Disheartened by MEXT + Eigo note

[Shamisen]

Perhaps its been discussed already, but Im annoyed with the Ministry of Eduction.
Under their nose is a GOLDmine of creative and capable English speakers willing to make good curriculums and actaully teach an entire generation to speak English, quite well I imagine. Im sure many are able to write textbooks on the subject.

But the ministry seems determined to do it they way they want to. I cant really see the benefit.

http://genkienglish.net/teaching/englis ... 4th-grades

http://genkienglish.net/eigonote.htm

Somebody tell me this is a very localised case..

[Otaku]

It is localized...only to Japan, that is. Not utilizing the "goldmine" isn't really surprising if you think about the culture..."Made in Japan".

Yeah, the Eigo Note has been discussed before, but it doesn't hurt to talk about it some more.

Here are the links to the threads from the old forum. I'm working on bringing all the threads over, but still haven't been success.

1. MEXT's ES English plan

2. ES English - 'English Notebook'

3. 5th & 6th ES English

[bum1]

When i first saw this topic I thought MEXT was being used as censorship.

[Paul]

How much does anyone want to bet that this is a case of a local entity taking the MEXT directive regarding English in the 5th and 6th grades as being a part of the official ES curriculum that they went friggin overboard and took things way too literally.

[Paul]

Oh and I wonder how much Genki English, although he puts out some helpful stuff for ES is using the propaganda to promote his site and his product?

[Otaku]

I'm Otaku - the geek that has been tracking this MEXTin' Eigo Note for awhile. To be fair, Richard (the Genki English guy) to my knowledge, hasn't done anything to use this upcoming change to his benefit. While he posts games and ideas to suppliment Eigo Note's lessons, he was the first person to translate the Eigo Note's curriculum into English for those who couldn't understand the upcoming plan, which was only written in Japanese...thanks MEXT. There are 12,000 ALTs in Japan that thank you for your consideration.

So, while he might have seen a potential for PR to his site, I think his translation has been extremely helpful.

And, just for the record, I'm not a Genki lover...just trying to keep things real.

[Paul]

Fair enough.

All I will add is that Richard always comes across to me as doing things with the ultimate motive of promoting himself and working to get "his" way of teaching ES English into all schools throughout Japan.

[Otaku]

Fair enough.

[Paul]

I would also like to point out that the use of the word banned is I think a bit extreme. Richard was asked to do a model class and yet he didnt take the time to prepare for the class himself and assumed that it was to be a lower level grade.

He openly admitted as well that he wasnt prepared for 5th or 6th grades which he has known all along will be the target grades for ES English classes.

As you probably know, Genki English is the best method in the world for teaching kids starting from 1st to 4th grade. So which grades do they give me? 5th & 6th! There’s just nothing remotely like a “model lesson” that you can do for that age group, so I was more than a little worried.
So then I asked why and found out it’s because they had one of the Ministry of Education staffers come down to do a presentation where he banned them from doing any English, actual teaching or even just “getting to know English”, in any grades other than 5th and 6th!

If his curriculum is so outstanding and "the best method in the world" I would say that it would be easy to adapt to the 5th and 6th graders as well. Depending upon the teacher and their methods.

Sorry but I have skepticism about his motives. His materials came at an appropriate time, I give him credit for that, yet I dont think it should be the only thing used because all it focuses on is edutainment.

[Paul]

I would like to add here that I am not trying to make a statement against Richard or his product. There is much to be said for the Genki English site and what he is selling.

Which came about at an appropriate time for the situation here in Japan.

I just personally dont believe that English education should be just entertainment, and I dont believe that ALT's should be expected to dance around like idiots and reinforce stereotypes of the "henna gaijin"

[Otaku]

I totally agree with you on both points:

1.) English is not soley for entertainment purposes.
2.) And, every teacher has their own teaching style and aren't dancing bears at a circus.

I can still remember doing an orientation seminar for a JET conference. I had to teach with another ALT. Needless to say, our two teaching styles were completely different. I, of course , had a more suave and smooth teaching-style, while my partner was over-the-top wild & crazy. At one point during her presentation, I actually cut in to tell the audience that everyone has their own teaching-style and it's okay not to be wild & crazy. A couple of ALTs came up to afterwards and said thanks for explaining because they were really worried because 'crazy' was outside their comfort zone.

