Abstract
This article examines a case of what Olssen et al. (2004) call ‘managerial oppression’ set in a faculty of international studies of a Japanese university. Japanese universities have, in recent times, been facing the financial pressures of a falling birthrate and dwindling enrolments. To remain solvent, some universities have had to reinvent their curriculum in the hope of attracting students. Institutional renewal, as will be noted, does not occur without accompanying complications relating to power and politics. In the present case, these complications are attributable to tensions created within an ideological dialectic of openness and closedness (Peters and Roberts, 2012) as universities face the dilemmas of globalization alongside the endurance of conservative mercantilist philosophies traceable to policies set during Japan’s post-war occupation by Allied forces. Through a critical examination of a series of instances of bullying and coercion, I seek in this article to argue that bullying and coercion are not random or idiosyncratic but are instead embedded in larger socio-political epistemologies that impinge on education and influence the way institutional agendas and managerialist decisions can adversely affect or defile human behavior. In this way, I seek not only to make a contribution to current understandings of language policy, ideology, power and higher education in Japan, but more uniquely, to establish a connection between ideological closed mindedness, corporate managerialism and acts of institutionalized bullying and coercion.
Keywords
Considering the dehumanizing, authoritarian world most employees face on a daily basis, one cannot overestimate the importance of the struggle for integrity. (Shahinpoor and Matt, 2007: 45) [O]rganizational leaders often attempt to change people into automatons, the conscientious individual reasserts the right to have a voice, to act freely and autonomously, and to be taken seriously as an individual of conscience. (Shahinpoor and Matt, 2007: 44) Far from being abhorred, intimidation is accepted as an inevitable aspect of [Japanese] social and political life; inevitable, because the informal non-legal relations that characterize the System lead very naturally to dependence on informal coercion (i.e. intimidation) to maintain order and safeguard the power of power-holders. (Van Wolferen, 1993: 447)
Introduction
This article is set in the context of a faculty of international studies of a private university on Japan’s main island of Honshu. Japan’s universities have been experiencing falling enrolments because of a sustained period of low birth rates. Universities have had to consider news ways of being innovative in both curriculum planning and delivery in order to survive the financial pressures of the enrolment crunch.
At the particular time relevant to this discussion, the university administration in question had embarked on a new policy in a bid to reinvigorate the university curriculum. As part of this initiative, the university decided to establish a new international studies faculty. Undergraduate courses in international relations, economics, political science, sociology and other areas relevant to international studies would be taught in English instead of Japanese. The reason for having English as the medium of instruction (EMI) was to introduce an element of novelty to the curriculum with the aim of attracting more students keen on working in English-speaking environments after graduation. However, given that the medium of instruction in the Japanese school system is Japanese, many of the students admitted into the faculty did not have the necessary proficiency in English for them to engage meaningfully with academic subjects in English. This made it necessary for the students, most of whom would have studied in Japanese for their entire lives in school, to attend English for Academic Purposes (EAP) classes. These classes were designed to help them acquire the necessary academic literacies to study academic subjects in English.
Difficulties arising from low enrolment numbers
I was employed as an EAP teacher and coordinator soon after I arrived in Japan on a spouse’s visa. This was in the second year of the new faculty’s operations. It was my first experience working in a Japanese university after my twenty years of work as an English teacher and teacher-trainer in Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and my native Singapore.
After I joined the university, I learnt that this new faculty was already struggling with low enrolment numbers, despite the attempts at being innovative through the adoption of EMI. Without a proven record of academic quality, the faculty experienced considerable difficulty attracting enough students. In the first two years, fewer than 300 students were admitted, creating serious concerns about institutional solvency. Moreover, of the relatively small number of students, the faculty was pressured to accept those who were not proficient in English, for financial reasons. The weakest ones were admitted despite having only pre-intermediate English, measured using the ubiquitous Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC), which itself was a problematic bit-item test that presented inconsistencies and contradictions when used as a measure of a student’s ability in academic English.
Conceived of by a group of Japanese businessmen and bureaucrats, the TOEIC is a standardized but reductionist English test widely used by Japanese institutions (Kubota, 2011). As an epitome of state-private enterprise symbiosis, the test is widely regarded as an ‘accurate’ measure of students’ English ability because of its widespread recognition by Japanese employers, especially big businesses. In Japan, TOEIC scores are viewed as an important credential even though the atomized bit-item nature of the test means that vocabulary and grammar are tested in a truncated and decontextualized manner, making it a dubious indicator of a student’s ability to read, write or reason in English.
