The Forbidden Lesson: Warning! Some lowbrow humor here...

In the States, as we all know, the litigious nature of our country has made the educational environment fairly rigid and structured, at least within the Public School System. Teacher - student interactions have a strict set of guidelines, and one of the first rules that any teacher, or any American for that matter knows, is that students should not hit each other and a teacher should probably not smack their students around. I have not seen a teacher outright thwack a student in Japan. But I have seen good natured sparring. It's common in class, if one of my students starts acting up, for another student to smack them (sometimes really hard) on the back of their head. If a student says something out of line, a teacher may feign to whack them on the head or shoulder too. The first time I saw this practice, it caught me a little off guard. I think my student who got smacked, a somewhat loud third grader, was caught only slightly more off his guard when his female classmate gave him a real hard smack on the crown of his head. The day that I saw a student punch his teacher in the stomach, however, and the teacher respond with a swift kick to the students back was a whole other step. What followed that first punch was a (mostly) pretend fight that evoked memories of the Kung Fu movies I watched back in America... where I had a DVD player. Teacher and student playfully punched each other in the stomach. A good time had by all. Imagine me looking on. My jaw was resting comfortably on the floor. There's even a game called Kancho where students try to catch the other off guard and thrust a finger up their friend's butt. Girls can also be front kancho'd. The points or value of the kancho is based on the effect, and depth of the thrust. I haven't seen this in school yet, but I did catch a little girl, maybe 3, kanchoing her mother at the bus stop one day.

One little match really jumps to mind though. I was teaching an elementary school class. There were 8 students in the class; a combination of first and second graders. Today was going to be a fun. We were going to practice introductions. Right off the bat, one first grader, Johnny (fake name) was louder than normal, as though he had eaten too much Mr. Donut for breakfast. As the class was getting settled, he threw a punch at his teacher's crotch. The teacher dodged, covered, and laughed. I laughed too, albeit a little nervously. But then Johnny did it again. Dodge. And again. Maybe 10 times he punched and the teacher dodged. After a particularly close call, the teacher told him to stop in about the least authoritative tone I've heard in my life. Johnny laughed maniacally and took his place., leaving his teacher nursing his inner thigh at the front of the class. With Johnny in place, I was able to really begin the lesson. Bear in mind that my objective according to the Ministry of Education with regards to the younger students is more to get them excited about learning English than to have them fluent by sixth grade.

The students stood in a circle, while I selected one student to stand in the middle. I blindfolded that student and spun them around. The lucky kid stumbled around the circle (With my guidance of course. I'm not that mean.) hands outstretched, trying to find one of their fellow students. When they did, they shook hands and the dialog went like this:

"Hello."
"Hello."
"Are you name?" The first student uses the other's, "Hello," to guess which friend it might be.
"Yes its me! I am _____" or, "No I am not!" If they get it right, they switch places. They loved it.

After all the students had gone I thought they might like to watch their teacher stumble around dizzy and blindfolded like them. This was the biggest treat yet. The 1^st grade teacher burst out laughing when I gestured towards him with my makeshift necktie blindfold and continued laughing as he tied it around his head. The students spun him around and backed away to their places in the circle, but began creeping back toward the middle, hands outstretched, in the hopes that their teacher would shake their hand. It was great fun. The teacher was laughing. The students were laughing. I was laughing.

Then, I noticed that one student hadn't gone back to his place in the circle. Before I could react, Johnny threw one last very calculated and direct fist, squarely into his blindfolded, dizzy, and completely unprotected teacher's crotch. His sensei doubled over... in pain... and laughing the whole way down. The student threw his hands up in triumph. All the other students laughed. When the teacher regained his breath, he laughed out loud, told Johnny not to do that again, and continued the game. He didn't miss a beat. But I guess students and teachers are just comfortable enough to joke around like that here. Even though it was surprising, it's refreshing. I think I could be punched by a student, but not Johnny. He's vicious.

Also, no photos to accompany this story. That would be a poor decision, BUT, here are some photos from my trip to Nagano city for our Prefectural Orientation.

Nagano and Zenkoji

Addition: This was written a while ago. As of this writing I have started calling this the forbidden lesson. I did it again with another first grade class and had a similar incident, only this time, I had the close call. Recently, I had another class with Johnny. The same teacher took another hit. And I did too this time. It's a mixed blessing that the students are now fairly comfortable with me...