The Marathon

A few days ago we had the school Marathon, and it was the first day that I really felt the differences between Canadian and Japanese High Schools in a negative way. So far, I had found the differences fascinating, and I often found myself thinking how much better some things are here than back home. Today was a little different.

First of all, all of the students have to run in the marathon. No matter how fat, out of shape they are, or whatever. They train for two weeks prior to the event, and I even went with the students on a short practice run (during which I finished last, and almost died but stubbornly refused to stop because the hot girl gym teacher was watching and I wasn’t about to let her see how out of shape I was). Most of the kids are in pretty good shape, since PhysEd is mandatory here, but there were still a few plumpers here and there.

The marathon was run on a fairly cold day, and the kids had to run a damn long time, and up towards the mountain. First though, they had to walk from the school to the starting line (about a 30 minute walk). As we were waiting for all the students to arrive (the teachers had driven up) my JTE explained to me that the gym teachers were all nervous because each year all across Japan some student inevitably dies in a marathon. This sounded pretty damn horrible to me! I mean, why force them to run if they are not able or really don’t want to do it? And they all have to finish too, because it’s shameful if they don’t, since individual scores count towards the overall team score for each grade.

In any case, the far more disturbing thing I saw that day was some of the kids get physically punished – harshly. Four of the students were late by about 3 minutes, or something minor like that. Two boys and two girls. They were all made to kneel and the old male gym teacher in charge started yelling at them and hitting them with a backhand across the face, hard. And when I say hard, I mean HARD. He hit the boys so hard that they fell over, and he kept on hitting them and screaming for about 5 minutes, and all this took place in front of the entire school. By the end, all four kids were crying. I couldn’t watch. After the first hit where the boy fell over, I turned my head away. I could still clearly hear each smack hit home though. In the end, the students were not seriously hurt, but it was still hard for me to accept that this happens regularly. It’s not my place to judge another society, and it’s true that those students will likely not be late again for a really, really long time, but it still made me uncomfortable.

As the marathon proceeded, I cheered the students as they arrived at the finish line and more than a few of the girls in my classes collapsed in my arms from sheer exhaustion. One girl had to be carried away on a stretcher, and was later taken to hospital, although she was all right the next day. These kids don’t have it easy, that’s for sure. However, while some of the things that happen here offend my western sensibilities, I can’t help but notice that it makes the Japanese people that much stronger in the end. Since Japanese society generally seems to work well, I assume that the harshness of the school system does not have any terrible effects on the kids overall. And let’s face it, the school system in Canada is sometimes way too lax.

Well guys, looks like I got a bit behind again with updating....but I will put up some more posts as well as some adorable pics of school kids over the weekend. Tomo and Tina are almost here! Woo hoo!