today

Today in class, as well as yesterday, the third years of the middle school were assigned to read aloud (over and over again) a passage from their textbook ironically called "New Horizon." This particular passage, unlike the passage used for the second years, which involves philanthropy amidst the Guatemalan countryside, was about the bombing of Hiroshima 60 years ago. The story, in very plain English so that it could be understood, featured a tree that remembered the people "burned all over" that were falling dead under its shade. The tree then focused its memory on one girl who played mother for a dying youngster, singing to him and telling him that everything would be alright. The story ends by saying that the girl also did not live to see the next day.

The students read the story aloud after I recited it to them (reciting being one of my most important duties as an A.L.T. in the junior high classrooms). The fact that an American was reciting this story that was obviously, although not explicitly, about a massacre brought on by the American government probably did not go unnoticed. There were times that I could not help myself from laughing. The story was almost disgustingly sad, pathetically traggic.

Of course the irony does not stop there. The school here would not exist in the fashion that it does without the American influences involved after the widespread bombing, and during the American occupation, of Japan. The architecture of the school has 1950s America written all over it. Then there is the fact that they teach English as the foreign language. And then there is the JET programme which brings, primarily American speakers of Engish, to bring - on a grassroots level - even more "internationalization" here.

Well, a nice third year student just stopped by the office where I am asking me to help her recite a speech that she wrote in English with the help of the English teacher, so I have to go for now...