I suppose if self-help books were available when I was a child, and I suppose if my parents were the type to read such books they would have looked for and bought several with titles like "How to Raise a Strong-Willed Child." Children like me, those with opinions and the vocabulary (and audacity) to speak minds are today referred to as "strong-willed". Back then, I was just sassy.
Raising such a child in a culture different than that of their passport adds an interesting twist to life. There are consequences to raising a child in a foreign land. My parents chose complete immersion for me and my brother. I'm grateful for the instinctive and intrinsic knowledge I have as an adult, of Japanese culture and language and the protocol required to live and work successfully in Japan. The trips back to the US during my childhood were fraught with angst and confusion, but those, too, eventually worked out. By many I've worked with in the US I'm considered highly functional, albeit a bit different (but not always in a bad way). I'm not quite American enough, but usually pass. An odd response here and there keeps people on their toes. Or, that's what I tell myself.
When one buys a bread maker as an adult and already is not inclined to read directions about the various pieces included and where and what they should attach themselves to, one hopes using such machines is simple. Throw in the ingredients (in order, preferably), push buttons and wait. That's about as far as I get with my patience, strong-willed that I am. After two failed attempts at making bread I was prepared to return this device, clearly defective. "Let's give it one more try," my beloved says, and because he was a math major as an undergraduate I agree. Surely math skills are paramount in placing the right amount of ingredients into the little square box that would produce the eventual loaf.
Herein lies the first problem. Raise a girl in the metric system, take her to a country where units of measure include words like ounces and fortnight, introduce her to friends who talk about "stone" as a way to calculate weight, then throw her back into a country where the metric system rules and there is inevitable mathematical confusion. Grams and meters are easy units to use with everything in tens, one hundreds and one thousands. I'm all for the metric system. To this day I don't know how many quarts are in a liter, fluid ounces in a Japanese cup (different than an American cup), or how specifically to calculate F into C.
Back to the strong-willed child. My first, and second grade teacher, Mrs. Sekiko Sato was, by all accounts a wonderful teacher. She made one life-altering statement, however, and I place blame squarely at her feet for the fact to this day I do not know how to swim. She gathered us in the school pool one day, and pointing to the black drain in the middle of the pool said, "Don't ever go near this hole because it will suck you in and you'll never see your mother and father again."
That did it. This pool and all it represented, swimming mostly, was something I would forever avoid. Why would schools have a facility on its grounds that would suck children away from their families, forever doomed to roaming underground drains? What was wrong with this place? I did not need to know how to swim. My life would be full and complete without this skill. To this day, I do not swim.
Similarly, when Mrs. Sato taught us that "doing math in your head means you don't use addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division" I was left dumbfounded. How did one do math without any of these four basic principles? "Imagine yourself using an abacus," she said. I went home and told my parents I needed abacus lessons (they promptly complied) and when the instructor came to our home with his abacus in hand and proceeded to teach me how to do math in my head, moving disks up and down making clicking sounds I knew once again Mrs. Sato was wrong. My abacus teacher most definitely had me doing any and all four math methods in my head. I was adding, subtracting and more. On top of this, I found I was expected to remember numbers using these pegs and not write them down. Answers did not miraculously appear on my abacus. I was expected to think. Japanese children clearly had a skill foreign children were incapable of learning, I decided. This is why it was possible for them to do math while not adding, subtracting, and the like, the way Mrs. Sato said. I gave up the abacus after several lessons, telling my parents it was a most stupid and out-of-date way of doing math. "I'll just master the calculator instead," I believe I said.
For a strong-willed child like me, the Japanese educational system did much to confuse as it tried to mold me into a proper Japanese child. Group-think was prioritized. There was actually a class called Ethics. I grew into a strong-willed, sassy child who spoke my mind, did not swim, hated math, and blended well to the extent any foreign girl could. Confusion aside, I turned out okay.
Some time after I left the Japanese educational system, the government decided to adopt a more child-centered approach, one many considered western. Children were encouraged to speak their minds. Children were given options. Group-think was less of a priority. On the surface, these traits seem positive. The consensus of the outcome, however, has many Japanese my age and older, disgusted with "young people these days" who volunteer their opinions when not asked, who do not follow orders from above, and who try one thing and then move onto another if the outcome isn't just right. Hiro, my friend from Tohoku is openly critical. "The words 'I think' shouldn't ever flow out of anyone's mouth but for those in their twenties, that's all they say. If I didn't ask them what they think, and let's face it, I never would, why would they think it's okay to offer up their personal opinion? The fact they hop from job-to-job, switching whenever they become dissatisfied or bored, my generation was never allowed to think this way. Yutori Kyoiku, that system where individual thought was encouraged? That's Japan's biggest mistake."
Hiro is not alone. I've heard this same sentiment from many. But, back to my bread machine. I distinctly remember being taught grams and milliliters were the same. I have since been informed by this applies only to measuring liquids. Flour, to be measured in grams (when going into a bread machine) must be weighed. This requires a scale. That requires a purchase of a scale. A child who was strong-willed who has since become an adult does not like the idea the metric system can fail or that another trip must be made to the local 100 yen store to buy a scale to weigh ingredients before they're added into a recipe. Bread machines are meant to simply the act of baking. Weighing flour is an additional step, going completely against the idea of simplifying. I heartily object to this part of the metric system.
The two loaves made in the bread machine since my two previous disasters have turned out perfectly. I acknowledge this is because I weighed the flour. The machine, alas, was not defective.
Today's post offers random thoughts on Japan's educational system and all it entails, waking up to the scent of fresh-baked bread, lamenting the fact my kitchen does not have an oven, why I do not and will not swim, and why even when having to weigh flour I still believe ones and zeros are better than changing the definition of a foot to match that of the current king's foot-size. (Wikipedia that last part if you don't get the reference.)
Here's to a year of happy bread making.
But I bet you never went near that hole in the pool...
ReplyDelete