Aug.
2004, Xene #41
Educating Poppies
The evolving role of the Hokkaido International
School
by Deborah Davidson
Several summers ago, I visited a Japanese couple in
Furano whose son was a student at the Hokkaido International
School in Sapporo. They drove me to one of the lavender
fields that draw tourists to Furano from all over
Japan and Asia every year. Scattered among the endless
rows of fragrant lavender bushes were a few stalks
of colorful poppies. I pointed to the poppies and
said to my friend, "That's me." She gasped,
and informed me that I was the third foreign guest
to make the identical comment that summer. All three
had been foreign mothers of HIS students. Each had
identified herself with the poppies sparsely scattered
among the fields of lavender, like incongruous foreign
features in a sea of Japanese faces.
HIS can be likened to a garden of such profuse variety
that no single species is conspicuous. This helps
to explain why my son was never able to answer me
when I asked him what countries his classmates came
from. When he was still little I thought he lacked
the sophistication or geographical knowledge to answer
the question. But he continued to shrug in response
to the same question even as a high school student,
until he finally said, "Why does it matter, Mom?
To me, my classmates are individuals. Not representatives
of a country."
Have you ever grown weary of being viewed as a representative
of your nation of origin? Have you ever wished people
would see you as an individual rather than as a national
or ethnic stereotype? I certainly have. In fact, I
have felt that way since childhood, and it was at
the Hokkaido International School that I, too, found
respite from being a gaijin.
On Friday, June 11, the eleven students of the Class
of 2004 walked across the auditorium stage at the
Hokkaido International School to receive their diplomas.
My son was among them. During the reception that followed
the ceremony I gave him a hug and asked, "How
does it feel to graduate from the same school your
mother did?" He gave me a look of tolerant amusement
and asked, "Is it the same school?" I was
rather struck by his response and had to admit the
obvious: In most ways it was not.
In 1970, the year I graduated from HIS, the school
offered grades 1 to 9 and the students and faculty
were mainly composed of North Americans. In 1995,
the year the school moved to the Sumikawa campus,
the number of grades offered had already expanded
to include K through 12, while the students and faculty
hailed from every continent on the planet except Antarctica.
Furthermore, the move from Fukuzumi to Sumikawa was
much more than a change of location. It was a move
into a new relationship with the city, the prefecture,
and the community in general. The city of Sapporo,
persuaded that HIS was a hitherto under-appreciated
asset to the city, provided the land for the new school
building rent-free. The Hokkaido government provided
the funding to build a dormitory.
HIS was ready and willing to become a more visible
presence in the city, interacting with and contributing
to the local community on a far greater scale than
it ever had before.
The school had been gradually adjusting itself to
the changing needs of the foreign community and an
increasingly cosmopolitan local Japanese community
over some time. I wondered how successfully HIS was
meeting the felt needs of the families who had selected
it from among other choices for their children's education.
A casual survey of the reasons families have come
and gone from HIS, as well as the timing of their
coming and going, revealed something of how they have
made use of HIS in the pursuit of schooling that meets
their individual needs.
Let's first take a look at the ex-pat families. For
the children of non-Japanese students who are here
for the short-term-- because a parent has been assigned
to work or study here for a specified number of months
or years-- international school provides a continuity
that might be missed if they chose to attend Japanese
school for the duration of their stay. On the other
hand, foreign families who are here for the long-term
are more likely to take advantage of the Japanese
public school system for their children's early education.
One advantage to this choice is that having children
in the local schools makes it easier for a foreign
family to be accepted into the local community.
Like
non-Japanese families who start their kids out in
the Japanese school system, bi-cultural kids often
begin their schooling in local Japanese schools and
transfer into HIS after graduating from Japanese sixth
grade. Since Japanese school ends in March, this gives
the transfer students a chance to experience over
two months of sixth grade at HIS, which helps smooth
the transition into seventh grade in the fall. Some
families choose to make this transition at fourth
grade, which is considered by many educators to be
a pivotal time in language learning. This has been
confirmed by the experiences of many students who
have transferred into HIS from Japanese elementary
school.
Almost without exception, the parents of foreign and
bicultural children who transferred to HIS after Japanese
school felt that the transfer brought positive results.
