The Japan Times has just come out with an article “Ex-students don’t want JET grounded“. JET has been around since 1987, and its stable of ALTs has been on the decline since an peak in the early 2000’s. The article briefly lists some pros and cons of JET, and pretty much says the Government Revitalization unit has added the JET program to its list of possible budget cuts.

I don’t know. The article states that since JET began “over 50,000 young foreigners with few, if any, teaching credentials have come to Japan and partied for a year at taxpayer expense. They have usually enjoyed their stay, but their effectiveness in improving the English language ability of their students was never quantitatively measured and, given Japanese students’ performances on international English tests, is questionable at best”. Gee, if the original and long-standing goal has been internationalization, not English improvement, what’s the major beef? (more…)

Last week the Yomiuri Shimbun [right click to open in new window] announced that the JET Programme “teaching bible” had changed this year.  It used to have a catchy (?) name of Team Taught Pizza, but the revised version is called Planet Eigo.

The article says TTP and PE were both created by JET volunteers, but that the new version is substantially better, containing “full Japanese translations for the activities and major content so that JTEs can utilize it as easily as ALTs”. (more…)