RTA

Phil’s Blog: Hope and Disappointment

If this is out where people are reading it, then I’ve obviously overcome an initial unease about whether to post publicly on this topic or not. The initial post is over 7 months old, so the adage about sleeping dogs perhaps comes into play. At this point I am writing, as I often do, to force my own head to wrap itself around what I feel or think about a complex and complicated issue. Jan said that if I feel strongly, I should post, but I shouldn’t post just to engage in debate. The truth is that I feel strongly about very few things. This, however, crossed the line.

As a preliminary statement, I would like to say that I only heard about this on Saturday night, so whatever has happened since the May posting is not within my scope of comment. However, other than the September posting, Mr. Clinton has not clarified, modified, or otherwise changed the scope of his original post. It would seem to me, then, that there has been no change in thinking, and that therefore my comments, however delayed, are still valid. Also, I have no pet projects at Nishimachi and no strong sense of maintaining the traditions of the school other than to make sure that the ones which are still useful are retained. Finally, I invested the time to go and read Mr. Clinton’s other posts — all of them — in the hope of gaining a better understanding of what, as he put it, “makes him tick.”

I heard about Mr. Clinton’s blog in the context of a group of Nishimachi parents who had gotten together for a dinner. Two were full Japanese families (Both parents were Japanese nationals.) and two were American. Of the American families, I’d say that we fall less into the typical expat mold and more into that of the international cross-cultural. Jan and I, for example, have lived on and off in Japan for a long time and are both fluent in Japanese. We also have traveled extensively and speak languages, however poorly, other than Japanese and English. I bring this up not to brag, but because it is important to the mindset we had when selecting Nishimachi. I’ll leave the details of the other families out of it — they can decide to add comments or not as they see fit.

When my company pulled me back to Japan in 2003, we had to make a decision about where Ellie would go to school. We discussed Japanese schools both because of the impact that would have on Ellie’s Japanese language skills and because I am an “inpat” rather than an “expat.” That is, I was hired here locally out of graduate school and then later sent to the USA. As far as my company is concerned, I came home in 2003, so my package doesn’t look anything like many of the parents whose companies pay for their children’s schooling. Ellie, however, was very concerned about her ability to read and write well-enough to participate fully in a Japanese school, so we all decided to look at the international schools that were available.

We spent a long time looking. I was coming to Japan monthly anyway, so it wasn’t a big deal to make sure that we learned about, talked with parents about, visited, asked consultants, and did everything else possible to make sure that we made the right decision. In the end we chose Nishimachi. I’m the misbegotten child of typical US public schools through high school, while Jan was in a private all-girls Christian school through high school. Jan’s experience led her to initially lean toward Seisen, but that changed after she visited NIS and spoke with faculty and parents there. She felt exactly the same thing that I did when I first visited NIS: Nishimachi just feels “right.”

Now that’s a hard statement to explain, but it’s at the crux of where, in my opinion, I feel Mr. Clinton has made a mistake in his efforts to convince others of his arguments. “Right” for Jan and me, and “right” for someone else can easily be different things, so I hope to not make the impression that by my use of this word that anything else is “wrong.” Perhaps it would be better to say that NIS suits us, but that seems almost too detached for something as profoundly important as where one decides to send one’s child to be schooled. No, the best word for this is “right,” but without the negative connotation that anything else is wrong. NIS is right for us.

So why is it right? It is right because it is not an American school. Likewise, it is right because it is not a French school, a British school, a Christian school, a Japanese school or any other nationality of school. Yes, it has a distinctly American flavor, but NIS is at its heart both literally and figuratively an international school. That is what drew us to Nishimachi, and in talking with many of the other parents who send their children up the hill every morning, that is what has drawn them as well. From the focus on bilingualism to the actual mix of Japanese and non-Japanese in the school’s population, NIS provided and still provides to us the rounded international framework for which we were looking.

Mr. Clinton vented a frustration that many of us who have worked for any length of time in Japan have experienced — that of pushing against a wall that refuses to budge. But to be in Mr. Clinton’s position and say something as volatile as ” My culture places value on movement over stagnation” is just wrong. There is no positive connotation for the word “stagnation,” and there is no way for someone coming from the Japanese culture to read that statement and not feel wounded. To follow it up by saying “I’m predisposed to seeking the best way, not the oldest way…” rubs salt in that wound in a way that actually caused me to cringe when I read it. Seeing as how he comments earlier that “these people” may have “lost a sense of self and a confidence in self,” one would think that he could have perhaps been just a bit more sensitive. In any case, while acknowledging that America’s model has been very successful, let us also spend a moment thinking about how much Japan has changed in the past 60 years and compare it to the USA. One has only to walk from Shibuya Station to Harajuku Station some weekend afternoon, passing though Meiji Jingu on the way, to see living examples of both Japanese tradition and a techno-pop modern world culture in the space of ten minutes. For that matter, let us think about how the Japanese word kaizen entered the English language: Continuous directed change, anyone?

