I’ve been teaching here for more than 10 years in both JH and Elementary schools.
I know how busy teachers are but there’s something I’ve noticed that didn’t affect me until recent.
My daughter is 小 1 nensei and she’s been struggling with both Japanese and Math. I try to help her but obviously the way she’s taught differs from the way I was taught back in the day.
What I’ve seen is how most of teachers here are like uni professors: they just stand in front of the board, give a lecture and that’s it. No feedback, no reading the atmosphere, not checking if the kids at least pay attention, nothing. Just flowers drawn on notebooks, vague words to the parents during the meetings and mentioning multiple times how the kid ganbarimashita.
I always thought juku was a very stupid thing: why paying extracurricular lessons when they should be learning the same thing at school?
After discussing the matter with jp wife she mentioned how careful teachers are at juku and that some of them are the best of the lot, basically these places hire the best of the best offering them good money and less work, something that makes sense since the better the results, the more customers they get.
Wife also said her best friends from school days were from juku.
Now I’m seriously thinking about enrolling the kid in one of those and telling her it’s okay to skip regular school every now and then.