[Shamisen]

I wholeheartedly agree with Richard's method for 1st, 2nd and 3rd grades, but I will not dance. If they had wanted a dancing bear they should have put that in the job description before I signed up. Its not there so.. I dont dance. And if it was, I'd be somewhere else.

Ithink he's just passionate about what he does and believes in it.

To Otaku - YEs, its not for entertainment purposes, but I think you miss the point. That through entertainment, it is learned Oh so much quicker.

As for the English Note, I notice they set it as a minimum level of English - therefore we are able to teach above and beyond it. And I will.

[Paul]

ALTs are not teachers, they are there to assist the JTEs. 90% of ALTs are working for 3rd party companies and as such are just the hired help, whilst many JTEs may have taken a back seat and relied solely on the ALT to do everything, they have just been shirking their responsibilities and some are now going to be called to task.

You brought up some valid points however I would like to point out something here that may be a bit confusing for some.

Granted ALT's are there to assist JTE's in JHS and HS, however in ES, which the Eigo Note was produced for there are almost no trained JTE's. The people teaching this material are Elementary School teachers and their specialties do not include teaching English for the most part.

ALT is not the proper title to describe a native English speaker or otherwise who teaches English in ES schools. HRT's in ES for the most part through my expereince as well have very little desire to teach let alone lead a class where there is a supposed or assumed "expert" in the classroom with them.

3rd party companies are just hired help, well let's take that one step further, so are teachers as well. I get your point though. Yet I rarely if ever see a JTE that shirks their responsibilities in teaching grammar or English in JHS or HS. They may not be proficient and that is another story.

I am getting the impression that yu feel that there are JTE's teaching the Eigo Note in Elementary Schools. There may be some, but where I am currently at there are ZERO. HRT's are not shirking their duties, they havent been trained to teach English and many are affraid of screwing up royally seeing as how English WILL be a graded suject in 2011. For the most part I would be willing to make a guess and say that ES HRT's do not know how to team teach, and to thrust them into a situation where they have to lead a supposed expert is not the best way to make things work.

[Otaku]

I think this conversation just got interesting. Let me say before I get into the meat of the post that I not posting to personally attack anyone, rather merely trying to promote a healthy discourse.

GENKI ENGLISH: I think it's quite obvious that Richard, Genki English, was trying to get his foot in the door with the Eigo Note page he translated on his site. You can't fault a guy for that. Also, MEXT wasn't very transparent in their ES English plans until very recent. I think what hasn't been said was that Richard was one of the first people to translate MEXT's ES curriculum into English, back when the teacher community was merely given a two-page sketch of what was going to happen. In other words, Richard translated the outline of the curriculum way before any 'teacher manual' was released to the masses. So, I think the only thing that can be faulted is that he hasn't updated the page. And as far as mis-translating, "第一時：世界には様々な挨拶があることを知る。" as "First hour: Learn that there are different greetings in the world," I'm by no means fluent in Japanese but I can't understand why there is a problem with his translation. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think his translation was THAT far from its Japanese counterpart.

TEACHERS MANUAL: If I were to classify the ALT community, I would view them in 3 different groups: 1.) no Japanese language ALTs, 2.) fluent in Japanese ALTs, and 3.) so-so in Japanese ALTs who are decent in the language but nowhere close to being able to pick up a book written in Japanese and read it. I would dare argue the majority of ALTs who have been in Japan a couple years fall into the third category. Hence, I don't think it's all that fair to expect an ALT to be able to pick up a teacher's manual written in Japanese and to be able to make heads of it. Elementary schools are going to 'officially' have TT classes starting in 2011 and ALTs and HRTs are going to be 'officially' teaching side-by-side. If there is no requirement to be fluent in Japanese to work as an ALT, I don't think it's fair NOT to provide the ALTs with a manual written in English since they too will be responsible for the team-teaching process. I think this would probably clear of a lot of the ambiguous and false statements said by many ALTs. I am guilty of this myself...

