In Defence of the ALT IV

Book Four – Larry Cotter and The Tediously Bloated Franchise:
Or, 

The One In Which I Give Up On Pretending Larry Isn’t Me.

Well, not entirely me. I’m considerable fitter and better looking than he is. And I’ve conflated my experiences with those of a few other ALTs I’ve heard about first hand. But everything I described in part two really happened to someone, and should help you realize just how much unrealistic bullshit gets thrown at new ALTs before they ever set foot in a school. This means that in addition to coping with culture shock, they also have to deal with the fact it may very quickly become apparent this isn’t what they signed up for.

You could rightly argue that falling for the sales pitch is a little naïve, that five minutes on Google would be enough to disabuse a prospective ALT of any notions they may have had about swanning around Japan in their copious free time, interacting with the locals, mastering whatever martial art they decide to learn, and generally righting wrongs and standing up for the oppressed like a latter day Zatoichi.

Morning meetings could be a bitch.

But really, who isn’t a little naïve in their early twenties? That’s pretty much the whole point of being that age; making questionable decisions and finding out that the rest of the world owes you fucking nothing. If you’re going to recruit primarily from that age bracket, you’d better be prepared to put some serious effort into their training to get them up to speed. Needless to say, that’s not what happens.

Aside from some functionary from the Ministry or Board of Education making an absurdly panglossian speech on how ALTs are going to get all Japanese students speaking fluent English simply by their presence, JET training sessions are almost entirely organized and conducted by other JETs. Imagine if a group of people who couldn’t see very well decided to give directions to another group of people who also couldn’t see very well. It wouldn’t be very effective, would it?

I'm sure there's a snappier way of phrasing that.

Teaching is consistently presented as just one part of the role, weighted equally with other, less tangible parts involving ‘exchange.’ So it can come as a bit of a shock to get into schools and discover that your Japanese colleagues don’t know the JET Programme is co-sponsored by three ministries (really, that fact got shoved down our throats so fucking hard we all started calling ourselves ‘Debbie’ and wondering if we’d gone to the wrong city by mistake), and that they don’t know that ‘International Exchange’ is an explicitly stated part of why you’re in Japan. They think you here to teach English, and only teach English. So when you ask for time off to go and see a festival, you think you’re fulfilling one of the main aspects of your job description, and they think you want a holiday because you’re lazy.

Of course, both may be true. But it still remains that you were lured to Japan with several stated goals, and the reality is that the people you are answerable to on a day-to-day basis only care about one of them. And one you’ve received maybe a maximum of ten hours training on prior to trying to execute.

Now, there are some wonderful ALTs, and there are some absolute jokes, as with any large group of people. But it’s not just the odd bad apple, unfortunately. It’s not an exaggeration to say that the bulk of ALTs are naïve, inexperienced, ill-prepared, and improperly incentivized. It’s not an exaggeration because that’s exactly the kind of people the system’s set up to attract. Look again at the list of horseshit I detailed in part two, and then realize that I left out much, much more because even I was getting tired of the easy sarcasm.

So it’s not that there’s the odd bad apple, so much as that the barrel’s half filled with onions too. Nothing wrong with onions by themselves, but you don’t want to mistake one for the other when eating them raw. And if you don’t want to keep doing that, then the obvious solutions is to stop buying fucking onions.

Especially from anyone as suspiciously French
as this. I live to break down stereotypes, me.

The average ALT’s salary is fairly generous in comparison to a newly qualified Japanese Teacher. Being able to shift yourself halfway across the world and still operate effectively isn’t actually that common a skill, so a decent salary isn’t unjustified for the position. But that newly qualified Japanese teacher also knows that if he keeps his head down and doesn’t fuck up then he’ll get regular raises just based on length of service, twice annual bonuses, insurance, pension for his dotage, and, if he’s any good, a shot at promotion and more responsibility and influence.

ALTs get none of that, which is what I mean by ‘improperly incentivized’. While you’ll get more influence as your colleagues learn to trust you, your official job description will be exactly the same at the end of your tenth year as at the end of your first. Your wage will be equally as fixed, in all probability. That’s if you’re going to hang around that long. The Japanese teacher’ll have a job for life, but ALTs have to make do with a series of rolling annual contracts. It’s almost as if they don’t want us to stay…

And so to get properly personal about it. I’m actually pretty well qualified, just not in TEFL, and in purely economic terms there’s no incentive for me to change that situation. The possible benefits of any extra training I might be interested in (and I am interested) can’t possibly cover the time and money I’d have to sacrifice to get that training. It just doesn’t pay.

This isn’t a complaint about my specific situation. I should make that clear. I love most of what I do and like to flatter myself that I’m pretty good at my job. Actually, fuck that. I am good at my job. I’m good at it in large part because I understand the parameters and constraints on everyone involved and push against them as little as is necessary in order to educate my students. I’ve learned how to pick my battles, which means I’m allowed to do the parts of my job that actually matter in return for tolerating idiocies that don’t. Welcome to the real world, kids.

Nobody on either side comes into this purposefully planning to do a shit job, but in general the ALT system seems almost deliberately designed to fail at teaching English communication. Any ALTs or JTEs who manage to actually work well together and measurably improve their students are outliers, and owe their success far more to blind luck and individual character than any kind of conscious process at the organizational level. That is the sad and inescapable truth of a project that has consumed billions of yen over the course of decades.

"Do I really look like a guy with a plan?"

I’ve now spent four weeks outlining how the ALT system is fucked. In a series entitled ‘In Defence of the ALT’. Next week will be a doozy, I promise you.

Credit where it’s due.