[steven]

GoNative, that was a great post. I have a new respect for you now. I have to say, I too indulge in Park Golf (not to be confused with gate ball) quite frequently. I think it's pretty popular here in Toyama as well, as I've seen many courses. I was a huge fan of mini golf in America (which is weird... I know), so I even brought my own clubs and some colorful balls that I 'acquired' a while back.

Something interesting about the JET program though is that I don't think they always had 36 countries. Slowly but surely they are making Japanese understand the difference between "America" and "white people", which is something that was touched on in another thread I believe we've all seen.

I also remember a Latvian foreign exchange student coming to my high school. She was pretty good at English! I'm embarassed to say this, but I didn't even know there was a Latvia at the time so I'm glad to see that they are participating in the JET program(me). Although I think that makes the English education part of it a little more difficult (as I'd say the majority of English learning material here is based on American English).

As far as the "closure of schools" issues goes, I'd like to make a few comments. At least around here, the schools closing has to do with the population of kids. I've heard of schools with less than 10 kids. There ends up being more faculty than students. (My friend told me of a school with as few as 2 students!) Another thing, a lot of cities merge together. Around here there was a big merger in the middle of the 2000's. Sometimes you get kids who go to some podunk school (that's the only school in their city... which is very far) even though they have a nice school right next door to them (but it's technically in another city). What happens is one city will become a 'town' or 'village' or whatever you want to call it of the bigger city. This allows schools with very few enrollment to basically merge with bigger schools. In turn this results in less demand for ALT's (which is what most participants of JET and other oganizations are called).

If a school has a very small enrollment, then the ALT will likely move around a lot to many schools in a day (granted this happens in big cities where schools with plenty of students reside). Moving around too much takes away from the effectiveness of the ALT. If the city thinks JET ALT could be more effective focusing on fewer schools, then the city might consider alternatives (like other companies) and hire out to them instead of JET (or they might hire an extra JET). During that period a school might get shut down. That results in a situation where there are too many ALTs. So when an ALT's term is over, the city might decide to not hire a new one as they would no longer be neccessary.

At least that's my take on the situation. To sum it up: there are a lot of shcools with only a few students, new ALTs are hired to make them more effective, cities merge, schools close, fewer ALTs are needed.

As far as the title of the article goes... I think that's a pretty good assessment, although I'd like to point out something I've seen about JETs/ALTs. I've seen a lot of people who use what is basically a pigeon English when speaking with Japanese people. They know what words and phrases Japanese know and learn to adapt to it. I think this can be both conscious and unconscious. So I think it's VERY important that ALTs should try to speak the most natural and standard (conversational) English possible to their JTEs (Japanese English teachers). Some teachers don't give an S and will keep on keeping on... other teachers are listening and adapting-- those are the ones that will make a difference.