[translation] If only I had had the STEED to go… Trip 8 - Elementary school
Oh, the times when sensei didn’t have to take a pandemic into consideration while sharing his thoughts on this topic… Anyway, I hope someone finds the translation of some interest, thank you for reading!
Every year, when summer rolls around, Science Hotline for Kids on NHK draws public attention. One’s heart gets softened by the adorable purity of the questions, and it is equally enjoyable to listen to the witty responses that the children receive from the science experts. While listening to some episodes, I end up groaning before I know it, then I get thrown back to elementary school mode of thinking: “I want to become an adult who is that good at steering a conversation!” But time flies, I am already in my 30s, and it is unbecoming of me anymore to only have fleeting daydreams about being a reliable grown-up.
The kouhai are quite grown up too. One of my friends calls this age “young elderly, a rookie veteran”. It feels strange to be able to say it, but I find myself more and more often in situations when somebody asks for my advice and opinions - both kouhai and other young people, whom I get to meet and talk to through my work. Every time it happens I feel lost for the right thing to say, and it’s impossible to make a cool impression.
That sort of thing happened just the other day. Doing location shooting for NEWS na Futari, a show I have an honor to host, we visited a home where several people live together as quite an unconventional family. They are in a polyamorous relationship (a romantic relationship between more than two people at the same time), where the Ys are spouses with two children, and the wife has another partner as well, who lives in the same house upon the husband’s consent. Another member of the household is a single mother of three, making it nine people under one roof. That part alone is enough to fill one’s head with questions. However, something that piqued my interest was the fact that one of the children of the woman who had moved in most recently doesn’t go to school. A, the eldest daughter, when asked about the reason, rattled me with her sharp speech: “We are all forced to learn the same things at the same time, does that make sense to you? That’s weird”. The parents of the household don’t have a unanimous opinion; some wish for the girl to attend classes, while others accept it as a choice that she made for herself. As the discussion unfolded, I was asked too: “What do you think, Kato-san?” In other words, I was suddenly facing a philosophical, fundamental issue: whether it is necessary or not for a child to attend elementary school.
I could attempt to picture the reply of an expert from Summer Science Hotline for Kids; however, unfortunately, this sort of question doesn’t have a straightforward, science-based answer. Moreover, since we were filming for a TV program, I had to keep in mind that, apart from A, my opinion was going to be broadcast to an unspecified number of viewers. It would not do to just blurt something out carelessly, along the lines of “You should go to school” or “You don’t have to”. If I choose my words too cautiously though, the answer would be all the more evasive. It truly was a conundrum.
If there had been a solid reason - bulling, for instance, or any other risk to her mental and physical state, - it would have been possible to just point out that going to school was not necessary if the girl was not willing to. That was not the case though, so firstly I made an effort to deeper understand A’s feelings, and the stiff formality of education that she spoke about. As far as I could tell, the source of her dislike was the totalitarian lack of freedom at school where everyone is expected to perform the same actions according to a specific schedule. To put it simply, she was questioning the principles of the Japanese education system. One might conclude that such views were influenced by the atmosphere of freedom in the family; however, A demonstrated a surprising degree of independence and firm will - it turned out that she actually had gone to the assistant principal to discuss the matter. Seeing that she didn’t come back to classes, the debate had not proved convincing enough for her to see the point in attending school. Which means that she could still agree to receive schooling if it was oriented at the student’s individual needs. There are people who promote the necessity of this sort of schooling; the education system aimed at nurturing individuality is already mainstream in some countries. In this regard I’m able to relate to the girl’s point of argument.
The thing is, even though she has a strong opinion, there is no specific field of studies on which she would like to focus. She doesn’t express interest in learning something, attending a free school, doesn’t do self-studying. It seems that her everyday activities consist of playing video games and such.
I don’t think that the games themselves are to blame here. However, as I watched her play, I couldn’t help getting a subjective impression that it was not her passion, she was just bored. She said, “I can study on my own.” Meaning, as I take it, that her intention was to find the thing she wanted to do and shape her lifestyle around learning just that one thing. Apparently, games were not it.
