The Wind of Tharn
I just read this piece in the Japan Times, labeled a “letter” to the Minister of Education, Tatsuo Kawabata. It’s going to get about as much attention as the guy wearing the sandwich board proclaiming the Apocalypse is upon us.
It begins talking about how Japanese universities are hiring more part-time instructors than they used to. Part-time instructors for whom they don’t have to pay benefits, holidays, and the rest. This is true, and it sucks. But it’s not like this is unique to Japan. We’re in the middle of a recession, and Japan’s been hit harder than a lot of countries (mostly due to a distinct resistance to change in the ol’ Diet, granted). When I was still in the US the situation wasn’t much better for people looking for work, especially English teachers. And on top of that, too many universities in Japan who made the error in judgment of hiring native English-speaking foreigners as language instructors in the past have been burned by those very instructors, either through incompetence, things unethical, or just lack of caring. If I was a university administrator, I’d certainly think twice about giving any kind of lasting power to the same demographic of people (mostly white male English speakers of European descent, in this case). If anything, it’s miserliness rather than displaced xenophobia driving the current wave of part-time hiring.
Speaking of white boys, Tharn’s letter also misleadingly states that if a ‘person “looks” the part’ they get the job. This is, of course, silly. Any institution that’s dealt with foreign hires in the past and is all-too-aware of their current fiscal situation in the present isn’t going to just hire the first Aryan that walks through the door. If there is one default hiring requirement, it’s being a native speaker of English, not looking like a Swede. That being said, though, there are a disproportionate number of white males working as language teachers in Japan, the reasons for which are many, including the Japanese culture, its reputation, and a traditional preference for employing men. Let’s be honest, Japan has always attracted a disproportionate number of white guys, yours truly included. I do agree, however, that there do exist institutions (read companies) who would select one foreigner over another based on appearance.
Continuing on, if I was a Japanese university administrator, why would anyone assume that I should speak English and conduct my hiring practices of foreigners therein, as Tharn seems to think? Um. Right. Why wouldn’t the Japanese head of a Japanese university be fluent in English to the point of making new hires? Why would the administration be doing the hiring, anyway? They just stamp the contract, it’s the departments who go through the hiring process.
Still, Tharn says it’s because of this exact inability to hire foreigners in their non-Japanese native language that the university hires instructors by means of personal contacts and recommendations. Allow me to mention, here, that Tharn claims to have lived in this country for some twelve years. With that being said, how does Tharn not know that in this culture, personal contacts are how a lot of deals get made and relationships established? This isn’t just for foreign hires of universities, this is for everything from piano lessons for your kids to marriage partners for your single spawn to full-time job positions. If you’ve lived in this country 12 years and haven’t gotten used to this fact yet, it’s probably time you investigated gainful employment elsewhere.
Next in the letter, though, Tharn makes a valid point. Many universities have, in the past and some even now, made it a practice to hire the occasional permanent English instructors who do not hold even a Master’s, let alone a PhD. This is changing in Japan. As most younger Japanese professors are completing PhDs before getting tenure here, so too are foreigners being held to higher standards. I know the institution I work for wouldn’t even consider an application that didn’t have a Master’s as a minimum. Private universities, of course, may not hold their candidates to such rigorous standards. To play the devil’s advocate, if a native English speaking foreigner is hired to teach oral communication classes, then a graduate degree may not be essential, given appropriate experience and/or training. I think I’d side with Tharn on this one, though, and say that an English- or teaching-focused graduate degree is preferable. More and more universities would agree too, I think, as many have been disappointed by less-than-qualified hires in the past.
I must contend, however, with Tharn’s evident assumption that being a native speaker with a Master’s is enough to land a cushy tenured office in a university here. Would Western universities give tenure to someone without a PhD? I suppose it’s not impossible, but I’ve certainly never heard of such a case. If you have a field-appropriate PhD in Japan (linguistics, TESOL/TEFL, etc.), then your chances of landing a tenured job are greatly increased.
That just leaves us with one little problem that The Tharn failed to mention. Having a field-related Master’s or PhD is a definite asset, but if you’re wanting to work full-time at a Japanese university in Japan where Japanese people work, conduct meetings in Japanese, and write each other Japanese emails, then perhaps maybe, just maybe, being a native English speaker isn’t quite enough, no matter what color or sex you are. I mean, no one’s expecting you to publish books and research in Japanese, but if you can’t even hold an intelligible conversation with the department secretary in the local language, why would anyone bothering considering you for a permanent position?
I think Tharn makes some valid points elsewhere related to race and gender and hiring practices here (although a lot of the same blustering from the Japan Times letter is included). But the letter under discussion, which many more people are likely to read, unfortunately, comes off as more of a pout than a strong argument.
