Re-opening Japanese schools
Where did all the teenagers go? I haven’t seen any Japanese teens since Thursday, February 27th. I left on a 17-day trip to Canada on Friday, February 28th, the same day that institutions here began shutting down in response to the coronavirus emergency. Schools, amusement parks, suspended or cancelled commercial airline flights. Prime Minister Abe addressed the nation on live TV on February 28th in much the same way that Justin Trudeau did in Canada on Tuesday, March 17th. The World Health Organization did not declare a pandemic until March 14th, but it had already declared an international emergency with recommended travel restrictions and outright bans by mid-February. Anyway, my last day of work was February 27th, which was the last time I saw any teenagers. After that, social isolation and lockdown came into effect. So, I know very well where all the teenagers are - they’re at home, listening to music, watching TV, playing computer games, staying up all night and sleeping all day like hibernating bears. But it still feels odd not to see them around. There is a public high school directly across the street from my apartment, and I am used to seeing and hearing the young people walking to and from school and the local subway station and bus stop; buying snacks at the local convenience stores; hanging out in front of those stores; working at part-time jobs in those stores; and, playing sports on the field across the street. So, the relative quiet in the neighbourhood these last couple of months, plus their absence from my vision field is weird.
In mid-May, the state of emergency that the Japanese government had declared in April was lifted for most of the country. By then, the school year was already almost two months delayed. The state of Emergency for Tokyo and some surrounding prefectures was not lifted until Monday, May 26th. Once it was lifted, it remained unclear when and how, in what form, school classes would resume. An immediate resumption of regular daily life, or a phased resumption? Either way, “regular” and “normal” no longer pertain. There has to be a new ‘normal.’
Classes could not start immediately. Boards of Education spent April and May devising protocols for reopening schools, and an immediate restart once the state of emergency was ended did not fit with those plans. Classes could be restarted in June or mid-June, with precautions in place like social distancing, smaller class sizes, mandatory face masks, frequent hand-washing, and regular body temperature checks. What about the lost months - the end of the last school year and the start of the current one? And - the question everyone is asking - how will it be done? How will it work? What will it look like?
One, there could be a massive push for online lessons only, or a preponderance of online lessons. But really, schools aren’t prepared - I mean equipped - for that. Two, once regular lessons reconvene, we could abandon the annual August holiday and hold lessons straight through the hot summer time. Three, we could scrap the first term entirely and simply start the school year in September - which has been a much-debated plan over the years. Reconfiguring the Japanese school year to start in September rather than April would bring Japan into line with many countries in the world. But, it would cause a lot of disruption - maybe unbearable disruption - to a society that is designed for a Spring graduation. Four, there could be either shortened lesson times or shortened school days. Or both. They could hold morning lessons only, or afternoon lessons only as part of a scheme to reduce congestion on the crowded rush hour trains and subways that everyone uses. Five, they could stagger grades on different days. I mean, have different grades at school on different days of the week, so that the entire school body is not attending simultaneously. For example, Grade 10 could attend on Mondays and Wednesdays; Grade 11 on Tuesdays and Thursday; and, Grade 12 on Fridays and Saturday morning, and make up the missed face time with online lessons. Something like that.
The Japanese school year did not always start in April. Most people probably don’t know it, but it was only in the Meiji Period that the government mated School Entrance with April to meet the manpower needs of the Imperial Japanese Army during the 1894-95 Sino-Japanese War. The Imperial Japanese Army wanted more educated young men in a hurry for their war effort, and tailoring the school year to meet military requirements was the way to do it. I don’t know why the Army did not simply recruit young peasants who might not have cared so much about schooling, but … So, it might be said that since the school year was gerrymandered once, it can be again, muting protests about modern social disruption resulting from the change. Nothing is traditional unless people make it so, and deciding to reconfigure the school year to a September start would just become the new tradition. After all, what we call tradition is nothing but the grip that the dead have on the living. So, why not break the grip?
What we call tradition is the grip
that the dead have on the living.
For schools, the new normal will almost certainly entail
1) no Entrance Exams
2) no Entrance Ceremony;
3) no Opening Ceremony;
4) no Sports Day;
5) no School Festival;
6) no Field Trips;
7) no clubs;
8) no Graduation Trip;
9) no Graduation Ceremony;
10) no drinking fountains; and,
11) possibly no physical education classes.
If schools do decide to hold P.E. classes then I’m sure there will be no swimming pool and no contact team sports. Instead, maybe callisthenics and running. Lots of running. Long, long, long, cross country running.
All the tentative plans made by high schools’ staff are couched in the caveat that they will watch “the situation” closely, and that all their plans could change with “the situation.” In other words, nothing is settled. I don’t blame them, because the current COVID-19 situation is unprecedented in living memory, leaving us all to make things up as we go along as we can.
Maybe teenagers don’t care about any of this. Or, maybe they’re anxious. They need to complete their school year. Seniors are anticipating graduation, university entrance exams and college.
In Japan, the number of infections began to increase quickly after the announcement of the postponement of the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics. That seemed suspicious to some people, who speculated that the numbers were deliberately under-reported in the hope that the Olympics could be saved. There was no spike in infections here like there was in, say, New York City. At the time I am writing this, the number of confirmed cases is still increasing, even though the curve has been flattened considerably. For the time being things seem in hand here. Nevertheless, when Japanese began to feel the most pessimistic in late-April/early-May we were told 1) that the health care system was on the brink of collapse under the burden of coronavirus patients, and then soon after that, 2) the health care system was on the brink of collapse because they weren’t making money. Suddenly, there were too few patients. You see, going to the outpatient clinics of large hospitals rather than to neighbourhood clinics is the most common form of medical treatment in Japan. As the coronavirus infection increased more and more people - elderly, for example - began to avoid going to hospitals out of fear of contagion. That meant that hospitals became unprofitable, or were threatened with red ink.
But back to the teenagers again. Where have the teenagers been and what have they been doing? I read a short story in The Japan Times English-language print newspaper that teen pregnancy has had a measurable climb in the last few months. So, maybe there’s incest going on with all the staying-at-home, or else boyfriends and girlfriends are finding more private time during the state of emergency. Or, maybe a side effect of the novel coronavirus is miraculous conception!