Japan has to really sort this stuff out with the long hours.
My company isn’t ‘black’ and treats me well but honestly most of our staff hang around every day for 3 or 4 hours for literally no reason.
I always thought Japan worked hard before joining a Japanese company myself. Now I see Japan just works LONG, not hard.
>“There’s a growing number of special-needs children who require closer attention owing to some disability,”
That’s quite concerning. Is it just a matter of more disabilities being recognized and taken care of compared to the past, or are there actually more children being born with disabilities?
Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd they wonder why so many people don’t wanna have kids. Sensible hours and better pay is a start.
From my experience, many of my fellow teachers have way more time than they think. They are not very good at time efficiency and I see quite a few chatting or doing other stuff rather than getting their work done. Perhaps they subconsciously waste time because to get stuff done quickly where you can leave early might look bad. Who knows?
That said, there are many unnecessary meetings and an insistence on club practices being every day. Japan needs to shut school doors on the weekends. They also need seasonal sport’s with off seasons, where everyone can have a few months of less strenuous training.
The big problem with schools as I see it is that they are combined school and Community Center.
The things schools do here in Japan go well beyond what they did for me in the UK (and I presume other countries as well). Back there, sure some days had some after-school sports, and some students hung around a bit and the teachers would linger in the staff room, but the school would go dark after one hour in most cases. But here, it’s like things are just getting started at 4pm. Sports clubs, test marking, counselling students, socialising etc.
In *theory*, it’s great. The problem is the expectation that one group of adults handle it all. You’re expecting the Maths teacher to don a tracksuit and take care of basketball club, then come back to the staff room after that to finish his Maths marking. That’s if he’s lucky: he’s also got his homeroom as well, where he is expected to be a third parent and provide pastoral support to the kids as well.
This really needs to be divided between different sets of professionals. At 4pm and on the weekends a whole new set of community workers should be rolling up to take over the “extra-curricular” stuff so the teachers can focus on the, y’know, teaching.
And I really don’t know why this is hard. Well, I do, it’s shoestring budgeting for education. But aside from that, there’s an imbalance of adults compared to kids in many places, why not take advantage of that imbalance?
I have an alarm for shift end. I don’t work a min past my scheduled shift. Lol but I’m not in a corporate setting.
The long hours are only really a huge thing if you want to move on to be a VP and move on that track or you choose a horrible club like kendo or baseball.
Every other teacher I’ve seen complain about the “long hours” is generally just sitting there talking with their buddies and playing on their smartphone.
My husband is still at work and it’s 20:24… works from 8:30 to 21:00 every day. Sometimes, even midnight. I even thought he was cheating but nope everyone in his office does. I’m thinking about going back to Europe just to make sure he doesn’t waste his life at work.
Japanese surfer nears 90 and talks of catching waves at 100. https://apnews.com/article/old-japanese-surfer-guinness-record-6d4663bf6f800299abe8f1802dd08a8b
Prolonged evacuation takes its toll in Fukushima Pref. with many disaster-related deaths https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20220610/p2a/00m/0na/031000c
https://japantoday.com/category/crime/24-year-old-woman-indicted-for-murder-of-82-year-old-man-in-love-hotel TOKYO Prosecutors in Tokyo have indicted a 24-year-old unemployed woman for the robbery and murder of an…
8 comments
Japan has to really sort this stuff out with the long hours.
My company isn’t ‘black’ and treats me well but honestly most of our staff hang around every day for 3 or 4 hours for literally no reason.
I always thought Japan worked hard before joining a Japanese company myself. Now I see Japan just works LONG, not hard.
>“There’s a growing number of special-needs children who require closer attention owing to some disability,”
That’s quite concerning. Is it just a matter of more disabilities being recognized and taken care of compared to the past, or are there actually more children being born with disabilities?
Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd they wonder why so many people don’t wanna have kids. Sensible hours and better pay is a start.
From my experience, many of my fellow teachers have way more time than they think. They are not very good at time efficiency and I see quite a few chatting or doing other stuff rather than getting their work done. Perhaps they subconsciously waste time because to get stuff done quickly where you can leave early might look bad. Who knows?
That said, there are many unnecessary meetings and an insistence on club practices being every day. Japan needs to shut school doors on the weekends. They also need seasonal sport’s with off seasons, where everyone can have a few months of less strenuous training.
The big problem with schools as I see it is that they are combined school and Community Center.
The things schools do here in Japan go well beyond what they did for me in the UK (and I presume other countries as well). Back there, sure some days had some after-school sports, and some students hung around a bit and the teachers would linger in the staff room, but the school would go dark after one hour in most cases. But here, it’s like things are just getting started at 4pm. Sports clubs, test marking, counselling students, socialising etc.
In *theory*, it’s great. The problem is the expectation that one group of adults handle it all. You’re expecting the Maths teacher to don a tracksuit and take care of basketball club, then come back to the staff room after that to finish his Maths marking. That’s if he’s lucky: he’s also got his homeroom as well, where he is expected to be a third parent and provide pastoral support to the kids as well.
This really needs to be divided between different sets of professionals. At 4pm and on the weekends a whole new set of community workers should be rolling up to take over the “extra-curricular” stuff so the teachers can focus on the, y’know, teaching.
And I really don’t know why this is hard. Well, I do, it’s shoestring budgeting for education. But aside from that, there’s an imbalance of adults compared to kids in many places, why not take advantage of that imbalance?
I have an alarm for shift end. I don’t work a min past my scheduled shift. Lol but I’m not in a corporate setting.
The long hours are only really a huge thing if you want to move on to be a VP and move on that track or you choose a horrible club like kendo or baseball.
Every other teacher I’ve seen complain about the “long hours” is generally just sitting there talking with their buddies and playing on their smartphone.
My husband is still at work and it’s 20:24… works from 8:30 to 21:00 every day. Sometimes, even midnight. I even thought he was cheating but nope everyone in his office does. I’m thinking about going back to Europe just to make sure he doesn’t waste his life at work.