Why didn't any of the teachers at Go-sho and many other schools disagree with us performing for the students? Our entire show was preaching! Doesn't Japan have some Constitutional thing separating Church and State in some way? I know for a fact that they do. How could those teachers, and even those students not be disturbed by the stories of Jesus and the "true meaning of Christmas" and all that bullshit???
Mary had some kind of English teaching gig at our school, which means she must have been getting payed by governmental money from the schools budget. Yet there she was, preaching away to helpless little Japanese kids. How could HORIKOSHI sensei stand for such non sense.
I remember dancing one christmas and creepy Ishii kochousensei with the creepy grin was standing right there through the whole 50 minutes class where we did chi-bi chan, and Mary did a whole preachy bit. How could that not have felt wrong to his conservative mind??
I know that if any hired teacher did that at my school I would have no shame in ripping them another asshole. I would be very disturbed if I were a parent and my tax payer's money was being funneled into some person (without a sufficient education...a high school drop out, very likely an illegal immigrant, and didn't even have the proper credentials to teach children) who would then bring her uneducated children to preach some bullshit religion.
I can't even imagine WHY any school system would allow that? even in the slightly reformed Tokyo.
At the time I would never have thought about such a thing, and I haven't in years...but then all of a sudden I realized how uncomfortable it must have been for all those teachers to stand by and watch as my own father, other questionable participants, and I beat down their entire nations constitutional rules.
I am partially amazed at our own stupidity, and the stupidity of the teachers, but mostly I'm amazed at the Japanese society and traditions that demands that their citizens not react in any way to a disturbance. Their own systems tells them to politely stand by and watch as foreigners attempt to convert the children.
Such a shame...
3 comments:
I agree with your thesis sentence, but I'm gonna have to ask you not to talk shit about my mom. Thanks.
Im not talking shit about your mom so much as Im talking shit about our entire understanding of Japan and how completely narrow minded it was.
Here is an extremely oppressed group of faculty members that cannot even stand up for what they know to be constitutionally right. They were willing to put their license as government paid teachers on the line so that they didn't have to stand the humiliation of telling a couple of simple minded foreigners off. As well as any PTA moms who were involved.
We of course had no idea that what we were doing was wrong. I mean, how stupid were we that we didn't even think that maybe there is a reason why religion is not taught in schools. Even my dad and your dad who have lived in Japan for 30+ years couldn't even have bothered to realize that what they were preaching went against everything that a school stands for.
I'm basically just stating amazement that we could have been so inconsiderate (Me, you, my dad, your dad, and your mom. For that matter, anyone else who tries to push religion onto children in school) to the Japanese school system. And the fact that none of the teachers even said anything....
It all really bothers me now.
No, no, I got what you were trying to say, and I completely agree with you. Just thinking about it makes me cringe. It's just that you called my mom a "person without a sufficient education...a high school drop out, very likely an illegal immigrant, and didn't even have the proper credentials to teach children" and that irked me, because although the last one was true, the first two were assumptions. Insulting ones. Which were entirely incorrect.
So, that's all I meant by talking shit.
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