be great interest
among the membership. Moreover, such teachers must continually prove their
own and their techniques' effectiveness in the market, so we would expect
contributions of high quality from them. Perhaps the reason is the same
as that for the absence of commercially oriented SlGs. We have frequently
asked our colleagues in the commercial field for articles, reports of commercial
language school conferences, and so on, with little success. No doubt we
could do better, but lacking money or space to publish all the worthwhile
articles we do receive, under continual pressure to shorten issues, we are
no longer able to solicit extra material, however worthwhile -- for example,
to ask a successful commercial entrepreneur to write a series on creating
and sustaining a small teaching enterprise -- much as we would like to.
(Since Harper's letter was received, we have been able to publish articles
on commercial schools in the Teacher Development and Action Research special
issues. We also recommend the account of an interesting and unique commercial
approach in this month's Educational Innovations column.)
In one sense, however, Harper's main point is un-contestable: Whatever
satisfaction we take in providing our readers with the best work our contributors
send us, we can't reply, "On the contrary, TLT does meet your
needs." In fact, we do not expect TLT to satisfy all of anyone's
needs as "sole contact with the profession." Indeed, half
of TLT every month is devoted to other contacts with the profession,
inside and outside of JALT: chapters, sigs, conferences, associate organizations
events, book fairs, job information, and on and on. (In passing, since this
information is timely and arrives on short notice, a quarterly TLT
would be worthless, even if we did agree that article quality mandated one.)
To paraphrase Kipling,
What can they know of TLT,
Who TLT only know?
This brings us to Harper's thwarted interest in a SIG for corporate and
commercial instructors. The relevant published information, in the JALT
by laws found in the April 1999 Directory Supplement, concern criteria,
rather than procedures, for SIG formation. But there is ample official and
unofficial guidance available for those who look. Probably
the best way to get a SIG started -- or to undertake any JALT project or
role -- is to ask those who have recently done so. Three new SIGs have formed
in the past year, and those who represent them in the contact information
section of "SIG News" doubtless have a great deal of knowledge
and experience to share. Again, consulting the Directory Supplement will
furnish interested members with the names and contact numbers of over 400
volunteers who are eager to share their knowledge and assistance, including
Peter Gray, the SIG Representative Liaison, whose contact numbers are listed
under the Bilingualism SIG contact information in this issue.
Up-to-date information does not circulate easily throughout JALT, which
comprises many quasi-autonomous, non-coordinated parts. (See the Recording
Secretary's message in JALT News, this issue.) Most volunteers have all
they can do to carry out their tasks. Taking the additional initiative to
write them up and find a way to disseminate them is hypervoluntarism. It
is surprising that so many do go the extra mile to update manuals, create
informational web sites, write data-bases, press releases, and so on, in
addition to their usual volunteer duties. (One such hero has cited the
Directory Supplement as "the most useful JALT publication"
for finding information and contacts.)
In all cold realism, the only sure way to see something happen in JALT
is to change the beginning of the question from "Why doesn't JALT .
. . ?" to "How can I help to . . . ?" and find the right
person to ask. It's also a great way to break down isolation. When you reach
the right people, you'll find they've been hoping all along for the right
person to call. Perhaps the most difficult yet most empowering realization
for members to experience is that there is no transcendental JALT,
separate and aloof from the member individuals and organizations.
Finally, the relevance of articles on labor issues: First of all, episodes
of institutional governmental job discrimination like the Kumamoto Prefectural
University case are deemed worthy of front page coverage by The New York
Times ("Japan's Cultural Bias Against Foreigners Comes Under Attack,"
November 15,1999). Certainly they are proper subjects for the publication
of the victims' own professional organization.
We question Harper's claim that most English teachers in Japan are "working
with no benefit package, pension plan, valid contract or tenure." As
Suzanne Yonesaka pointed out in the November issue, each year over 1000
new teachers join the ranks of public secondary school English teachers
alone (TLT23, 11). Perhaps the claim should be interpreted as "most
expatriate English teachers in Japan." While some -- David Paul
and William Gatton come to mind -- have made a disproportionately large
contribution to JALT, proprietors of small independent businesses like Harper
himself are relatively few in number compared to secondary and tertiary
language teachers -- in JALT and in Japan.
We know that instructors in commercial schools have few benefits as a
rule, and little protection from arbitrary employer decisions, and we would
welcome articles on improving their working conditions, which may often
fall far short of those in secondary and tertiary positions. However, articles
about secondary and tertiary school labor conditions are of interest
to many commercial instructors, precisely because they aspire to positions
in schools and colleges which do offer benefit packages, pension plans,
health insurance, and the other routine perquisites of salaried professional
employment. (Note, for example, the response from self-employed instructor
James Scott (TLT 23, 11), responding to Aldwinckle's (TLT
23, 8) piece on "10+ Questions for university job seekers.")
Thus it is in the interests of not only current but aspiring tertiary
teachers for TLT to publish articles like "A New System of University
Tenure" (Aldwinckle, Fox, & Ishida, TLT23, 8). This was TLT's
first coverage of the Ninkisei Hou, a law passed in 1997, with literally
unprecedented consequences for native Japanese and expatriate college teachers
-- and the relationships between them. We have no doubt published
and no doubt will publish articles of little value or importance to most
members, but this was not among them.