As I was talking to A, the wife who has a polyamorous relationship, showing support of the girl’s choice said: “She can come back to school whenever she feels like it. A new beginning is possible at any age.”
In the end, based on the context, I gave my answer: “I think you should go to school after all. If you don’t, there is a chance you won’t be able to learn how to learn.”
Indeed, it is possible to choose a new path at any age, to live the way we wish to. I want to believe that, the society has to provide that sort of opportunities. However, I also believe that to be able to start anew at any point in life, a person should use a chance to learn when they are presented with it.
I heard that a lot of outstanding discoveries in mathematics and physics were made by people in their 20s. Naturally, there must also be quite a lot made by older people, but it is no wonder that, the same as our bodies, our brain has a higher performance capacity when we are young. Thinking about it inspires me, it helps me, aged over 30, to not overestimate my abilities and appreciate what I still have now. That also gives us a reason to proclaim childhood a precious season of learning. All the chaotically amassed tidbits of knowledge, all the things that a person witnesses and experiences during that period, have the power to shape a significant part of their entire life.
When I was a first-grade elementary school student, we lived in Osaka, and the area was hit by The Great Hanshin earthquake [1995]. The moment it struck I was terrified - as well as thrilled, to an extent, with the sheer abnormality of the situation. However, when I came to school the next day, at the morning assembly the principal told us that one of the teachers had died, and that’s when I first realized how sudden death can be. When I was a second grader, one day my friends began to ignore me. They didn’t like the way I was acting. I experienced for the first time what it was like to be hated by others. Year three - I was told that I have to transfer to a new school, the sadness of leaving my friends; year four - my classmates made fun of me when they heard I applied to Johnny’s; year five - the day when I refused to go to school.
I wasn’t bullied or anything. More like, all of a sudden I felt exhausted from interacting with my classmates and other people who had anything to do with school. At breakfast, as I told my parents: “I don’t want to go to school”, my father responded with, “Then, I think I’ll take a day off too” and made a call to the company right away. Both my parents were working at that time, so mum ended up the only one leaving while dad and I spent an entire day on our own. Having no particular plans in mind, we just went to a video rental shop that had just opened in the neighborhood, and picked up Titanic. As far as I remember, dad made yakisoba for lunch. Dad used to cook from time to time, and his dishes were different from mum’s cooking, more daring and delicious. After that, we spent almost four hours in the living room watching a story about the luxurious ship that sank. It got awkward during erotic scenes. We finished the movie when it was already evening. Basking in the rays of the setting sun, I suddenly realized that I don’t mind going to school the next day. Perhaps, it was partly because deep down I felt guilty for making dad take time off work, but at that moment my need to skip school was fully satisfied.
A year after that, when I was a six-grader, male students began harassing a girl from my class, making sex-related jokes. Then our homeroom teacher revealed to us that in the past she was assaulted by someone who pretended they were going to rape her. She was crying as she spoke about her pain.
During my elementary school years, compared to the knowledge I acquired in class, there were even more things I learned just because we were all forced to spend our days together as a group. I made some friends, fell in love for the first time; I have memories of the first small victories - like that time when my work was chosen as one of the best at haiku competition. On the other hand, my memories about sports days are not happy ones, since I was not good at P.E., and every summer I had to attend supplementary swimming lessons, anxious at the prospect of my classmates making fun of me if they found out.
If I think about it now, every single experience and memory were part of my learning process, and school, being a miniature replica of the society, ended up cultivating both my ability to cooperate and my autonomy.
Of course, we can’t actively select what we are subjected to. As we face certain experiences that we perceive as irrational and try to handle them, it can help us gain strength which becomes useful later in life. Living, after all, means constantly dealing with absurdity.
One can start anew at any point, as many times as needed. However, there will always be a lot of people who started earlier than you. If you only study half-heartedly, it might be not enough to become their equal or surpass those people; you must be mentally prepared for that.
Rather than book knowledge per se, I think it concerns a broader range of experiences that we call resourcefulness. In other words, if a person is quite experienced at life in general, they will always find a way. One needs a strong base to cultivate resourcefulness, so that later in life they are able to keep on going no matter what happens. That is what I had in mind when I said “learning how to learn”.
