So how's NYC been treating you?

Another milestone was reached back in August. This one requires its own writings and shall be addressed at a later date. For now, I just want to do a general update and get back into the groove of daily reflection and writing.

Overall, New York has been good to me. I have steady a work, a good paycheck, a nice place to live, benefits, and my family nearby. I have enjoyed good books, good films, good television, good video games, and good times with my family. I have no broad complaints about the circumstances of my life.

My complaints, such as they are, pertain only to my current job. I am teaching at a "last chance" charter school in northern Manhattan. The job requires little in the way of pedagogical mastery or general subject knowledge and a lot in the way of behavior management and child-rearing. Ostensibly I am a high school teacher, though in practice, the actual level I address is more like late elementary.

The students are not in a good way. Most of them have issues - familiar, mental, emotional, academic - and several are beyond redemption. They have tied themselves into a ghetto culture that has convinced them of education's meaninglessness. A teacher such as myself, adept at appealing to curiosity and humor, cannot reach them all too well. What many of them need are nuns or drill instructors - uncompromising agents of human molding and manipulation.

I don't want to be a manipulator. I want to work at a more traditional school. I don't imagine that the typical Manhattan public school is much better, but I doubt they compare to where I am now. The lack of self-respect and discipline, the depressed academic skills, the contempt for teachers - all of it is appalling where I am now.

I should obtain my Japanese teaching certification soon. Next year I shall get my masters. Perhaps I can teach Japanese, or eventually become a university lecturer. Either way, I intend to change jobs the moment the opportunity arises.

Tell 'em

Three years gone by: The Departure part 3

There is one final reason why I am returning to New York, and it is the biggest reason of all.

Writing.

In fact, it is why I am teaching in a public school.

You see, I wrote on this very blog a few years ago that I had moral reservations about working in a public school. In truth my long-term career goal is to write fiction full-time. I don't intend to make a life out of teaching.

I feel a genuine sense of disgust knowing that I will be supporting an education system I detest, even if only temporarily. Though I plan to do everything in my power to subvert and sabotage that system from the inside, I do not believe this in any way excuses the sin of drawing a paycheck from it.

No, for me, atonement will come years after the fact. You see the real reason why I want to become a NYC public school teacher is to use the experience as research for a book. I plan to write at least one major book on education (I have ideas for both fiction and non-fiction) and if I am to write convincingly, I will need to have seen the world of public school teaching from the inside. I need to be at staff meetings, be in the faculty room, go to professional development, speak with union reps, attend parent-teacher conferences, and most importantly, interact with hundreds of students from the role of teacher.

The necessity of the first-hand experience did not hit me until this year in late April when I began working on a story with a Japanese protagonist. Currently I am still working on the story, a short novel about a Tokyo girl who attends high school abroad. In writing the story I discovered that my experience in Japan was crucial to the writing; simply put, I could not have written the story were it not for my living in Japan for three years.

The same is true for any work I plan to write about education. While I may have a lot to say as an experienced teacher and graduate student of education, without that "in the shit" record on the front lines, my credibility is shot. I want to see what John Taylor Gatto saw over the course of 30 years in the NYC system. It was enough to cripple him emotionally, and he poured his soul out into the amazing book Weapons of Mass Instruction. It's a heartbreaking book, one that has the potential to make you rethink not only your education, but all of your life choices and your entire perspective on society and culture. Read it at your own risk.

I intend to be a saboteur in the old-fashioned sense. I am going to give my students the tools they need to see through all of the lies and bullshit. I'll teach them what questions they should ask, how they should respond to all the petty threats, how to get a real education without relying on school's brainwashing. I don't know how long I'll last, but I think I am clever enough to avoid being fired for at least a year or so.

New York is where I intend to begin my writing career. On top of my desire to research a book on education, I plan to shop around my other story ideas with literary agents and publishers in the city. I can't guess how successful I will be and it will be necessary always to have back-up career plans. I'm thinking that since I should be able to get a Masters by next year, I can work towards becoming a professor down the road, which would both help me become a writer and allow me to earn more money.