Several parents said that in retrospect they wished
they had made the transfer earlier. The response of
one North American mother of bi-cultural children
sums up the majority view: "By attending Japanese
elementary school, students can have neighborhood
friends, receive a lifelong basis for interaction
in Japanese society, and approach kanji learning as
native speakers. I feel four years is adequate for
this, and in both Japanese elementary schools my children
attended, the 5th and 6th grade was used more for
social/group learning than for academics. I feel they
wasted 2 of their most crucial years of schooling
and were handicapped in their English learning and
in acquiring study skills by starting HIS too late."
Bi-cultural families where one parent is Japanese,
typically supplement HIS education with juku or Kumon
(a popular commercially-produced lesson plan that
students can pursue at their individual paces) to
give their children a firmer grounding in Japanese
reading and writing skills. Bi-cultural families where
neither parent is a native English-speaker may supplement
HIS education with tutoring in the foreign parent's
native tongue or regular visits to the foreign parent's
home country to attend school for brief periods. A
significant number of bi-cultural students end up
leaving HIS and their parental home to be educated
in the foreign parent's home country for the long-term,
especially if there are strong ties with the extended
family there. Financial considerations are often behind
this choice, as well as the difficulty of overseeing
children during HIS's long summer vacation if both
parents have full-time jobs.
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A German mother of bi-cultural children who has been
supplementing their Japanese schooling with correspondence
courses in her native language, says she is seriously
considering HIS as a future schooling choice and hopes
that her children will someday be ready to take on
the challenge of studying in a third language. "Deep
in my heart," she says, "I believe that
English will be [for the children] the most important
of the three languages we are using at home, even
more important than it is right now due to the spread
of the Internet and globalization. I do not believe
that Japanese or German will ever fulfill the same
role as the English language." She added that
if there had been a German school in Sapporo, it would
be her first choice, with HIS being her second choice.
The French father of bi-cultural kids who are currently
enrolled at HIS also feels that HIS provides an education
that supports their efforts in raising their children
to master French, Japanese and English. They supplement
HIS schooling with Kumon and home-study in European
history, French geography, and social science to give
them a European perspective which is "quite different
from the HIS perspective."
Like other international schools in Japan, a large
percentage of the HIS student body are children whose
parents are both Japanese. Some of these students
come to HIS after returning from life overseas where
they have studied in an English-speaking environment.
There are others, however, who have never left Japan
and still chose to attend HIS. These students usually
start at preschool or Kindergarten. And though some
continue through high school, they typically transfer
out of HIS and into the Japanese school system at
one of three significant junctions: after Kindergarten,
after third grade, or after sixth grade.
A number of Japanese parents who have committed themselves
to HIS because they share the HIS educational philosophy,
express frustration at other Japanese parents who
appear to be using HIS simply as an English conversation
school or for the perceived status it gives them in
Japanese society.
"Because they don't really understand the difference
between an English-language school and an educational
institution where the language of instruction is English,
these parents quickly become dissatisfied with HIS.
They don't come to school functions or PTA meetings
and mix with other parents. They think that the high
tuition entitles them to sit back and not become involved,"
one Japanese father complained.
When asked if his own expectations of HIS had been
met, this same father replied, "On the positive
side, I feel that my children are receiving the kind
of education that encourages the development of their
individual characters and their ability to express
themselves. I feel that HIS is a disciplined school
and the children here are generally well-behaved.
On the negative side, because HIS is such a small
school compared to the international schools in the
Tokyo-Yokohama area, our children are limited in their
choice of friends. And though they meet a variety
of people, they don't meet a great number of them."
This drawback was mentioned by several foreign parents
as well, like one North American mother who commented,
"The thing about a small international school
is that, while the kids are great with each other
and there seems to be almost no bullying, there is
also a very small diverse pool of kids which seems
to make it hard for the kids to find that special
best friend that everyone seeks in school."
This
year's HIS graduates included young men and women
from six different national backgrounds. The reasons
they chose to attend HIS are as varied as each student
is different from the other. Ultimately, though, it
was because their families believed HIS was most likely
to meet their needs. Many of their classmates had
transferred out of HIS along the way to pursue other
alternatives that were more likely to meet theirs.
Schooling choices, especially for children who don't
quite fit in among the lavenders, are never easy.
But with carefully considered application, HIS can
be a welcome option for many foreign and not-so-foreign
families in Sapporo.
by Deborah Davidson