I do think there is a lot more going on in Japan's education system that the ALT community isn't aware of, but I don't think that means the ALT community should stay silent merely because they are kept in the dark about what is going on because the majority of the community can't read/speak Japanese at a competent level. On top of that, let's really be honest, MEXT and/or the Japanese culture isn't the most transparent when it comes to communication and I understand why there's no transparency. I'm not weighing in to say it's right or wrong but Japanese people are conditioned from a young age not to question orders coming down from above, much like a military environment. I think the clash comes when Japan invites foreign teachers into the country who come from a different set of cultures who ARE TAUGHT to think and question EVERYTHING. I see this a problem waiting to happen when an ALT starts to really care and try hard to do the job they were brought into the country to do, only to be kept in the dark because of a language barrier and nothing put into the ALT's L1 language for them to understand the big picture of what is happening to the education system. So, I don't see the problem with people voicing their concerns based upon the information they do have access to and can understand.

ALTS BEING TEACHERS: The bottom line is ALTs are teachers. Occam's Razor states, "The simpliest explanation is most likely the correct explanation." Despite not having a license, Assistant Language Teachers are TEACHERS; it says so in the title. ALTs teach Japanese students about their own culture/language and hopefully show the students that English is not just another subject learned in school. ALTs aren't confused as doctors, gas station attendents, artists, bakers, bankers, etc...ALTs teach. Therefore, they are teachers. If you say ALTs aren't teachers, then what are they? Granted they aren't full-fledged teachers like their Japanese counterparts, but that doesn't automatically mean they aren't teachers. ALTs come to Japan under the guise of working and getting paid a decent salary to TEACH, much like a JET SEA (Sports Exchange Advisor) who is brought into the country to TEACH students about the technical aspects of a specific sport. Are SEAs trained teachers of a sport? No, but they are really good at it...much like ALTs are good at English, hopefully. ALTs are brought into the country because of their expertise of the English language. While they might not have the training or legal documents to teach in an EFL environment, from the Japanese perspective, ALTs are experts of the English language and have hence been given the title of "Assistant Language TEACHER".

In my opinion, saying ALTs aren't teachers is a slap in the face of every ALT in Japan. Just because the training EVERY ALT receives sucks balls, and JET and every other dispatch company doesn't do squat in terms of actually training their ALTs how to do their job, doesn't make ALTs any less of a teacher. ALTs are teachers.

90%: Amanojyaku, I think your figures might be a bit off. I don't think 90% of ALTs working in Japan are working for 3rd party companies. However, I must clarify before I respond, when you talk of '3rd party companies', you are referring to 'dispatch companies' like Interac, correct? If so, I think your figures are completely off. I'm speaking very generally here and don't have the most up-to-date figures but I believe there are about 13,000 ALTs in-country. Of which, 5,000~6,000 are JET ALTs. If my figures are in the ballpark, that means JET makes up roughly 50% of all ALTs in-country. I don't consider JET to be a dispatch company so the 90% figure is completely wrong.

JTE VS HRT: This point is more of a pedantic clarification than anything. JTEs teach at junior high school and HomeRoom Teachers teach at ES.

PURPOSE OF EIGO NOTE: The basic purpose of MEXT's Eigo Noto is to 'officially' introduce English into elementary school and they want to do it in a way that makes it fun for the students. I can't fault that reasoning; fair enough. What I do have a problem with is the reasoning behind why they are implementing Eigo Note. I believe its Japan's way of trying not to fall too far behind their other Asian counterparts in respect to English ability. What I have a problem with is MEXT classifying the English classes as 'international time' to circumvent ES homeroom teachers from having to pass any English ability test to teach English. Any moron can see the Eigo Noto is NOT an 'international' curriculum as that it teaches nothing BUT English beyond the first lesson. Therefore, I think the curriculum should focus on learning the English language and in my opinion merely focusing on 2 of the 4 parts-of-learning (speaking & listening) is NOT a good approach. I think this was a scapegoat attempt because HRTs currently don't have the ability to handle the other two parts: reading & writing. I think at the basics of teaching English in an EFL environment, students need to learn the basics of English, and in my humble opinion, 1.) learning international greetings, 2.) ignoring reading/writing parts of learning, 3.) teaching non-sequetor lessons that don't build upon each other, and 4.) promoting katakana English in the English classroom is not my idea of successfully handling the introduction of a foreign language into the classroom.