Three years gone by: The Departure part 2

As I mentioned in the last post, there is a massive financial incentive for me to return to NYC now. The cost of living is far lower in New York compared with Tokyo, and I'll be able to earn a lot more money. For this writing, I would like to focus on some of my more personal reasons for leaving now.

I left NYC is the Fall of 2006 largely because I was disgusted with the education system. I still am, though my time in Japan has taught me that it is not the worst system conceivable. I have a specific purpose behind teaching in NYC related to my writing, a motivation that I will get into in the next entry. I would, however, like to comment on the school system in Japan.

The Japanese educational system is twisted and evil, more so than even the American system. People praise it for churning out teenagers that multiply two digit numbers in their heads, but they don’t see what it does at the individual level to these children’s souls. In fact I would even argue that the kids are not actually educated - better to say they are programed for a few specific tests while undergoing a robust program of cultural conditioning. It is hard to understand without seeing it firsthand. The subject is worthy of its own essay (which I will write someday, I swear!) but for now I’ll just say that my heart goes out to those kids. The education system perfectly explains the high suicide rate, the low birth rate, the mass dissatisfaction with career, family, life, the obsessive consumer culture, the insulting entertainment industry, and the feckless, unaccountable government.

By the end of my first year, I knew I had to get out of it. I stopped working at public schools, but that was not enough. A much more basic realization hit me; Japanese kids are not much fun to teach.

They're boring. It’s not a language barrier thing either because the kids talk to me in Japanese all the time. I’ve met and taught hundreds of them and rarely is there any reason to remember the name of one over another. The differences in their personalities tend to correlate with GPA and socio-economic status, and are ultimately superficial in most cases. There are precious few exceptions.

I could blame the wider society. By the time these kids reach high school they’ve undergone years of brain washing in terms of how to treat foreigners. The school system inculcates a powerful mistrust and fear of teachers, which is why they never raise their hands to speak in class. In the west, teachers consider it a compliment when students ask a lot of questions and participate heartily. In Japan, students consider such “interruptions” disrespectful to the teacher and everyone else’s time. Kids in Japan are also loathe to come to teachers directly with their concerns about homework or class activities. Instead they talk to other teachers, who then talk to administrators, who then call the company that hired you so that you get in trouble.

This last cultural trait is crucial to understand if you have any intention of working in a Japanese environment. There are three important Japanese words you need to know first: nemawashi, tatemae, and honne.

Nemawashi is a gardening term pertaining to the trimming and preparation of roots on small plants. In the work place, the term refers to the managerial practice of obtaining the employees’ various points of view in one-on-one conversations in private. Managers then synthesize the points of view into a proposal everyone can agree on, then hold an efficient staff meeting where there is no need for public expression of opinion or open disagreement.

Tatemae and honne could be translated to mean something like “official position,” and “actual point of view.” A tatemae is merely a front; the things you say and do to keep the peace and avoid offending others all fall under this category. Your honne is your honest opinion about something. Japanese go to great pains to conceal this in both professional and personal dealings. Comedy shows make a big deal about celebrities accidentally revealing their honne. Students and teachers are no different, and this is why I have little hope for the Japanese educational system.

A student who cannot be honest with his teacher has little hope of learning anything meaningful from him, and a dishonest teacher has little chance of imparting any meaningful lessons. There is an added difficulty for foreigners, as Japanese students are often extremely apprehensive about approaching them or talking to them in any setting outside of being called on in class. If a student does not understand an assignment in class, they may ask another student, however fears about social standing often compel them to ask another teacher or administrator to talk to their foreign instructor on their behalf.