As EAP teacher and coordinator, I quickly found myself embroiled in a concatenation of controversies over the importance placed on TOEIC by the university administration, which was in direct conflict with my duties as a teacher of academic English, academic literacies and thinking skills. Before elaborating on the nature of these controversies, I will first provide an overview of relevant literature relating to institutional politics in the Japanese context as well as EMI in the context of globalization, before examining the intricacies of a real-life situation that was a direct result of the ‘innovations’ that the university had introduced. Suffice to say at this point that attempts at innovation and renewal are generally not a straightforward matter of reinventing the curriculum as such. Innovation and renewal are liable to bring along unintended challenges and traumas, the more repugnant aspects of which may result in bullying and partisan behavior within institutional portals among its teaching and administrative staff members.
Literature overview
Japan recovered from the throes of defeat in the last world war to become an economic world power. At the height of its economic success, Japanese people enjoyed an enviable standard of living made possible by policies that protected conservative corporate interests and an education system that fostered a compliant workforce that helped preserve a powerful state/capital nexus (Caprio and Sugita, 2007; McVeigh, 2000; Van Wolferen, 1993).
Bullying (ijime)
Behind the country’s economic prowess and material sophistication, however, are the rather more unsavory aspects of people-to-people relations to be found in an extant culture of bullying (ijime), intimidation, subjugation and suppression of those deemed to be weak, vulnerable or different (De Mente, 2005; Hall, 1998; Lee, 2006; Sugimoto, 2010; Van Wolferen, 1993;). Van Wolferen (452) notes that ‘[i]ntimidation is an unavoidable and omnipresent characteristic of Japanese society’ in the way it works to perpetuate existing structures of hierarchy and power. Van Wolferen also observes that ‘far from being abhorred, intimidation is accepted as an inevitable aspect of social and political life’ (447). On the problem of bullying, Sugimoto (2010) observes that bullying ‘mirror[s] the way in which the pressures of conformity and ostracism operate in work environments and the community at large’ (147). Together, bullying, intimidation and various types of informal coercion are seen as ways of ensuring conformity and the preservation of institutionalized and corporatized status quo, both of which are regarded as important ways to safeguard existing structures of power and control.
Japaneseness versus foreignness
In relation to the matter of conformity and preservation of the status quo, Befu (2001) introduces an added dimension that links both of these issues to notions and conceptualizations of Japaneseness. Japaneseness, as well as the alleged homogeneity of the Japanese people, is reified in a genre of literature known as nihonjinron (literally, tenets of Japaneseness), widely popularized in the 1970s and 1980s when Japanese economic prowess was at its zenith (Befu, 2001), but still wielding considerable influence in today’s conservative resurgence (Dale, 2013; Das, 2013). Nihonjinron literature is premised on the assumption that the Japanese people are a homogeneous race possessing a homogeneous culture (Befu, 2001). Nihonjinron, which is widely regarded as a civic religion (Befu, 2001), in turn feeds into narratives of nationalism which thrive on the myth of an unadulterated ethnocultural identity of the Japanese people ‘in a society where ethnocultural identity is very much nationalized’ (McVeigh, 2006: 225). Where the matter of nihonjinron, conformity and Japanese homogeneity impinge on bullying, intimidation and preservation of the status quo, nihonjinron engenders antipathies against anything that is deemed to be ‘abnormal’, ‘unJapanese’ or simply different. The result of such antipathies is, invariably, acts of rejection, bullying and intimidation, often traceable to an aversion of things unfamiliar or foreign.
Another unfortunate outcome is the way foreigners or ‘aliens’ (as they are referred to in the Japanese Alien Registration Card which all foreigners have to carry) are liable to be taken advantage of or bullied by employers or peers alike (Hall, 1998; Rivers, 2013; Worthington, 1999). Among the different ways such bullying can take place, foreign teachers have highlighted instances of exploitation through unfair or unjust contractual arrangements (Aspinall, 2011; Hall, 1998; Worthington, 1999); racial stereotyping, tokenization or outright racial discrimination (Hall, 1998; McVeigh, 2006; Murphey, 2004; Rivers, 2013; Stewart and Miyahara, 2011); and gender or emotional harassment (Hall, 1998; Worthington, 1999). It is revealed in the literature that foreigner teachers of different cultures and creeds are liable to become targets for bullying. While ethnic Koreans are often singled out for victimization (Caprio, 2007; Hall, 1998), Japanese-Americans (Kubota and Fujimoto, 2013; McVeigh, 2006), Southeast Asians (Giri and Foo, 2014) and even white Europeans too (Rivers, 2013; Stewart and Miyahara, 2011; Worthington, 1999), are targeted for different forms of racially-motivated marginalization or victimization. This is despite Befu’s (2001) observation that the Japanese generally tend to look up to people of white European ethnicity as being superior while people of Asian and African ethnicities are looked down upon as being inferior.
