Either the JET Program is being junked, or Japanese schools are taking a wrong turn in hiring teachers. A news story in Japan Today reports that vacationing foreign university students can, from February, serve as language instructors at Japanese public elementary, junior high, and high schools. Now, if we’re talking JET-style human-tape-recorder jobs, then okay, I guess. But the article leaves open the possibility that these people will be teaching classes, possibly even solo. Maybe I’m mistaken, but I think the policy up until now has been that no foreign teachers, no matter how qualified, were allowed to teach solo in any public schools. If this new policy has university students teaching classes solo, then they’re out of their mind. But I figure there’s gotta be some qualification of the circumstances in there somewhere. Anyone know about that?

What Japanese schools need is to allow fully qualified non-Japanese TOEFL teachers to get full-time jobs teaching language in those schools; that alone will seriously improve the end result of those long years of otherwise half-wasted study. In my experience as a student in American schools, I never saw a class that was taught by a non-native speaker. I’m sure there are quite a few in America, but I’ll bet that they’re the exception rather than the rule. And I think it’s a good rule to have someone who is both intimately familiar with the language in question, and with professional credentials, to teach the class.