I have had numerous misunderstandings as a result. In one case, a student told me that she had been to Boston once. I told her that I did not like Boston’s baseball team because I am from New York, and the Yankees have had a long rivalry with the Redsox. Though I am not actually a huge baseball fan, I figured this sort of cultural capital from a native-speaking teacher would be valuable. I turned out to be wrong. Apparently the girl did not quite understand what I said, and she assumed that I was angry or disapproved of her being in Boston in some way. Rather than ask me to explain more slowly, speak Japanese, or even come to me after class in private, she went to the assistant principal.

From there, nemawashi kicked in, and several other teachers and administrators discussed my “case,” and put together a list of other student “complaints” (misunderstandings, really) then called my dispatch company. I had to attend three separate meetings at the school and at my company office, where salespeople lectured me on how to do my job. They advised me “Be positive always! Do not say negative thing. Do not say ‘don’t like’ or ‘not like’ because it is negative and students will have problem.” Three years at NYU could not prepare me for this level of inanity.

I lost one part-time job this way. The day they told me about the various “issues” students had was the same day they fired me. It was only two hours per week. Small potatoes really, certainly not a job I needed. But the principle had been established.

I have no desire to work in an environment where people not only prefer talking about you instead of to you, but consider it a virtue. I refuse to shrug and say “oh, that’s just their culture,” forcing myself to accept being summarily dismissed because a few kids were too shy. A teacher, counselor, or administrator could have had the decency of e-mailing me about their concerns, could have had the courtesy to give me the chance to adjust my teaching for the kids’ sake, but they chose to conspire behind my back for months and just find another gaijin, since all us foreigners are expendable (I seriously doubt a Japanese teacher would receive such shabby treatment, as with them the staff cannot use the excuse that students were “apprehensive” about approaching them).

I have met a lot of foreigners in Japan – Americans, Canadians, Italians, Germans, Australians – who have stayed a bit too long and grown resentful. After ten years of conversation school teaching and the insufferable deceptive culture at work, they grow embittered. Much of their anger comes from the knowledge that they’ve squandered away their twenties on cheap flings, mindless distractions, and the reality that they couldn’t possibly earn the same salary (often less than 25k per year) in their home countries given their lousy qualifications. Still, I have no intention of ever joining this species of disenfranchised expat. Just being an expat is disenfranchising enough. I think there is a turning point, right around the two, three year mark (where I am now) where as a foreigner you have to decide – am I in it for the long haul, or is it time to go?

I decided that it was time to go. After nearly three years, I got the experience that I was looking for. I learned a new language, met my amazing wife, and came to understand a society who's founding principles are wholly different from that of America. The only way I would have stayed longer would be if I had either a powerful career incentive or a desire to go native and assimilate. Neither of those possibilities materialized; instead I came to appreciate American culture more and I found better writing and teaching opportunities in my home country.

And so I said 'sayonara'.

Three Years Gone By: The Departure part 1

Tomorrow I leave Japan for good.

Well, maybe not for good. I'll get to that later. But I am moving back to New York.

I'll be staying with my folks for a while. I have a trip to Jamaica next month and will need to find a placement at a school in New York City. It will be a busy August, but I look forward to it.

Haruko is coming with me. She needs to return to Japan briefly in late August and continue teaching for about a month. She will rejoin me in New York in late September or early October. By then I hope to have the whole job and apartment thing sorted out.

This may seem a bit sudden, but actually this decision is the culmination of about four months of health concerns, problems at work, reflection on my future, and a profound insight into the nature of my time in Japan generally.

The health issue may or may not be a big one. There is a genetic kidney problem in my family and a Japanese doctor told me that my urine had a high amount of protein. Not exactly doomsday news, to be sure, but I do want to get checked out to be safe. Certainly if I do have a problem, I want to be in the United States. My family is here, as well as my medical records and a transplant system that occasionally offers kidneys to black people, unlike in Japan. There is also still a language barrier, as in spite of my high level of Japanese, making medical decisions with doctors using terms I don't even know in English is a bit risky.

There is also a powerful financial incentive for me to return to NYC. I can make twice as much money per year by working at a charter school in the city, and live much more comfortably given that NYC is a much cheaper city than Tokyo. My wife wants to go too, and with the improved salary and benefits, I can support her and build a good life for us.

