How is it possible my son's taught himself to read and write Japanese on his own using only a £10 toy when expensive teachers are only just beginning to manage that now in English after six months of school? Could we replace his teachers with cheap plastic toys?
Before you get cross, the answer is, of course, no. Not yet, at any rate. But I'm less sure about Training Departments and Higher Education. First, how did he learn to read and write Japanese with a toy?
Two possible answers to that question:
1. eLearning is suited to Japanese spelling.
It's tempting to say that Japanese spelling is 'easier' than English. And it's true that, once you learn the characters in Japanese, you can pretty much read and write anything. The absurdity of this poster-child of spelling reform, Ghoughpteighbteau is simply not possible in Japanese (see if you can guess the name of this vegetable without clicking through - it's a bit like 'ghoti', except the 'gh' is from 'hiccough' not 'enough').
But Japanese kana are simply more suited to eLearning. The Anpan-Man Computer gives you immediate feedback on anything you've spelled in a way not possible with English. How would an English spelling computer respond to 'ghoti' or 'Spek & Spel' other than to say INCORRECT? Whereas Anpan-Man will tell you exactly what you've spelled, even if it's nonsense. By trial and error, my son was able to learn how to spell things like, "I like trains," or "I did a poo," and practice long past the time that any human, no matter how loving, would have got bored teaching him.
2. His teachers taught him Japanese without even trying.
They use synthetic phonics at Arthur's school - the 'synthetic' refers to the way children are taught to 'blend' sounds together to make words. They also do a lot of work on developing fine motor skills. All the kids at his school do cursive writing, for instance.
Anpan-Man would have struggled to teach him the synthetic part of synthetic phonics. He didn't really pick up the computer and properly play with it till he'd gained the confidence to start sounding out words. And as for the actual pen-holding part, there's no way he could have learned to write in Japanese without the hours of practice he got in writing English at school.
Confluence
There's a huge confluence of events and activities enabling my son to learn to read and write Japanese (and English). We're really good at teaching people to write at this age. The fact that it's much harder to teach people to write when they're older has more to do with how we've designed society than how the brain is designed (I think, you know where the comments button is).
At the centre of the confluence are the teachers. At this age, they do an amazing job of tying all the play and the toys and the enthusiasms together in a way that nothing else could.
Effluence
The Training Department (or Higher Education faculties) may well be the best qualified people to 'tie things together' in the workplace. But they're rarely there in the teams, on projects or with managers. More importantly, they don't benefit from a confluence of events that has evolved to help people learn. It's just as likely they'll have the exact opposite.
The talents of the Training Department will always be indispensable. But the way things are organised now, they're often replaceable.
*In two of the three main scripts. The third and most important, kanji, will be a different story. For example, it's unlikely he'll learn the more advanced kanji (eg things like 'eat' and 'drink') till he's at High School. For an indication why this might be, have a look at this turn-of-the-century Chinese typewriter. Chinese languages use the same character set as the Japanese kanji.
Anpan-Man is a Japanese cartoon about a bunch of superheroes, mostly made of bread - 'Anpan' means 'red-bean-jam-filled-bun' - who fight the cute but evil Baikin-Man, or Germ Man. The plot typically involves Anpan-Man, along with Little Melon-bread and Baby-Man, defending some other less able bread-based lifeform. Baikin-Man usually manages to damage his bread-head, rendering him helpless - until the baker arrives in the nick of time with a new head. Anpan-Man then delivers the fabled 'An-punch' (or 'azuki-bean-paste punch) and all is well with the world. It was apparently inspired by the near-starvation of its writer in World War II and his wistful daydreams of beanjam pastries.
Arthur's also been to school in Japan for a short time. In later life, Japanese schools are really tough. But, as the picture above shows with the pink pom-poms, there's definitely a different vibe in the younger years.
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