The politico-historical dimension
There is, to be sure, a political and historical element to the above observations about bullying and prejudice. Bullying and prejudice may, at one level, be viewed as an aspect or dimension of ‘Japanese culture’, a culturally-borne or culturally-inherent outcome of an overwhelmingly closed, conformist and hierarchical society. A deeper analysis, however, will reveal that nihonjinron’s reification of Japanese homogeneity can be traced to significant events ensuing from Japan’s post-war occupation by the Allied forces led by the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) both in the person of General Douglas MacArthur and his office. The Allied forces came to Japan with lofty ideals for its democratization and emancipation from militarism and conservative extremism but these ideals eventually gave way to Cold War paranoia (Caprio, 2007; Caprio and Sugita, 2007; Dower, 1999). Briefly, the result of SCAP’s turnaround from its original ideals was a reassertion (and rehabilitation) of nationalistic rightwing elements, the suppression of labor unions, the persecution and repatriation of ethnic Koreans and SCAP’s complicity in the ascent of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), whose conservative and neoliberal policies endure to this day (Caprio, 2007; Caprio and Sugita, 2007; Dower, 1999; Lee, 2006). The mythology of the post-war ‘Japanese’ model of success under the LDP proved in reality to be: a hybrid Japanese-American model: forged in war, intensified through defeat and occupation, and maintained over the ensuing decades out of … a widespread belief that Japan needed top-level planning and protection to achieve optimum economic growth. (Dower, 1999: 558)
Hence, as explained, while bullying, marginalization and victimization tend to be viewed (merely and superficially) as putative cultural behavior, the exposing of their post-war political and historical connections actually reveals a somewhat different picture of their origins. The overall picture thus far formed of bullying and victimization does have yet another facet to it, which is the subject of discussion in the next section.
Globalization, EMI, and theorizations of openness and closedness to change
The impetus supporting the ongoing surge in university EMI programs is the belief among certain scholars that English is now used globally as a lingua franca in fields like business, diplomacy and higher education (Dafouz, 2014; Jenkins, 2014; Lin and Lo, 2015). Also becoming more apparent are situations where EMI is seen to take place in multilingual and multicultural university environments (Iino and Murata, 2016; Jenkins, 2014). Dafouz (2014) observes that implementation of EMI is happening on a large scale and at a fast pace while Tsui and Tollefson (2007) note that globalization is sustained generally by the mediational tools of English and technology, to the point that even countries like Japan which are strongly protective of their languages and cultures have recognized the need for EMI. Peters and Roberts (2012) in turn observe that with the current changes, knowledge formation is happening cooperatively and instantaneously by way of electronic communication, which Tsui and Tollefson (2007) recognize as being part of an interpenetration of boundaries (linguistic, cultural, geographical, intellectual) that occurs with globalization and the lingua franca role of English. More so than before, meaning is increasingly recognized as something that is dynamic, multilayered, open-ended and negotiable rather than discreet or pre-existent (Williams, 2010). For Peters and Roberts (2012: 65), such a form of ‘[o]pen knowledge production is based on an incremental, decentralized (and asynchronous), and collaborative development process’. As part of their theorizing of the notion of openness, Peters and Roberts (2012) posit that openness is inclusive of the attendant notion of open-mindedness, while existing not just as a particular disposition to actions and relationships, but very importantly to this present discussion about Japan, also as a property of organizing systems and social order. The significance of Peters and Roberts’ (2012) observations on openness and open-mindedness will become apparent in subsequent discussion on the distinct possibility that bullying and victimization may well be manifestations of a form of closed mindedness, which Peters and Roberts (2012) collocate with closed systems and closed societies in their theorization.
Meanwhile, policy wise, Japan has had to cope with the increased use of English as a lingua franca in various fields of engagement with domains and agencies (from) outside the country. To achieve this, Japan has adopted strategies of language management which have required balancing between recruiting more overseas students as part of the need to internationalize and reinvent its tertiary education sector (which means introducing more EMI courses), and resisting what is perceived among policy makers to be the threat of the hegemony of English (Hashimoto, 2007; Tsui and Tollefson, 2007; Yamagami and Tollefson, 2011). This involves a delicate balancing act between linguistic, systemic and cultural openness and closedness, to use the terminology from Peters and Roberts (2012), which, while conceivable at policy level, may not be so readily achievable when it comes to individual institutions at local level (see discussion below). Reactions against policy changes may not be so favorable among individual local teaching staff and these may result in erratic behaviors manifesting in forms of outright bullying and victimization.