Now, Mr. Clinton had spent almost a year at NIS charged with developing a new curriculum, and having just gone through a year of re-engineering many of the processes and structures at my company, I can sympathize somewhat. That said, insulting people by disparaging their culture is not the way to get things done anywhere in the world. We can have our personal opinions and still function professionally without those opinions affecting our work. By posting these statements in a public forum as he has, Mr. Clinton has damaged not only his ability to interact and work with many of the parents at NIS, but it appears to me that he has also come dangerously close to damaging the school’s reputation and standing. The “For Nishimachi Readers” post in September could have done a lot to fix the situation and make this post unnecessary, but it offers only a statement of innocence and nothing more than an invitation to read the blog for proof. I did, and it didn’t help.

I do not believe that Mr. Clinton is a racist. I do believe that in the May post and in some others he shows an ethnocentricity (and here) that does not do NIS justice. Jan and I are sending our daughter to NIS because it is not an American school and because it is an International school.. We are sending her there because the unique international culture at NIS is going to provide her with a perspective that acknowledges that we do not live in a world of black and white but in one cloaked by myriads of gray shadows that are brightened or darkened depending on our own backgrounds and perceptions. Change can be good, but change for change’s sake isn’t necessarily so. As Mr. Clinton says, Americans tend to thrive on change, but it seems to me that both Japan and NIS have done quite well with their own set of standards. How typically American, I am sad to say, is the viewpoint that we know best. How typically black and white. And lest anyone think I am not proud of being American, I stand and sing when the national anthem is played, it brings tears to my eyes, and I can think of no other country on earth of which I would rather be a citizen. It is a great nation, but it is no greater than any other nation whose people work, pay taxes, elect leaders, and do their best in an ever-chaotic world. NIS will help teach my daughter that.

Maybe I should just let this go, but now that I’ve spent a couple of nights thinking about and writing about this, the post will go out within a few minutes. Mr. Clinton talks about the Japanese woman who approached him with her concerns and his own naiveness in hoping that she would understand his position. What he doesn’t seem to understand is that by even approaching him and broaching the topic, this lady did what many Japanese would be unable to do. She came forward and spoke in a culture where this is sometimes difficult to do — particularly in a culture that places teachers and school officials in such a position of authority. I hope that Mr. Clinton did not speak directly to her as he has spoken to us in his blog, but unfortunately I can deduce from his post that he did not attempt to meet her halfway. The lack of direct feedback on the blog is probably also an artifact of the Japanese desire to avoid direct confrontation. I don’t have those reservations.

I hope that this post starts a dialogue that improves everyone’s understanding. In Plato’s Phaedrus, Plato writes in Socrates’ voice and argues that the written word is deceitful. It is deceitful because although the words on the page appear to speak to us as if they were alive, if we question them they maintain a deathly silence except to repeat what they have already said. For this reason Plato wrote almost exclusively in dialogues while Socrates himself refused to write at all. We must continue to communicate, or our words become cold and dead, only fossilized remains of the original living idea.

In closing, here’s a quote I like. I think it draws a bead on the whole “global ambassador” aspect of NIS very well. We must always be aware of our own paradigm — even more so when operating in a culture other than our own.

Your paradigm is so intrinsic to your mental process that you are hardly aware of its existence, until you try to communicate with someone with a different paradigm.

Donella Meadows, The Global Citizen

Andrew Harris Wines

My favorite vineyard ever (Well, so far, anyway, and it’s stayed in this spot for almost 2 years now…).

The “Vision” series is a shiraz-cabernet blend that is so dark you could use it as ink to write a novel, and it’s about as easy to sink your teeth into as a good book as well. Just watch out for the sediment — I know some people like it, but this is a bit over-the top! Uff da!

“Double-Vision” is a velvety sparkling Shiraz that isn’t as dark as it’s blended cousin, but if you want something a bit more interesting that the average Brut, try this.