ADAPTING ENVIRONMENTS: I applaud people who adapt to their environments; not everybody has this ability, especially, as they get on in years. I agree that running around the ES room practicing greetings in multiple languages can be fun and it promotes internationalization but I don't necessarily agree with adapting to a environment you don't agree with. I'm not under the false illusion that ALTs will do anything to ever change the overall system of how English is taught in ES here in Japan, but that doesn't mean you simply give up and lie down and accept status quo. Blindingly accepting status quo runs dangerously close to how Japanese are conditioned from a young age which isn't bad...if all the information disseminated is good information. However, I don't believe the Eigo Noto is a good example of 'good information'. I say if you disagree with something, start a dialog about it...hence, the whole purpose of this EIGO NOTE FORUM. The fact of the matter is ALTs, while they might not have a license or experience to teach in ES, they are seen as the 'expert' of the English language at ES. Their opinions should matter, but I don't think the Eigo Noto provides for an ALT's opinion; what is in the curriculum is taught...everything is a big だめ. If an ALT has the experience and know-how to teach English at the ES level, whether they have a license or not, the Eigo Noto and/or school(s) needs to learn to adapt to the ALT, just like an ALT should be constantly learning how to adapt to Japan's culture and way of doing things. I think a give-n-take relationship is best, but I don't think the Eigo Noto promotes this type of relationship given that Japan's culture dictates everything must be followed right down to the letter. While the Eigo Noto was most likely designed to be a guide book, the culture in Japan treats guide books as rule books.

I do commend ALTs who tweak the Eigo Note to try and adapt it better into the English language but I think the overarching theme of the curriculum is way off-base and lacks merit. However, the same thing could be said about me...

That's just my two cents...

[Otaku]

[HRTs] are affraid of screwing up royally seeing as how English WILL be a graded suject in 2011.

REALLY? Will the Eigo Noto class be graded?

[Paul]

[HRTs] are affraid of screwing up royally seeing as how English WILL be a graded suject in 2011.

REALLY? Will the Eigo Noto class be graded?

First off in your previous reply to this one here I appreciate it that you took the time and effort to clearly state some of the things that I was thinking.

English classes will become a graded subject in Elementary Schools starting in 2011 according to my boss at my B.O.E. English will be a mandatory subject for 35 school/classroom hours per year, meaning 1 hour/period of classroom instruction per week.

At first I really thought it was going to be overly subjective grading yet since MEXT introduced the Eigo Note the teachers will have something to base their grading on in my opinion, which is better than nothing at all.

[Otaku]

At first I really thought it was going to be overly subjective grading yet since MEXT introduced the Eigo Note the teachers will have something to base their grading on in my opinion, which is better than nothing at all.

I knew about the 35 hours and the 1 hour per week but I didn't know this was going to be graded. My thinking for the once-a-week 'international' class NOT being graded was that I believe it will be the only subject that only happens once a week. All other subjects will for the most part will be studied everyday.

Also, if your reasoning holds true and Eigo Noto provides a basis for grading, it stands to reason that there will be little to no variance from the Eigo Noto's curriculum. uuugghhh...

[Paul]

Fair enough, I was referring only to ALTs not JETS. I doubt even 10% of ALTs are direct hire, BOEs generally don't want the responsibility or trouble of dealing with untrained foreigners.

I think Otaku will respond to the rest I would just like to point out one thing in your response to him.

This comes across as an over generalization and tells me that it is quite possible that your experience here comes from being in a large city or metropolitan area of Japan.

I personally know of locations within the country that ZERO 3rd party companies are used to hire private ALT's and that all are hired from municipal BOE's, or district Education Offices.

It doesnt help to overly generalize.

[Paul]

Presumption is no virtue either.

I presumed nothing , mere made an obsservation based upon experience. Also you come across to me as if you are trying to twist my response to support your argument.

That isnt the point, I responded to you from personal knowledge and not something that I picked up via google, not saying you did but you are making bold statements yourself about percentages and for an entire country of roughly 125,000,000 people scattered throughout 47 different prefectures, and countless numbers of cities, towns and villages, and associated whatevers. I am not going to argue with you on this point. I stand by what I wrote as I know it to be a fact. Now then.

it seems to lack the breadth such large claims require to hold validity.

Name me one school in the prefecture of Okinawa that has a dispatch company hired ALT working for it?

I think criticizing whilst making errors oneself comes across not only as naive but also a little arrogant.

Are you familiar with the phrase that is usually used here when one makes a comment like this and is shown to be wrong?

I merely pointed out your error, if you are that stung by the correction then I would suggest rethinking how you respond before finding out what that "other" person may or may not know or be aware of.