I'll get into the more personal and philosophical reasons for leaving a bit later.

The Optimist part 1: So much evil...

Sometimes there is so much evil...

...it's like...my heart can't take it.

I think about all the problems in the world, all the injustice, and it just overwhelms.

America is bad enough. I can't stop and think about the douchebag sitting in the oval office without feeling embarrassed. The global financial meltdown was largely a product of America's unique mixture of ignorance and megalomania. Afghanistan and Iraq are still screwed up, though with all the A-listers kicking the bucket these days, you would not know it. We have a deficit over a trillion dollars in size, a government healthcare takeover that will cripple choice and innovation in medicine, and entire states imploding under the weight of public sector unions, entitlements, and stupendously idiotic politicians tossing our money down every sinkhole they can find. In my own state of NY, teachers like myself can't find work thanks to a hiring freeze that protects incompetent instructors over new teachers, no matter their qualifications, all in the name of seniority.

As I have written before, this crisis is going to get worse before it gets better. There will be a lot of oscillation with seeming improvements, temporary recoveries, ups, downs, and baskets of bullshit from the Obama administration (hey, did you hear the one about how the stimulus was always meant to work only after two years?).

But it isn't just the United States that is suffering. Japan is no better. They've gotten to the point where they're now paying foreigners to leave to protect Japanese jobs. You've got riots in China, a surveillance state in England, uprising in Iran, bombings in Indonesia, and swine flu to top it all off.

It's hard to blame people who don't follow the news. Anyone who pays close attention is bound to go through bouts of severe depression and disgust. In the long run, what exactly is there to look forward to aside from the next iPod or new season of American Idol? With so much shittiness out there, one wonders what they can do to actually fix things. Voting sure doesn't work. It's easier to just be self-absorbed in your own drama, to just try to find some security.

The problem is that that security is almost always false. You'd think 9/11 would have taught us that. It didn't. Neither did this most recent financial crisis, which so far has been a fairly comfortable recession. As long as it's the guy next door and not you losing your job, what's the big deal? Ignorance has a cost, and it only gets more expensive with time.

In spite of everything I remain optimistic about the future. I think the world my children will grow up in will be a good one. Why do I think this? Well, for a number of reasons...

Monogamy

Maybe I should have written this before getting married...

But now that it's official I feel like ruminating.

Can a man really be satisfied having sex with only one woman for the rest of his life? Does the idea of committing to one person forever even bear scrutiny?

Perhaps it depends on how you approach the question. If you ground yourself in the whole "humans are animals" line of thinking, then you'll probably think of some clever analogy between humans and monkeys asserting the need for men to spread their genes around. It's evolution, after all, the same undeniable force that kept nerdy guys like me from scoring with too many chicks in high school and college since they were too busy with alpha tough guys who would best protect their future offspring.

I find this argument tenuous at best. Monkeys don't invent airplanes or debate metaphysics. We are not just animals who happen to wear skirts and ties. Sure, we have animal desires. It's called the Id. An Austrian dude named Freud figured it out years ago, look him up. What makes us human is our capacity for controlling those desires, deferring gratification, and making long range plans for the future. As a species, our basic wants (food, shelter, sex, iPods) are analogous. Yet from that it does not necessarily follow that all men are wired to need sex from a wide range of partners over the course of their lifetimes.

Different strokes for different folks, as they say. Just as I don't question the happiness of the willfully childless or single, I don't think you can make blanket statements about married people. Surely there are a lot of people who jump into the sacrament unprepared. The over 50% divorce rate is a testament to that. Ultimately I think that in making the decision, knowing who you are is more important than knowing your partner. Too often people take the plunge looking for the pretense of a certain lifestyle, an elusive "security," or the approval of their community or family. They forget their own values and lose sight of their partner, which leads to suffering ten years down the road when they find themselves blaming their spouse for everything that has gone wrong in their own lives.

