potent potables

The cultural learning space so often referred to as the Japanese English classroom, resembles less of a teaching institution than it does a comedic hilarity production facility (specializing in slightly overpaid, dashingly handsome foreigners and off the wall excitable kids).

Note the excerpts from a recent exercise involving the combination of one’s memories holiday memories and the present perfect tense of the English language (notice that only one of the students even attempted to use a past perfect sentence).

First off, we have this little gem:

“Nara is in beer. beer is very cute.”

Oh. I see.

Now to the untrained eye, this seems to be merely a grammatical error coupled with psychedelic hallucinations that cause one to think that deer appear as beer. Be that as it may, I suppose beer can in fact be rather cute, especially after drinking about 30 of them, as this student has apparently done.

Here’s a piece that defies all logic:

“I played sik last year. Daikura is good place. I smooted sik in Daikura. I goes many take a pictuer in the Daikura.”

Yes indeed. Now although I really want to give this particular student due credit for the multiple sentences (he shoots! he tries!), I cannot ignore the monstrous indignity this would do for the English language as a whole (it would be somewhat akin to Optimus Prime letting the Decepticons into the Autobot base, and then thanking them for the carnage they wreaked).
However, in the student's defense, I'm sure many of us also "smoot sik" on a regular basis, especially in Daikura (wherever or whatever it might happen to be…standard dictionaries produced no hits for this particular linguistic anomaly). Of course, I had to give admire this student for the almost readable “taking pictures” sentence.

Another bold attempt:

“Beer! I saw many beer in Nara park. Sika was cute. But I have stepped on feces of beer. I became sad then.”

Well, one is always apt to become a little sad when stepping in the beer feces.

Note: In Japan it is impossible, in fact it is illegal, to assign a grade of lesson than a C to any student at any time for any reason. A classroom attendance record of 0% merits a fine C average across the board. Furthermore, an annual test score average of 0 results in a well-deserved grade assessment of C.

I, as with all other Japanese teachers, can say to such abysmal students, “Simply stunning. You have done nothing, earned nothing, deserve nothing and will probably amount to nothing. Congratulations. C.”

That said, I must confess that there are very few students (none at my current countryside school) who really do nothing (or don’t come to school except on the last day to receive their report card full of Cs). Rather, the point is that mandatory schooling, as it exists here, requires that all students be passed through the grades until high school, regardless of behaviour, intent, ability, work accomplished, attendance or any other calculable factor that could conceivably be used to tabulate a student’s academic progress.

I think I will conjure up an imaginary student this year, enroll him in public school, choose his classes and collect his admirable C report card (George W. Bush, eat your heart out) at the end of term and display it proudly on my wall.