As well as facing the world’s most rapidly ageing society, according to a speech by a government minister yesterday Japan is also having to deal for the first time with its supply of foreign teachers getting older and older as the supply of 23-year old “fresh meat” (my translation) through Nova and the JET scheme has dried up and people who’ve done more than two years in Japan have found themselves unemployable back home.

Reasons for concern and possible negative effects he pointed out in his speech include:

– Those teachers never saving enough money to be able to retire and not being on the government pension scheme, making the problem of ageing teachers ever more extreme and making Japan’s first hundred-year-old classroom TEFL teacher only a matter of time

– A vicious cycle as comments by cynical long termers on online discussion forums put off the few younger teacher who are thinking of coming over

– Having to schedule classes to fit in regular toilet breaks, naps, pills, cups of hot cocoa, heat lamps, Vic vapour rub etc for the teachers

– The late middle aged ladies who enjoy having an innocent little crush on their foreign teacher being shocked by said teacher making a move, or not having any teachers they could possibly fantasize about

– Extremely long stories to illustrate language points etc, sometimes with the teacher forgetting the point of the story halfway through

– Teachers who have the heating on for 11 months of the year, or who refuse to put the heating on because it is a terrible waste and teach with two coats on instead

– Teachers who tut at almost every story by the students about what they did at the weekend

– Teachers who keep all their books and unused photocopies in plastic bags and a shopping trolley that they wheel around with them from class to class and home in the evenings

– Nostalgia for ancient textbooks that no sensible person would still use (e.g. Cutting Edge)

– Too many lessons about “used to” and medical ailments

– Teachers conducting classes in Japlish and pidgin English because they’ve forgotten their own language, or becoming irrationally annoyed by L1 interference just because they’ve heard those mistakes so many times

– Teachers wanting to wear slippers in class

– Teachers needing a little sit down after every stage of the lesson

– Teaching slang, idioms and cultural rules that haven’t existed anywhere for ages

– Use of the Daily Express and Daily Mail for classroom readings

– Use of outdated and discredited teaching approaches such as CLT and Humanistic Language Teaching

– Broody teachers whose kindergarten lessons go on for three hours because they can’t bear to the see the cute little kids go home

– Teachers who use their ex-wife in all the example sentences they use to illustrate language points

– Totally unrealistic and utopian statements about countries that teachers worked in before Japan

– Teachers refusing to go into the classroom until more PG Tips and custard creams arrive

– Teachers dozing off during pairwork

– An over-emphasis on choral drilling, as that is the only way older teachers can hear the students

– Irrational resistance to new technology such as brain implants

– Teachers beginning to believe that back home really is like it is represented in Headway

Is he wrong? Or does he have even more reasons to be worried? Comments below please.