A young teacher at a Tokyo elementary school has recently been reprimanded for asking a question in class related to a joke about murder.
"What should you do if you want to see a nice guy you had met at a funeral ceremony for you elder sister?" was the question.
"You should kill your younger sister" was the answer.
The Tokyo teacher was quoted as saying that she came up with the quiz because she believed that her classes appeared to be progressing without any excitement and were boring for the children. Her idea has raised questions about what is wrong with classes without any excitement and why she attempted to surprise students in such a way.
In another case in Aichi Prefecture, a teacher asked students how may days it would take to kill 18 people if you murder three each day.
Numerous teachers began to learn how to speak from professionals in the 1990s when breakdowns in classroom discipline emerged as a major social issue. I have no objection to teachers' efforts to give interesting lessons. However, if teachers do so merely because they do not want to hear their students say their classes are boring, it would be in vain.
It is true that the environment surrounding schoolteachers and parents and students' expectations from them have drastically changed since the 1960s.
Teachers should not resort to violence to control their classes. However, they may occasionally need to bang the blackboard or raise their voice when their students won't stop talking to each other or cannot concentrate during class, though such an assertion is likely to stir criticism that journalists do not understand the difficulties involving teachers' work.
The teachers who are still fresh in my memory and those whom I want to meet again are not those who were skillful in attracting students' attention or entertaining them.
The homeroom teacher of my second-grade class often shed tears in front of her students.
She cried when she read an essay that I wrote, which partly read: "I feel lonely because I'm left alone at home. I massage my mother's shoulder after she comes home from work, seemingly tired." I was surprised because it was the first time that I had seen her shed tears.
Another teacher I cannot forget is a social studies teacher who taught me when I was a third-year junior high school student. He had a small build and was gentle. His lessons were boring and students constantly chatted with each other during his classes. I do not remember what I learned in his classes.
I heard rumors that he was regularly hit by his superior in the Imperial Japanese Army because he said the war was just a waste of money when he was drafted into the military and fighting on the front-lines, but he did not look like a fighter.
However, when he wound up his last lesson, he told the students in a resolute tone, "Be hardworking and manufacture goods and read the Constitution." The whole class became silent. All those who attended the class clearly remember what the teacher said.
Sincerity is undoubtedly better than any teaching method. Readers might laugh it off as a cut-and-dried comment. But if you look back on your younger days, you probably feel nostalgic about such serious and conscientious teachers. (By Kenji Tamaki, Expert Senior Writer)
