True Story 4.05
American mother startled by Japanese classroom procedure
The setting for this story
Gail is an American who was living in Japan and sending her children to a Japanese primary school. She received permission to observe in several classrooms. Here’s Gail’s story.
A story of misaligned minds5
Possibly the most startling sight was when I first saw what happens when a Japanese pupil gives an incorrect answer. The other pupils immediately raise their hands, calling out chigaimasu! (“I see it differently!”) One of those who called out would then be chosen to give an alternative answer. In this way, the correct answer eventually emerges. [See note at the end of this story.].
Japanese teachers typically decline to give either a positive or negative evaluation to any pupil’s answer. Pupils’ responses are evaluated by their classmates.
I couldn’t wrap my head around pupils calling out that they disagreed with a fellow pupil.
Gail’s question
Harmony is a big deal in Japan, right? So why is it OK for pupils to loudly question their classmates’ responses?
Critique of story 4.05
Gail’s query illustrates the type of misunderstanding that occurs when someone from one cultural tradition (Gail: individualist) interprets behavior within another cultural tradition (Japan: communitarian).
Some individualists such as Gail know that Japan has a “harmony-oriented” culture. If they have expectations about what goes on in Japanese primary school classrooms, they’re probably imagining scenes in which children are behaving with conspicuous harmony – and pupils’ calling out “I see it differently!” don’t seem to be modeling conspicuous harmony!
So what’s going on in Japan when pupils yell chigaimasu?
In Japan, especially in the lower grades, the spirit animating classroom interaction is one of together-we’re-all-mastering-the-knowledge. That is harmonious. Visualize Japanese pupils as a team that, coached by their teacher, is trying to master the subject in a mutually supportive way. So if team member Haruto doesn’t know the answer but fellow team member Akari does, that’s a win for their team. Akari’s shouted chigaimasu doesn’t announce that he is better than Haruto; rather, it demonstrates that Akari is a good team member, contributing to everyone’s shared objective: mastering the material being learned.
U.S.-style competition is not unknown in the Japanese lower grades, but that’s more likely to occur in densely populated urban areas where people tend to be influenced by practices in other societies. In the absence of outside influences, Japanese primary schools are animated by, among other values, classmates’ collaborative effort to learn.6
For thought
The renowned anthropologist Margaret Mead trained many fledgling anthropologists. She emphasized that one cannot do fieldwork without divesting one’s mind of all norms, values, and expectations. What do you think is the proper way to disagree with your spouse? To give birth? To discipline someone else’s child? To teach subtraction? To defecate? If you’re going to do fieldwork, get rid of all that; it’s worse than useless – literally!
We can admire Gail for sending her child to a Japanese school. But when she observed there, she brought along her Made-in-America expectations about what, properly, should occur in primary school classrooms. Hold on, Gail! This is a Japanese classroom.
Related stories
Stories 4.18 and 7.13 also concern events in East Asian schools that shocked American visitors.
Note to story 4.05
Gail herself was the source of this story. Her book states that chigaimasu is translated as “That’s wrong!” Unfortunately, Gail is wrong. Chigaimasu is the Japanese word-of-choice to gently object to someone else’s statement. This was pointed out to me by my private editor, Kay M. Jones, who is fluent in Japanese. In the story above, I used an accurate translation of chigaimasu.
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Endnotes:
5 Benjamin, G.R., 45.
6 For more detail, see Grove (2020), especially “More About Classroom Process,” 98–102.
Full citations are available at misalignedminds.info/References.