Anyway, I wouldn’t have been able to get through to A with all these long-winded passages. This is, after all, the story of my own life. Listing my successes and failures, then saying, “And that’s why you should go back to classes”, I wouldn’t have touched the heart of a kid who doesn’t want to go to school. So I put it like that - “learning how to learn”, - and tried to explain it in a simple way, but it must have still been hard for her to understand, because the discussion ended with her quite discouraging resume: “Well, I guess to each their own.” I’m still trying to think of a better way to explain my views on why elementary school education is important.
It was shocking to me when scientific research showed that flutter kick doesn’t propel swimmers doing crawl but has a slowing down effect instead. According to research conducted by a joint team from University of Tsukubo and Kyoto Institute of Technology, if the average speed is 1 m/s (amounting to 90-91 seconds per 100 meters), then flutter kick does have a propelling effect, however, if the speed is increased to 3m/s, then the movement of legs impedes the flow of water and increases the resistance in the same proportion.
What about those supplementary swimming lessons in the summer? Did I just waste my time practicing flutter kick? Why hadn’t anyone noticed sooner that flutter kicks don’t work?
It raises suspicions that there might have been wrong answers among those given by experts from Science Hotline for Kids as well. The teenager in me feels dejected: turns out adults can teach you wrong things. I wonder though, why doesn’t it make me think: “So going to elementary school is a waste of time after all! Individual schooling would be better!”
If they hadn’t taught me flutter kicks, how would I have been able to swim? I might not have learnt how to swim at all.
I might not be the best at it, but to this day I do enjoy swimming. That’s because I would practice together with other kids who had poor skills too, and I still remember the taste of the ice-cream we would get from the vending machine afterwards.
It’s much better to suck at swimming than not be able to do it.
Next time I have a chance to swim I think I’ll try crawl with no flutter kicks. Then I will try to do them, giving it my all. If the no-flutter-kick style speeds me up, that’ll be exciting for sure. Then I will try to see what feels better, not doing flutter kicks or moving my entire body while doing them. I’ll have a lot of fun with those experiments.
No doubt I will be followed by the phantom smell of chlorine and the vision of the blue swimming pool with a few tiles fallen off, my elementary school memories.
Every year, when summer rolls around, Science Hotline for Kids on NHK draws public attention. One’s heart gets softened by the adorable purity of the questions, and it is equally enjoyable to listen to the witty responses that the children receive from the science experts. While listening to some episodes, I end up groaning before I know it, then I get thrown back to elementary school mode of thinking: “I want to become an adult who is that good at steering a conversation!” But time flies, I am already in my 30s, and it is unbecoming of me anymore to only have fleeting daydreams about being a reliable grown-up.
The kouhai are quite grown up too. One of my friends calls this age “young elderly, a rookie veteran”. It feels strange to be able to say it, but I find myself more and more often in situations when somebody asks for my advice and opinions - both kouhai and other young people, whom I get to meet and talk to through my work. Every time it happens I feel lost for the right thing to say, and it’s impossible to make a cool impression.
That sort of thing happened just the other day. Doing location shooting for NEWS na Futari, a show I have an honor to host, we visited a home where several people live together as quite an unconventional family. They are in a polyamorous relationship (a romantic relationship between more than two people at the same time), where the Ys are spouses with two children, and the wife has another partner as well, who lives in the same house upon the husband’s consent. Another member of the household is a single mother of three, making it nine people under one roof. That part alone is enough to fill one’s head with questions. However, something that piqued my interest was the fact that one of the children of the woman who had moved in most recently doesn’t go to school. A, the eldest daughter, when asked about the reason, rattled me with her sharp speech: “We are all forced to learn the same things at the same time, does that make sense to you? That’s weird”. The parents of the household don’t have a unanimous opinion; some wish for the girl to attend classes, while others accept it as a choice that she made for herself. As the discussion unfolded, I was asked too: “What do you think, Kato-san?” In other words, I was suddenly facing a philosophical, fundamental issue: whether it is necessary or not for a child to attend elementary school.
