Goals of a school are totally different to the goals of students and what people
may believe the goals of those lessons are.
Now, Japan is very, very similar from what
you’ve just said in terms of Italian, that you know the two main things that they study
at their age group (and that’s the age group that I used to teach – junior high school) the
two main things they study is English (bizarrely enough when you consider like, you go to Japan
and nobody speaks English) and Japanese. And they also do put a lot of time into studying their own
language. That’s partly because of the writing system which is, you know, has to be learned
and developed for a very, very long period of time. But they do also look at the grammatical
structure of their language and things like that. Now one very, very strong idea is kind of an
idea but it’s something that’s been argued about in the research literature extensively
and I’m inclined to agree with it is that, really, the main goal of English in Japan (and whether
this is the same in Italy or not, I don’t know) but it’s been argued that the main goal of English
in Japan has actually to do with increasing the Japanese-ness of a person. It creates contrast.
By comparing and contrasting the first language, which is also studying the syntax of, with the
syntax of another language we wouldn’t develop a sense of, a better sense of our own language.
And that was also kind of explained to us on my study of French at school that one of the reasons
why we do it is because you learn to understand your own language better (well I didn’t because
I didn’t really study). However when I was at school, I don’t know whether it’s changed
now or not, they used to teach English grammar and things at school. That stopped at some point.
When I was at school, we never got to tell our own grammar which is kind of disappointing now that I
think about it. Whether that’s reverted back to how it was or not I don’t know.
So, the point there is is that often the goals of what is being done in schools is very,
very different to what we would expect the goals to be. Now, again, I can only use Japan as a
real example here but, you know, actually, the reality is is if everybody got really, really good
at English at school in Japan: one it would be totally useless because there really aren’t that,
you know, that many situations where people need a high level of English in Japan; two, is actually
not in the best interest of the government because where Japan has big problems right now is not with
highly-skilled, highly-intelligent elite people, it’s actually that they need more factory workers,
they need more people sweeping the streets, so the education system is naturally going to be (and
this is controversial and people don’t like it, but this is the reality of how governments work)
the educational system really a set up to funnel the majority into factory workers sweeping the
streets, lower-tier industries, and then really just segment out a small percentage who are then,
going to be the international elite and ambassadors of the country and all that stuff.
Again the point I’m trying to make here is often, the goals of a school are totally different to
the goals of students and what people may believe the goals of those lessons are. And
what that then means is that you’re always going to be prescribed
given a framework and you just have to do the best that you can in that framework.