I is for Impunity

Near the bottom of Tokyo’s public educational barrel, Kanokita School appropriately sits in the shadow of the regional garbage incinerator. Toxins must seep into the water table, too.

I share a bus ride from the nearest train station with a disturbing number of mentally disabled adults. They are the only ones naive enough to sit next to a foreigner, although my knees do jut into the adjacent seat, sometimes the last one available.

An otherwise routine trip was once enlivened when one such man boarded with a bottle of brown “English tea.” Drinking on public transportation is frowned upon, but that didn’t dissuade him. He was audibly slobbering on the bottle. How refreshing to have the other passengers furtively eye someone else for a change.

While the bus was in motion, he leaped up and lunged across the aisle to slide open the window, dripping tea on an elderly passenger. He ejected the bottle from the window. Plastic rattled onto the pavement. The engine drowned out stifled reactions.

However small, it was a rare breakdown in order here. Well, rare if you’re a stranger to Kanokita. If D is for Delinquency, then I is for Impunity.

A pack of wild girls runs down the hall feeding off disorder it incites. Like a car with squealing brakes, Seiko’s shrieks can he heard down the block. First, she’s in the hall. Next, the fire escape. Then she’s yelling upstairs to Maki from the flowerbed in the courtyard, her uniform snared by branches. An old custodian lady pleads her not to trample the greenery.

A teacher told me that the outdoor pool is the only one in the ward to freeze in winter because it faces west and receives no direct sunlight. This distinction would qualify for an achievement at Kanokita were it not for the students who nearly fell in after treading on thin ice. Others kept their distance from the safety of fourth floor windows and pelted the ice with Mandarin oranges from school lunches, now a free meal for the crows.

Sometimes their boldness is welcome. Students freely adjust the classroom thermostat, which often works to this sweaty American’s favor. I silently cheer when a student pumps up the a/c. During spring rainy season either I’m getting soaked from above or sweating from underneath.

A tradition dating back to temple schools from the Edo period, students are assigned daily after school cleaning tasks. A rotating wheel of chores keeps track of who is sweeping where that day. Kids arm themselves with hand brooms and washcloths as chirping music sounds over the PA system. The tune mimics what’s heard at a closing department store. Chairs are raised, desks pushed to the side, and dust balls and spilled rice grains swept up. Others rub washcloths along the banister or wipe the linoleum stairs. At Kanokita, however, there’s no music – only the huffing of teachers carrying cleaning supplies.

The only thing that students who don’t want to learn have learned is that they don’t have to learn if they don’t want to. When students wield more power than teachers, threats are hollow and discipline is unenforceable.

Such antics wouldn’t go unpunished in U.S. schools. There are principals to lay down the law and detention for those who flaunt it. In Japan, principals are powerless and detention is a foreign concept. It’s the fundamental right of students to attend class. Kicking kids out would be to deny them this right. Students hold the ace of spades. Except for when after class began I broke up a poker game on the grounds that if I wasn’t dealt in, then nobody was playing.

While sometimes I use outsider status as leverage to encourage good behavior, specialized Japanese “cowboys,” as I called them, are the only hope of containing problems. In the absence of respected authority, cowboys patrol classrooms and hallways to prevent rebellious teens from taking over the ranch.

Chief cowboy Koutoro is a cool 30-something friend to the students and ally to the out-of-touch staff. His hairstyle matches his eclectic taste in fashion. The kids liken his stringy bangs plastered to his forehead to pubic hair. They have a point. He began as a volunteer five years ago, and now is the longest tenured member of staff.

The student-teacher ratio in one class was 3:1. Two English teachers, two cowboys, and one other man were on hand to lead and observe class. The problem was trouble itself. These 8th graders were perfectly behaved.

Although not (yet) as treacherous as their sempai (elders), the youngest students influence classroom life. I suggested dividing into groups to play a game that worked well with elementary schoolers I once subbed for. A 7th grade class at Kanokita has about the same English ability. The Japanese English teacher rebuffed the idea: “This class doesn’t do groups. If we try, one or two groups won’t participate.”

We’re teachers. Time to show ’em who’s boss, right? To the contrary, the mischief only gets worse….