Importing Diversity: Inside Japan's JET Program [Paperback]

David L. McConnell (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0520216369 | ISBN-13: 978-0520216365 | Publication Date: March 16, 2000 | Edition: 1

In 1987, the Japanese government inaugurated the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) program in response to global pressure to "internationalize" its society. This ambitious program has grown to be a major government operation, with an annual budget of $400 million (greater than the United States NEA and NEH combined) and more than six thousand foreign nationals employed each year in public schools all over Japan.
How does a relatively homogeneous and insular society react when a buzzword is suddenly turned into a reality? How did the arrival of so many foreigners affect Japan's educational bureaucracy? How did the foreigners themselves feel upon discovering that English teaching was not the primary goal of the program? In this balanced study of the JET program, David L. McConnell draws on ten years of ethnographic research to explore the cultural and political dynamics of internationalization in Japan. Through vignettes and firsthand accounts, he highlights and interprets the misunderstandings of the early years of the program, traces the culture clashes at all levels of the bureaucracy, and speculates on what lessons the JET program holds for other multicultural initiatives.
This fascinating book's jargon-free style and interdisciplinary approach will make it appealing to educators, policy analysts, students of Japan, and prospective and former JET participants.

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

"Japan's official efforts at internationalization have been painful to witness. . . . The government's JET program is easily the most ambitious and its history and on-the-ground problems offer significant insights into Japan's struggle to open up to the outside. David McConnell's book provides a most interesting analysis of why this process has been so complex and difficult. It tells us much about Japanese society and education at this critical point in time."--Thomas P. Rohlen, author of For Harmony and Strength

"In this superb and insightful book, David McConnell explores perhaps the greatest (certainly the biggest) education program in humankind's history, offering patient, balanced analysis of its workings, problems, and accomplishments. McConnell's confucian equanimity and multifaceted perspectives lend the book a depth seldom found in contemporary writing on Japan."--Robert Juppe, First ALT Advisor for the JET Program

"This is a very astute, thorough, and personal account of the JET program as a case study of how a program can both change a system and provoke defenses against any change. With his fine ethnographic and analytic material, McConnell reveals the faultlines of "internationalization" in Japan. This is a great contribution to the study of organizations, marginality, and shifts in global and national identity."--Merry White, author of Japanese Families: It Takes a Nation

From the Back Cover

"Japan's official efforts at internationalization have been painful to witness. . . . The government's JET program is easily the most ambitious and its history and on-the-ground problems offer significant insights into Japan's struggle to open up to the outside. David McConnell's book provides a most interesting analysis of why this process has been so complex and difficult. It tells us much about Japanese society and education at this critical point in time."--Thomas P. Rohlen, author of For Harmony and Strength

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 346 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press; 1 edition (March 16, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520216369
• ISBN-13: 978-0520216365
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #82,373 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #92 in Books > History > Asia > Japan

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars not very useful, August 9, 2001

By 

Justus Pendleton (Colorado Springs, CO United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Importing Diversity: Inside Japan's JET Program (Paperback)

This book attempts to be a treatise of Japan's JET program. It succeeds in some ways but fails in many more.

The first problem is that the material is dated; the bulk of his observations come from 1988-1989. While this provides a good sense of history for the program it makes the book less than useful for those who are interested in how the JET program operates today. To a certain extent this is rectified in the final chapter but the treatment of the modern JET program is brief and superficial.

So if the book isn't a great guide to the modern JET program, how does it fare as a history of the program's foundations? Even here it is flawed. He breaks it into three main sections: the national perspective, the regional perspective, and the local perspective. The problem is that both the regional and local perspectives are based on very few observations. For instance, the entire regional chapter is based on interviews with one single administrator. A similar problem pervades much of the book. While I have no doubt that the events described are representative, the reliance on a single source for so much is a detraction from a book that presents itself as a broad based overview.

My final complaint is that the book explicitly states that the most prominent feature of JET nowadays is its functional as a cultural exchange program. However, this aspect of the program gets almost no treatment. The majority of the time is spent discussing the English teaching aspects of the program: interaction with other teachers, team teaching, classroom motivation, etc. It seems strange to spend so much time on something the author acknowledges is not the main focus of the program and so little time on what he admits is the main focus.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Required Reading for Anyone Planning to Teach in Japan, June 26, 2000

By 

UmitoYama (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Importing Diversity: Inside Japan's JET Program (Paperback)

Professor McConnell's coverage is thorough, well-researched, and fair. He takes us into the heads of the people on both sides of the various conflicts that have sprung up through the years in the JET Programme and continue to spring up throughout its various levels - from the inter-ministry feuds to the JTL/ALT clashes in the classroom - and in doing so, I believe he helps point the way to greater understanding and cooperation...at least on the local level...

As a JET Prefectural Advisor* (my primary duties being to provide training, advice, and counseling for JETs in my prefecture on living in Japan and teaching in the Japanese school system) I believe that this book is a MUST HAVE for all JETs, past, present and future.

One of the primary struggles that I think all of us JETs go through is that of contextualizing our experiences, figuring out where exactly we fit (if at all) in the larger scheme of things, wondering if what we do has any value or makes any type of difference. This book, with its decade and a half of perspective and examination of the various (and oftentimes contradictory) forces at work - all the way from the international to the national to the prefectural right down to the local school/community levels - provides an invaluable framework for understanding the JET Programme, warts and all, that I doubt any of us JETs would be able to construct on own. Tremendous change has been and is happening, though its movement may be too slow for most of us JETs (even those of us who stay for the full three years) to discern...and perhaps not in the directions that we might expect.

Additionally, I agree with the writer of the previous review that _Importing Diversity_ has value not only to JETs but also to those seeking insight into the workings of Japanese government, education and society...but I shall leave the opining on that to the true scholars and less JET obsessed.

To anybody thinking of or already teaching in a Japan school, I strongly recommend that you read this book (try also reading _Teaching and Learning in Japan_ (LeTendre & Rohlen, eds.)). I have recommmended this book to all of my JETs and I am basing a portion of the orientation training for this year's new batch of JETs on Chapter 5 of _Importing Diversity_. It is truly a shame that there is not yet a Japanese translation of this text for our Japanese counterpart teachers.

* In no way does this review reflect the official views of or have any connection to the Shiga Prefectural Board of Education or the Shiga Prefectural Government. I take full responsibility for the content of this post.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A "must-read" for potential JETs., January 23, 2002

By 

Zack Davisson "japanreviewed" (Seattle, WA, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Importing Diversity: Inside Japan's JET Program (Paperback)

This book is a great overview of Japan's JET program. While most of the research was done on the early years of the program, the author has kept in touch over the years and includes a chapter on JET in the 2000's. The main players are introduced, and the functions of CLAIR, AJET, JETAA and the various ministries are outlined. I found the information on how JETs are placed to be very insightful. Also, some fairly common cultural misunderstandings are focused on. Perhaps JETs who read this book will not make the same mistakes as their predecessors.

The author does a nice job of presenting both sides of the JET program. The opinions of the Japanese teachers and administrators is counter balanced with the opinions of the JETs themselves. As expected, the viewpoints rarely match. There is a great section on a JET who felt that she had had a great experience, and that everyone was happy with her performance. The Japanese host institution was glad when she finally left.

The book does tend to emphasize the bad experiences over the good. Statistics show that JETs who break contract are fairly rare, yet they make up the majority of the interviewees. The author does not imply that this is the majority experience, just that they make for more interesting reading.