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| Cheating Grandmother (Obachan) PHOTO CREDIT: http://www.tofugu.com/2014/10/08/yakan-chuugaku-the-japanese-night-time-junior-high-where-the-uneducated-learn-to-read-good/ |
Yes, even Japan has night schools. I was surprised to know this, too. I've been teaching here for almost 3 years and I didn't have any idea that Japan has night schools. I only learned about night schools after reading these articles from Tofugu. Read them too to get a different perspective of Japanese school system.
In recent years, many people from different countries have been coming to Japan. Their reasons for studying Japanese are as various as their backgrounds. Due to this diversity, local governments have begun shifting their attention of language education to a wider age-range of non-native speakers, since these people aren’t all school-aged students, after all. However, there are still some learners that manage to slip from the clutches of even these education systems. Japanese Junior High Night Schools, or 夜間中学 (yakan-chuugaku), have been picking up the slack. They have actually been accepting these non-native students since after WWII, and the number of non-Japanese students in these classes has been rapidly increasing in recent years. In fact, now approximately 70% of the students are non-Japanese! Today, we’ll be learning about these nocturnal classrooms.
Last week, we learned what a junior high night school was and, as I mentioned, today we are going to hear from a teacher of one of those schools. The person I interviewed just started as a junior high night school teacher last April, so she is in the middle of figuring out what this job is like. In other words, we can get her fresh impressions of this type of school. (READ MORE)