I could attempt to picture the reply of an expert from Summer Science Hotline for Kids; however, unfortunately, this sort of question doesn’t have a straightforward, science-based answer. Moreover, since we were filming for a TV program, I had to keep in mind that, apart from A, my opinion was going to be broadcast to an unspecified number of viewers. It would not do to just blurt something out carelessly, along the lines of “You should go to school” or “You don’t have to”. If I choose my words too cautiously though, the answer would be all the more evasive. It truly was a conundrum.
If there had been a solid reason - bulling, for instance, or any other risk to her mental and physical state, - it would have been possible to just point out that going to school was not necessary if the girl was not willing to. That was not the case though, so firstly I made an effort to deeper understand A’s feelings, and the stiff formality of education that she spoke about. As far as I could tell, the source of her dislike was the totalitarian lack of freedom at school where everyone is expected to perform the same actions according to a specific schedule. To put it simply, she was questioning the principles of the Japanese education system. One might conclude that such views were influenced by the atmosphere of freedom in the family; however, A demonstrated a surprising degree of independence and firm will - it turned out that she actually had gone to the assistant principal to discuss the matter. Seeing that she didn’t come back to classes, the debate had not proved convincing enough for her to see the point in attending school. Which means that she could still agree to receive schooling if it was oriented at the student’s individual needs. There are people who promote the necessity of this sort of schooling; the education system aimed at nurturing individuality is already mainstream in some countries. In this regard I’m able to relate to the girl’s point of argument.
The thing is, even though she has a strong opinion, there is no specific field of studies on which she would like to focus. She doesn’t express interest in learning something, attending a free school, doesn’t do self-studying. It seems that her everyday activities consist of playing video games and such.
I don’t think that the games themselves are to blame here. However, as I watched her play, I couldn’t help getting a subjective impression that it was not her passion, she was just bored. She said, “I can study on my own.” Meaning, as I take it, that her intention was to find the thing she wanted to do and shape her lifestyle around learning just that one thing. Apparently, games were not it.
As I was talking to A, the wife who has a polyamorous relationship, showing support of the girl’s choice said: “She can come back to school whenever she feels like it. A new beginning is possible at any age.”
In the end, based on the context, I gave my answer: “I think you should go to school after all. If you don’t, there is a chance you won’t be able to learn how to learn.”
Indeed, it is possible to choose a new path at any age, to live the way we wish to. I want to believe that, the society has to provide that sort of opportunities. However, I also believe that to be able to start anew at any point in life, a person should use a chance to learn when they are presented with it.
I heard that a lot of outstanding discoveries in mathematics and physics were made by people in their 20s. Naturally, there must also be quite a lot made by older people, but it is no wonder that, the same as our bodies, our brain has a higher performance capacity when we are young. Thinking about it inspires me, it helps me, aged over 30, to not overestimate my abilities and appreciate what I still have now. That also gives us a reason to proclaim childhood a precious season of learning. All the chaotically amassed tidbits of knowledge, all the things that a person witnesses and experiences during that period, have the power to shape a significant part of their entire life.
When I was a first-grade elementary school student, we lived in Osaka, and the area was hit by The Great Hanshin earthquake [1995]. The moment it struck I was terrified - as well as thrilled, to an extent, with the sheer abnormality of the situation. However, when I came to school the next day, at the morning assembly the principal told us that one of the teachers had died, and that’s when I first realized how sudden death can be. When I was a second grader, one day my friends began to ignore me. They didn’t like the way I was acting. I experienced for the first time what it was like to be hated by others. Year three - I was told that I have to transfer to a new school, the sadness of leaving my friends; year four - my classmates made fun of me when they heard I applied to Johnny’s; year five - the day when I refused to go to school.
I wasn’t bullied or anything. More like, all of a sudden I felt exhausted from interacting with my classmates and other people who had anything to do with school. At breakfast, as I told my parents: “I don’t want to go to school”, my father responded with, “Then, I think I’ll take a day off too” and made a call to the company right away. Both my parents were working at that time, so mum ended up the only one leaving while dad and I spent an entire day on our own. Having no particular plans in mind, we just went to a video rental shop that had just opened in the neighborhood, and picked up Titanic. As far as I remember, dad made yakisoba for lunch. Dad used to cook from time to time, and his dishes were different from mum’s cooking, more daring and delicious. After that, we spent almost four hours in the living room watching a story about the luxurious ship that sank. It got awkward during erotic scenes. We finished the movie when it was already evening. Basking in the rays of the setting sun, I suddenly realized that I don’t mind going to school the next day. Perhaps, it was partly because deep down I felt guilty for making dad take time off work, but at that moment my need to skip school was fully satisfied.
