That everyone should receive an education is a wonderful democratic ideal, but that everyone should receive the same education is a totalitarian ideal.
Below is a link to the Japanese version of a a keynote presentation I gave on 23 January, 2010, at the invitation of Meisei Gakuen, a highly innovative elementary and junior high school for the deaf, where sign language is fully recognized and developed as the native language of their students and used as a language of instruction. It is a dual language school in Japanese sign language and Japanese literacy, with the classes team-taught by a deaf teacher and a hearing teacher.
http://www.meiseigakuen.ed.jp/deafbilingual2010/keynote/index.html
Now I don’t know what any of these creatures look like, actually: I have a very poor visual memory and I drew them from memory. What I do know, though, is that things look very very different depending on the standpoint of the observer, both literally and figuratively. To paraphrase Proust, the truest journey is not to see 100 places with one pair of eyes, but to see one place with 100 pair of eyes.
Regarding the current crisis in the Sumo World, apparently there is nothing in the Sumo rule book to preclude bout-fixing, and also there is nothing in the Japanese law books. Anyone who runs an organization knows that rule books can be extremely cumbersome. Whenever an untoward incident happens, the temptation is to add another rule, so rule books can become thicker and thicker. Do we really want that? It seems like what is commonly understood need not be said. For example, is it really necessary to make a rule that a teacher must be in time for class? And in the case of sumo, is it just so much part of common understanding that bouts shouldn’t be fixed that a rule need not be stated? Or, could it be the opposite, i.e., fixing bouts is just part of what one does depending on the circumstances? Officially, of course bouts cannot be fixed, but unofficially? Behind the scenes? Honne vs Tatemae? Thanks to modern cellular phone technology, the cat is out of the bag, so to speak, and once it is, it can be hard to stuff it back in again.
If the sumo wrestlers have no salary until they enter the top division and then, in the top division, they have a minimum salary of 1 million yen per month, it must certainly be a temptation for lower division wrestlers to take their turn helping their fellows out, or UP should I say?
When I was a college student I took a summer class on the works of Herman Melville at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. I had to write a paper on one of Melville’s works. The title of my essay, which is all I remember of it, was “Double Look + Twice Think = Horror: Melville’s World View as seen in The Confidence Man.” The professor, whose name I don’t remember, had spoken a lot about Moby Dick and the symbolism of the white whale. He reminded us that without light, there is no color. I found it very scary and interesting to imagine things in themselves without a bit of color. It is the reflection of light off of things in themselves that makes things colorful to our eyes. The things in themselves, by themselves, are color free…and so are we….physically.
About Me: Steven Parr
I am a long term resident of Japan, and the Founding Director of New International School of Japan, a dual language and multiage by design international school in Tokyo. It keeps me busy, but also I have ideas and images I would like to share, not all of which are directly related to education; hence, this blog site.