"According to an education ministry report last year, 8,627 public school teachers took a leave of absence for health reasons in fiscal 2009. Of these, 5,458, or 63.3 percent, did so due to psychological problems.
The number of teachers taking temporary leave for mental health reasons has been steadily rising since fiscal 2000, the report said. While 0.24 percent of public school teachers took a leave of absence in fiscal 2000, the percentage rose to 0.60 in fiscal 2009, it said.
The education ministry official cited so-called monster parents, who make unreasonable demands, and an increasingly digitized society as some of the reasons behind teachers' increasing stress."
Pushy parents and the internet. That's it. Nothing to do with the twelve-hour working days; crippling workloads; mandatory voluntary involvement in extra-curricular activities at weekends; unofficial prohibitions against taking holidays; that instead of replacing one of their many, many previous bad ideas, any new ones MEXT concocts just gets added to the pile; the seniority based system which means the the competence of those in authority is a total crap-shoot; and the fact that all this gets dumped disproportionately on new teachers because they have 'more energy' and no family commitments.
Credit where it's due.
No. Nothing to do with the ministry at all. It's obviously Facebook that's the problem here.
Credit where it's due.
The Education Ministry is absolutely borked and fucked. It will need an entire overhaul to really prepare kids to compete internationally ...of coarse 81% of workers 20-29 said they opposed Uniqlo's mandatory TOEIC req because they don't think it's necessary and they want to stay in Japan. This is the younger workers and they are cripplingly optimistic about this countries ability to employ them in the future.
ReplyDeleteThe problems are wide and deep.
And of course it isn't necessary. Maybe if you're an executive heading off to another country (which may not use English anyway), but not for some Saturday job on the shopfloor.
ReplyDeleteThat reminds me of another shitty working condition, the random far-flung transfers inflicted on teachers every 5 years or so. "Congratulations on your new job! Now piss of to the middle of bumble-fuck nowhere. Four hour commute you say? Suck it up, Newby. And stay away from Twitter."
I have no idea why anyone becomes a teacher or 'salaryman' here. What's the upside, apart from job stability (that's something)? Why grind through JHS and HS and 'juku' and entrance-exams, to get a vacation during Uni (which is when you ought to learn how to think) and get a middling-class wage and a horrid commute, along with the working conditions you stated? There's other ways to have that income in Japan - some even legal.
ReplyDeleteI like teaching, but to be honest the reason I chose it over law is I wanted vacation more than real money. J-teachers get neither. I had to laugh at the following, as it applies to Canadian teachers too:
"instead of replacing one of their many, many previous bad ideas, every genius new initiative MEXT concocts just gets added to the pile; the seniority based system which means the the competence of those in authority is a total crap-shoot; and the fact that all this gets dumped disproportionately on new teachers because they have 'more energy' and no family commitments."
I wouldn't discount stability as a factor. The public sector here really does have 'jobs for life' in a way that isn't true in the UK any more (dunno about Canada). The seniority thing also means that if you can hang around long enough without pissing people off your final salary and pension are going to be pretty generous. And then there's the fact it's possible to fuck up quite appallingly and the only sanction is to get moved to another parish. Sorry, school. Moved to another another school.
ReplyDeleteThe bright side (because dear god there must surely be one) is that the increasing drop/flake out rate of new teachers suggests that more people are starting to agree with you. I know quite a few part-time teachers who enjoy the job but refuse to go full-time because the stress isn't worth it.