A year after that, when I was a six-grader, male students began harassing a girl from my class, making sex-related jokes. Then our homeroom teacher revealed to us that in the past she was assaulted by someone who pretended they were going to rape her. She was crying as she spoke about her pain.
During my elementary school years, compared to the knowledge I acquired in class, there were even more things I learned just because we were all forced to spend our days together as a group. I made some friends, fell in love for the first time; I have memories of the first small victories - like that time when my work was chosen as one of the best at haiku competition. On the other hand, my memories about sports days are not happy ones, since I was not good at P.E., and every summer I had to attend supplementary swimming lessons, anxious at the prospect of my classmates making fun of me if they found out.
If I think about it now, every single experience and memory were part of my learning process, and school, being a miniature replica of the society, ended up cultivating both my ability to cooperate and my autonomy.
Of course, we can’t actively select what we are subjected to. As we face certain experiences that we perceive as irrational and try to handle them, it can help us gain strength which becomes useful later in life. Living, after all, means constantly dealing with absurdity.
One can start anew at any point, as many times as needed. However, there will always be a lot of people who started earlier than you. If you only study half-heartedly, it might be not enough to become their equal or surpass those people; you must be mentally prepared for that.
Rather than book knowledge per se, I think it concerns a broader range of experiences that we call resourcefulness. In other words, if a person is quite experienced at life in general, they will always find a way. One needs a strong base to cultivate resourcefulness, so that later in life they are able to keep on going no matter what happens. That is what I had in mind when I said “learning how to learn”.
Anyway, I wouldn’t have been able to get through to A with all these long-winded passages. This is, after all, the story of my own life. Listing my successes and failures, then saying, “And that’s why you should go back to classes”, I wouldn’t have touched the heart of a kid who doesn’t want to go to school. So I put it like that - “learning how to learn”, - and tried to explain it in a simple way, but it must have still been hard for her to understand, because the discussion ended with her quite discouraging resume: “Well, I guess to each their own.” I’m still trying to think of a better way to explain my views on why elementary school education is important.
It was shocking to me when scientific research showed that flutter kick doesn’t propel swimmers doing crawl but has a slowing down effect instead. According to research conducted by a joint team from University of Tsukubo and Kyoto Institute of Technology, if the average speed is 1 m/s (amounting to 90-91 seconds per 100 meters), then flutter kick does have a propelling effect, however, if the speed is increased to 3m/s, then the movement of legs impedes the flow of water and increases the resistance in the same proportion.
What about those supplementary swimming lessons in the summer? Did I just waste my time practicing flutter kick? Why hadn’t anyone noticed sooner that flutter kicks don’t work?
It raises suspicions that there might have been wrong answers among those given by experts from Science Hotline for Kids as well. The teenager in me feels dejected: turns out adults can teach you wrong things. I wonder though, why doesn’t it make me think: “So going to elementary school is a waste of time after all! Individual schooling would be better!”
If they hadn’t taught me flutter kicks, how would I have been able to swim? I might not have learnt how to swim at all.
I might not be the best at it, but to this day I do enjoy swimming. That’s because I would practice together with other kids who had poor skills too, and I still remember the taste of the ice-cream we would get from the vending machine afterwards.
It’s much better to suck at swimming than not be able to do it.
Next time I have a chance to swim I think I’ll try crawl with no flutter kicks. Then I will try to do them, giving it my all. If the no-flutter-kick style speeds me up, that’ll be exciting for sure. Then I will try to see what feels better, not doing flutter kicks or moving my entire body while doing them. I’ll have a lot of fun with those experiments.
No doubt I will be followed by the phantom smell of chlorine and the vision of the blue swimming pool with a few tiles fallen off, my elementary school memories.