Edited to add
I would like to add here that I have a healthy distrust or should I say skepticism about people who post on forums that provide information that doesnt accurately portray themselves to the general public. It creates an image that is not accurate. It would be better to have not supplied the information in the first place, rather than have people thinking you are in one place when you are not.

[crustpunker]

My my my! Things are starting to get interesting here!

[crustpunker]

ALTS BEING TEACHERS: The bottom line is ALTs are teachers. Occam's Razor states, "The simpliest explanation is most likely the correct explanation." Despite not having a license, Assistant Language Teachers are TEACHERS; it says so in the title. ALTs teach Japanese students about their own culture/language and hopefully show the students that English is not just another subject learned in school. ALTs aren't confused as doctors, gas station attendents, artists, bakers, bankers, etc...ALTs teach. Therefore, they are teachers. If you say ALTs aren't teachers, then what are they? Granted they aren't full-fledged teachers like their Japanese counterparts, but that doesn't automatically mean they aren't teachers. ALTs come to Japan under the guise of working and getting paid a decent salary to TEACH, much like a JET SEA (Sports Exchange Advisor) who is brought into the country to TEACH students about the technical aspects of a specific sport. Are SEAs trained teachers of a sport? No, but they are really good at it...much like ALTs are good at English, hopefully. ALTs are brought into the country because of their expertise of the English language. While they might not have the training or legal documents to teach in an EFL environment, from the Japanese perspective, ALTs are experts of the English language and have hence been given the title of "Assistant Language TEACHER".

In my opinion, saying ALTs aren't teachers is a slap in the face of every ALT in Japan. Just because the training EVERY ALT receives sucks balls, and JET and every other dispatch company doesn't do squat in terms of actually training their ALTs how to do their job, doesn't make ALTs any less of a teacher. ALTs are teachers.

now I understand how you might feel about this, yes some ALTs do try very hard to do a good job, but at the end of the day, they are irrelevant, as replaceable as a light bulb and as valuable as a desk. For the most part they have nothing to base their opinion on other than their classroom experience in a few schools, they don't speak the language, they have no idea of the culture, they cannot for one minute begin to understand how to raise and educate a child in the Japanese way. This might seem like a harsh observation but in the eyes of the people who make decisions as to who works, that's all they are. The BOE and mayor decide which dispatch company to hire, they don't care whether it's ALT peter paul or mary, it's a money decision, similarly for most recruiters at said dispatch companies, they want the least troublesome people to whom they can pay the least salary. The ALTs are an insignificant part of a much bigger equation. Might be sad but it's true. If ALTs want to make things better they should learn a very important Japanese phrase, 出るくいは打たれる, and not being Japanese they're alreadry 出るing.

Being an instructor is one thing, and yes there are some ALTs who instruct English well, there are many more that are terrible, some of the ones I used to see were, well lets put it this way, I wouldn't have them teaching my boy. However, being a good instructor does not equate to being a teacher. How many ALTs know all their students' names? know the family situations, know personal issues, know how nurture a child in a Japanese way. I'd say less than 2%.

Training, certifications, degrees and even talent does not make anyone anything my friend unless all of these vestigal add-on's are accompanied by hard work, a dedication to your craft (be it teaching or be it washing machine repair) and a true desire to consistently improve your own ability and awareness in your chosen field. The work you put in earns you the right to call yourself a teacher and I believe if anyone has proven dedication, drive and hard work in a visible physical manner, it is Otaku.

How many Japanese teacher's know all their student's name's? (without checking their name tag)
Are you equating having a good memory with being a "real teacher"? Are ALT's required to know their students background as some sort of prerequisite for being a "good" teacher? An ALT must be raising/nuturing a child in Japan in order to understand the school culture? Do you mean a Japanese child or will any child do?

Teaching is a job. That is all. We are not trying to save the world here are we?

[Paul]

congrats on that too, I think we all know that Okinawa is not like the rest of Japan, many things are done way differently on the stolen island.

I anted up one entire prefecture in response to your "request" and this is what I get in response?

Stolen island? Jeez grasshopper I think you have much to learn about my island. Okinawa is a stolen island like Hawaii was stolen from the Hawaiians, only a few hundred years earlier for all intents and purposes. Literally roughly 80 years earlier but I digress here.......

Ok, your observations extrapolated from experience are fact. Thanks Oracle.

