Dark Sarcasm In The Classroom
These kids, seriously.
When I first came to Kureha High School I was mildly alarmed by the number of injured students I saw everyday. After a while though I came to accept it - these kids play hard and they work hard. They play so hard it looks like work.
What makes me a tad uneasy now is how many students I see collapsing about me. At the beginning and end of terms we have ceremonies. Lots of them. We have so many ceremonies that before long the teachers and students will be lining the corridors to mark my journey to the western toilet each afternoon.
These ceremonies usually last between one and two hours and you have to stand for most of them - the rest is bowing. These ceremonies are punctuated every 20 minutes by a 'thunk' of somebody somewhere in the student body hitting the deck. Several teachers will rush into said mass of students and emerge a minute later dragging a body - usually a girl - head hung sickeningly on her chest and feet trailing behind her. The longer the ceremony, the higher the body count.
This, I thought during the summer, is what happens when you make kids stand in the heat for two hours.
In winter it is mostly the same, except the kids sit on the floor. During an hour long speech by the Principal this winter on the perils of the 'flu season three kids were dragged out after listing far enough to the side to be lying down.
This, I thought during the winter, is what happens when you heat only classrooms and not corridors, and then make kids sit on a cold floor for two hours.
Yesterday was the opening ceremony for the new school year, which in Japan is in the spring. The ceremony lost two girls that day. And this gave me pause. It's spring - it's positively balmy outside: what was wrong with these girls?
"Maybe they are sick, or they did not have breakfast this morning," a JTE explained to me.
Breakfast? These are not delicate little flowers - I've seen them play football. Missing a slice of toast in the morning will not floor you by 10am! On my way into school this morning a black SUV drove up to the front doors, two teachers met it, the car door opened and a second grade girl was dragged out and into the school. What is going on? Is this not a cause for concern for parents? The mother might as well as flung the car-door open and pushed her daughter out onto the tarmac before screeching away.
There is something more fundamental here than the odd cold, or skipping a bowl of rice in the morning. These kids need a break.
When I first came to Kureha High School I was mildly alarmed by the number of injured students I saw everyday. After a while though I came to accept it - these kids play hard and they work hard. They play so hard it looks like work.
What makes me a tad uneasy now is how many students I see collapsing about me. At the beginning and end of terms we have ceremonies. Lots of them. We have so many ceremonies that before long the teachers and students will be lining the corridors to mark my journey to the western toilet each afternoon.
These ceremonies usually last between one and two hours and you have to stand for most of them - the rest is bowing. These ceremonies are punctuated every 20 minutes by a 'thunk' of somebody somewhere in the student body hitting the deck. Several teachers will rush into said mass of students and emerge a minute later dragging a body - usually a girl - head hung sickeningly on her chest and feet trailing behind her. The longer the ceremony, the higher the body count.
This, I thought during the summer, is what happens when you make kids stand in the heat for two hours.
In winter it is mostly the same, except the kids sit on the floor. During an hour long speech by the Principal this winter on the perils of the 'flu season three kids were dragged out after listing far enough to the side to be lying down.
This, I thought during the winter, is what happens when you heat only classrooms and not corridors, and then make kids sit on a cold floor for two hours.
Yesterday was the opening ceremony for the new school year, which in Japan is in the spring. The ceremony lost two girls that day. And this gave me pause. It's spring - it's positively balmy outside: what was wrong with these girls?
"Maybe they are sick, or they did not have breakfast this morning," a JTE explained to me.
Breakfast? These are not delicate little flowers - I've seen them play football. Missing a slice of toast in the morning will not floor you by 10am! On my way into school this morning a black SUV drove up to the front doors, two teachers met it, the car door opened and a second grade girl was dragged out and into the school. What is going on? Is this not a cause for concern for parents? The mother might as well as flung the car-door open and pushed her daughter out onto the tarmac before screeching away.
There is something more fundamental here than the odd cold, or skipping a bowl of rice in the morning. These kids need a break.
posted by Geoff at 2:14 AM
1 Comments:
We lost one yesterday. Dropped to the floor like a sack of potatoes. Life overwhelms them and drops them all. What can I say? Life blows when you're a Japanese High School student.
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