Believing in future myself
Working for reconciliation for Chinese, Korean and Japanese historical relationships.
As an educator, this is the one that I am recently interested in, yet I've never problematized this issue from educational perspective.
While I learn about a dark chapter of Canadian history, which is the cultural genocide of Aboriginal people, I couldn't help thinking “What about Japan?”
First of all, I have been seeing my classmates in teachers programs work so hard and face the reality. They are trying to catch up Indigenous histories that they did not learn in their childhoods.
In 2008 the then Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper delivered the first official apologies to Indigenous people about the residential schools. Before this, however, Canadians seemed not to care about the regidential schools.
*For those who don't know about the residential schools, this is a good summary about the history of colonialism.
Berief idea of residential schools is "aggresssive assimilation" under the assumptions that Indigenous people need to be educated to be able to adopt the mainstream Canadian society. The schools were run by churches with government supports. Kids are completely segregated from their paretns to kill the Indigenous cultures, including their spiritual believes, languages, and customs.
This is why, this history is called not only "genecide", but also "cultural genocide".
To back to the point, currentaly teachers and teacher candidates are facing difficulties teaching this histories because they are in the generations that ignores the dark side of Canadian histories; a lot of adults in Canada did not learn anything about residential schools in their school lives. Therefore, many teacher candidates worry about their knowledge or skills to facilitate the conversations about Indigenous history.
The one critique striking to me was the idea of "Perfect Stranger" (2013) delivered by Dr. Dion.
She does not blame the fact that many teachers are ignorant of Indigenous issues, but criticizes that they are remaining as "perfect strangers" by believing that the issues are happening between government and Indigenous people. Dr. Dion continues that even though those teachers have aboriginal students in their classrooms, the teachers responded to Dr. Dion that "I do not know anything about Indigenous people" or "I do not have friends from Indigenous communities". This explains they are not willing to touch this issue and end up being “perfect stranger” by excusing them.
I was inspired by this video and then questioned myself about the situations in Japan because Japan also has the history of colonialism in Asian countires.
- Did we talk about the history of colonizations?
- Did we just finish learning the history only for the tests?
- What did we need to talk in the classes?
- The positive image towards Korea and China compared to older generations are just coming from our ignorance or lack of discussions about the history?
- Are we truly having our own idea about the history of genocide?
- Aren't we believe in that this is governmental problems, we are not in the center of the problems?
To honestly answer these questions, I personally haven't thought about the issues ciriously as a nation since I was thinking that the history is history, that’s that. I had also been thought that people always fighting against each other are older generations. But, it was wrong.
Now I really think that it is important for individuals to have some opinions about the relashionships among Asian countries.
In schools, learning is still for exams, especially in high schools for the Japanese system of entrance examinations. But somehow, it has to be changed to allow students to think critically and work based on discussion.
Actually the balance of input and output is difficult to manage, but I swear that this is extreamly important to not only build a cooperative relationship among Asian countries, but also to encourage students to have more critical to be a grobal citizenship.