Actually in this case yes they are, if you choose not to accept or believe them fine with me. I suppose someone would have to, figuratively speaking here, slap you up side the head and drag you around by your nose for you to accept "proof".

Noone disagreed with you that many places use dispatch companies for their ALT's. However what we were disagreeing upon was the 90% figure, nothing more nothing less. Oh that also include your over generalizations as well.

Instead of avoiding the main points in my previous post and attempting some low level trolling with pedantic statistics why don't you post something useful.

Now this, why dont go go back again and read what I wrote..........Your answer to this is there.

How much faith is one supposed to have in the internet? especially forums which are usually moderated to the webmaster's point of view.

Boy your earned this one here for this comment....(That's me in the picture btw)

FYI and in case you didnt know previous to this, I am the moderator here on this forum. And we like to consider all our members here including you since you took the time to join up and post as ......

Oh that isn't the admin's pov either, it's one that I took the liberty of deciding upon. I come from a family of 8 brothers and sisters and believe me that there are days I CAN NOT STAND the sight of them, for what they sometimes say or do, yet I still respect and love them for who they are.

Welcome to the family!

[Paul]

2. Do you know what my name is ?　天邪鬼 this board won't accept unicode for names. Go look it up then re read my replies

Actually yes I do know what your handle means in Japanese......ok so you are trying to be cute here?

You can antagonize all you want, but keep this in mind too please, if I or others here find fault or error with what you or anyone else write here we will let you know about it as I expect you will do the same for any of our mistakes as well.

Let's just keep the generalizations to a minimum ok? It doesnt help anyone.

I await your boss dealing with my other points. hihihi can't wait

FYI give it a few ok, first off he isnt my boss, he is a good guy that I happen to have a hell of a lot of respect for and I will as best as I can run interference for him.

I don't think you are that far off the mark, in your comments, and like I wrote previously you are now a member of the family, let's just try to keep the commentary on a civilized basis, and try to refrain from the generalized comments ok?

Otaku will reply as soon as he can, he is otherwise detained on a Friday PM making other people happy.......(I am actually jealous in a way, yet I again digress here....)

1. Did you enjoy my links? No else seemed to be contributing so I thought I would

Would you like an honest answer or the bullshit one?

Ok honestly I havent taken a look at them yet but I promise you I will........

Have a nice weekend......if you didnt know what that is.....it's your "name" Just with my feet missing from on top of you that's all......demon.....

[crustpunker]

where did the overfiend go?
just came for a spell to troll about then piss off?

how odd.....

[Paul]

It is odd and I for one am sad to see him go. He may have had a unique manner of saying things but he wasnt too patient in waiting for a reply to what he had to say.

Oh well.....I think that if someone wants to leave that's fine, however it really screws up threads when they delete everything that they had written.

I believe that it may be necessary to place a time limit on people being able to edit or delete their posts and if they choose to close their account their posts have to stay.

[Otaku]

I was going to respond to his most recent post too...hmm. Why did he delete all of his posts? Deleting posts in the middle of discourse is not cool. Something has got to be done about that in the future.

[amanojyaku]

I didn't delete my account, Merely deleted content and user info. This place feels a little cliquey for me and I don't trust informe.

I'll leave this post for posterity.

Good luck with your project and watch out for copyrighted material.

[Otaku]

Amanojyaku, if you didn't like forum, all you needed to do was to stop visiting it. There was no need to delete all your posts.

I thought this thread made good points for both sides of the fence. It was disappointing to finally find some time to sit down and respond to what you were saying, only to find out you deleted all your posts.

I'm sorry you feel like this forum is beneath you.

I do want to mention that between four of the posters on this forum, we have about a total of 35 years of teaching experience here in Japan. We might not have a masters or a phd in EFL, and we might not even be fluent in Japanese, but you also can't take for granted experience and somebody's opinion based upon that experience.

Amanojyaku, you also brought up a couple of good points so I'm sorry that you are bowing out of this forum. I hope you find a forum that better suits your liking.

[Paul]

You know I am also disappointed that you took all that time and effort to write what you did and then go and pull a stunt like you did, deleting all your posts and then come back and have the gall to reply that we are a little cliquey for you?

I sincerely hope that the kids in Gifu get treated better than this, kind of hard to tell the difference between teacher and kid don't you think?

[jessen100]

so because more than one person disagrees with what he says its a clique all of a sudden?


wow.