(Snow) White-Washing Education to Death

And Japan goes and takes the cake (and eats it too) once again.

It seems that a kindergarten in one of Tokyo's many suburbs wanted to stage a school play based on "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs". However, the parents thought it was unfair that only ONE GIRL (gasp!) would be selected to play the lead. Therefore, they organized a relentless campaign of harassment and bullying until the teachers finally caved in to their demands.

The result? A performance of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" in which all 25 students at the kindergarten played the lead role (i.e. Snow White) and no one played any of the other roles.

The parents apparently gave the performance a rousing ovation and called it a triumph of personal rights for their precious snowflakes (Tip of the hat to Fark) who all got to be Snow White.

(Article in the Times. The same article has appeared in a number of different publications from various countries both printed and online)

This would be laughably absurd if it weren't so pathetic. This is a perfect example of the state in which Japanese education is finding itself these days; schools and teachers are becoming more and more under attack from what is known as "monster parents". Basically, the parent of the 20-oughts is someone who feels that his child has rights without responsibility, that society owes him and his offspring special treatment, that he is entitled to have his sushi and eat it too. It's not just the education system that is under attack, either; instead of respecting the certified professionals whose services they hire, such as doctors or lawyers, they noisily demand that those professionals make special allowances for them. Quite often those demands are just plain outrageous. Not surprisingly, more and more school districts, hospitals, etc. are having to take outrageous measures, such has having contracted lawyer teams on standby, simply to be able to do their jobs.

This isn't a faraway thing, either. My wife wound up being driven from her tennis coach position because the "monster parent" father of the team captain, who she'd demoted after he'd not only failed but had scandalized his position, had organized the parents of the first-year students (i.e. the ones that didn't know her) into a posse and harassed both the principal and the local superintendent trying to have her sacked both as coach and as a teacher. (To their credit, the latter refused to punish my wife in any way, and a lot of parents even came out in her defense, but the posse was causing so much trouble that my wife finally quit.) Mssr. Maestro Ogawa at Ye Olde Academy very nearly lost his job five years ago because of something vaguely similar (though I shouldn't and won't give details), and it took me risking my own job by forcing the people up top to listen to the full story and even making efforts to form a counter-posse to defend him. Now I'm having to deal with something of a "monster parent" myself; this person isn't malicious or overly demanding (yet), but she has been pestering the teachers and harassing certain students in the music club every time her precious snowflake has trouble getting along with her seniors (which is about every other week). We've actually been lucky. I know of other teachers and schools in our area which have suffered far worse.

Experts are saying that the "monster parent" phenomenon is a product of the late 90s, when Japan both suffered an economic downturn and saw a rash of faulty product scandals. It is said that, because of these factors, young adults are now far more aware of and quick to demand their individual rights as paying consumers. Well, that may very well be part of it, but after having been a teacher here in the Land of the Rising Bile for almost two decades, I'm far more inclined to believe it has more to do with the bubble-economy indulgence of the 80s. After all, most of the parents of elementary-school-age kids now were in high school when I started teaching here. I remember what they were like as kids: spoiled rotten. These were the children whose fathers were more dedicated to their companies than to their families and whose mothers were intimidated by their doting grandparents. In other words, they got lots of money from their parents and naught else, allowing them to get what they wanted when they wanted without many rules attached. Life was just one, big, convenience-oriented consumerist paradise. Now those spoiled brats are parents, and guess what? They still expect to be given whatever they want whenever they want. Bottom line? This country proudly dug its own grave twenty years ago. The question is whether it can now avoid melting into it.

While I say all this, I realize my American and European readers are probably thinking "Been there, done that..." because the PC and "soccer mom"/"helicopter parent" phenomena have been around for longer than they have here. However, since the "25 Snow Whites" story has gotten so much coverage in American and European press, I have to wonder if this is yet another field, like cars and electronics, which Japan came into later but has now started to overtake the competition.

Anyway, by interesting coincidence, the latest post on Happysurfer's "From Where I Am..." website is a list of 11 Rules of Life, often mistakenly attributed to Bill Gates (because he quoted it in a speech) but which was actually created by Charles J. Sykes, author of the book, Dumbing Down Our Kids: Why American Children Feel Good About Themselves But Can't Read, Write, Or Add. Personally, I think this list is both excellent and very timely:

Rule 1: Life is not fair - get used to it!

Rule 2: The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.

Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity.

Rule 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time..

Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.

Amen. This should be required reading for all parents.