The book (and film) "Revolutionary Road" explored this idea well. The story is of two young and intelligent people who, in spite of their desire to escape their boring suburban lives, are unable due to their inability to understand one another. It doesn't help that they are both dishonest with themselves, manipulative of each other, and that the husband lacks the courage to back up his ambitions and the intelligence to stand up to his toxic wife. The point of the film is that conformity works because it is safe and easy. Conformity drags people into both marriage and divorce, as both are common as anything.

It is not surprising that both characters are unfaithful. What makes their affairs especially pathetic is that both choose to cheat with people they deem inferior. There is at least some vague element of principle in cheating with someone you believe to be prettier and smarter than your wife, or more of a man than your husband. This possibility of meeting someone "better" than your current partner I think drives many people's fear of commitment.

I know that it is possible down the road that I might meet some amazing woman, super intelligent, creative, independent, funny, awesome - basically, a female version of myself. Yet that possibility does not give me pause about being married, because I don't believe that I would be required to have sex with that woman. All my life I have had close female friends, and such a woman would just be one more. I do not have to miss out on a meaningful relationship with a woman simply because it must be non-sexual.

I don't understand men who are incapable of having female friends, nor do I care to. Nor do I believe, as some might, that you are doing an injustice to yourself by choosing your current partner over the supposedly superior new person. Writers like Ayn Rand even called it a moral imperative, having all of her female protagonists "move up" from husband to husband, climbing the ladder to find the best man.

The problem with this conception of love is that it assumes you can quantify a person's value in linear terms. My current spouse is a gorgeous college grad who speaks two languages and has worked for five different companies earning an average of $3000 a month while mastering cooking and gardening. So I guess she's about a 37. Yesterday I met a girl who is five years younger than my wife, speaks five languages, earns $10,000 a month, is a former model, has an IQ of 180 and knows Jiu-Jitsu. So I suppose she's a 79. If I talk to her and find that we have a lot in common, should I leave my wife for her?

The Randians would say yes, it is your moral duty to do so. To stay with a woman whom you acknowledge to be less accomplished, less intelligent, less pretty, - ultimately, a less accurate representation of your values - to stay with her is to worship mediocrity in favor of virtue. There is no room for loyalty or commitment under this vision of love, a vision that a lot of people subscribe to unconsciously. But there are two big problems with it, the first having been mentioned earlier. It is a fallacy that a man who meets an admirable woman cannot have a relationship with her that doesn't include sex.

The second issue deals with the score system. We are not being fair to my spouse. If my wife and I were at the beginning of our relationship, say just after our first date, then I may consider dating the other woman and breaking it off with my current partner. But since she has been with me for over two years, she deserves all sorts of "points" for loyalty. Two years of helping me with laundry, dinner, cleaning, translation, Japanese language study, good conversation, etc. As a lover, as a friend, and as a spouse, if I consider all she has done for me, I would have to add another 1000 points or so. So really we are comparing a 1037 to a 79, and it's no contest.

There is something to be said for loyalty, for always being there even in bad times. Hell, there is something to be said for "proved quantities" and experience. If you need a kidney transplant, which surgeon do you want performing the surgery? The young guy with the high test scores from Harvard who is doing his very first operation? Or the middle-aged guy who went to state college, but has done 500 operations and has seen it all before? If you would rather have the first guy, then I sure as heck would not want to date you.

To put it simply, my wife met me at a time when I had no job, little money, was living in a dorm in Yokohama with practically no savings and could not even afford to treat her to dinner. Even then she saw something in me that no other woman has, and she's stuck by me as our lives have improved. I can't conceive of anything that could tempt me to abandon her now. It's funny when I think about it. You assume that everything changes with marriage, but what is really amazing is how much everything stays the same. We are still the same boring couple that never goes out and watches Law and Order on cable all day. The possibility of us splitting up seems about as likely as the chances of them canceling that show.

Current Music: I'll Be There - The Jackson Five