Linking to the discussion at hand
Returning to the present discussion, I will examine in greater detail the problems surrounding the university’s novel decision to adopt English as the medium of instruction for the new faculty, subsequently manifested in an outright rejection of innovative ways of teaching EAP among a group of dissenting administrators and faculty members. In the next section, I will provide a narrative of a real-life situation enacting the realities of an institutional culture where bullying and intimidation became part of my experience as an EAP teacher and coordinator. The discursive and reflexive nature of my narrative is consistent with investigative works of praxis that use vignettes, critical incidents and counter-stories written by educators (Giri and Foo, 2014; Rivers, 2013; Stewart and Miyahara, 2011; Worthington, 1999) to critique or dialogize inequitable practices within educational portals. Inasmuch as the narrative touches on matters of race by dint of my being supposedly ‘inferior’ as a Southeast Asian Chinese in Japanese eyes (Befu, 2001), my narrative would also bear out the elements of a critical race counter-story (Ladson-Billings, 1999; Solorzano and Yosso, 2002).
Dramatis personae
In my second semester at the new faculty, the university employed a new Dean who joined the faculty after retiring from a stellar career in a large Japanese multinational conglomerate. This Dean came with a reputation for business acumen from his years in the corporate world and well-honed skills in the developing and deploying of human resources, having worked in the busy hubs of continental Europe and America for much of his illustrious career. The university’s top administration envisaged that the Dean would turn the faculty into a financially viable operation. Not only would the number of enrolments increase, graduates from the faculty would be able to secure good jobs when they graduated through his good offices and elaborate network of business connections. This would enhance the reputation of both the startup faculty as well as the university. As a mark of respect for his impeccable record in the business sector, he was accorded the position of full professor, even though he had absolutely no background in academia. Such a practice is consistent with McVeigh’s (2006) observation that promotion or demotion of professors can often be viewed as more of an administrative rather than an academic matter.
One semester after the arrival of the Dean (hereafter D), a new Administrator-General was recruited by D to run the faculty’s administrative office. The Administrator-General (hereafter AG) was another retiree from the same powerful conglomerate that D worked for. Both D and AG ran the faculty in a manner reminiscent of ‘managerial oppression’ within a closed system that permitted little room for cooperative or consultative management (Olssen et al., 2004; Peters and Roberts, 2012) through a network of operatives from among the teaching staff who cooperated (collaborated) with them and carried out their instructions.
As for how this new arrangement affected me and the quality of EAP teaching, there were the three collaborators who exerted direct influence on my work as EAP coordinator. Each of these people had their individual agendas in choosing to work in league with D and AG. The first two (hereafter A and B) were both Japanese and were respectively the Head of the Academic Affairs Committee (A) and a TOEIC instructor (B). Both A and B did not want the EAP curriculum to be too creative or progressive (see below for details) for fear that English teaching would veer away from attention to TOEIC – over which they each had their own deeply vested interests. The third (hereafter C) was an EAP teacher from an English-speaking country. Fresh from his PhD studies, he was actively seeking out a career footing and quick advancement through the favor and indulgence of his Japanese superiors and colleagues, D, AG, A and B. He ingratiated himself to them by following their orders and carrying out their behests.
Working together, D, AG, A, B and C created a difficult work environment that eventually became invasive, corrosive, and in my opinion, counter-educational.
Cold measurement versus empowerment in academic literacies
The highly valued conformity in Japan is to a large extent enforced by intimidation … For administrators, intimidation is preferable to legally enforceable normative values, and is widely used to maintain control. (Van Wolferen, 1993: 447) Neoliberalism has reduced work … to competition, marketing, and fragmented production, where workers are removed from their creations, thereby creating a prevailing sense of occupational alienation (Dale and Hyslop-Margison, 2010: 91)
The machinations of A, B and C were made possible by their ingratiation of themselves to D and AG and by D and AG’s deep concerns about TOEIC statistics. For D and AG, TOEIC statistics were a good way to impress parents and potential students to attract new enrolments, unfortunately reminiscent of Dale and Hyslop-Margison’s (2010) observation that ‘modern universities [often] are built on a corporate edifice of consumerism where … credential is what matters (for its economic transaction value)’ (p. 80).
With regard to the dynamics of the undermining of my work as academic English coordinator, the recruitment of C into their ranks meant that D, AG, A and B became privy to what was discussed at the EAP teachers’ meetings which were chaired by me. As a consequence, I was summoned one day into D’s office and taken through pages of statistics. The statistics indicated how students’ TOEIC scores correlated poorly with the previous year’s entrance examinations results, meaning that students admitted based on their entrance examinations grades ended up scoring poorly in TOEIC. To D, this was highly unacceptable. I was therefore told to work with B, the Japanese TOEIC instructor who would be appointed the chairperson of the next entrance examination committee, to design an entrance examination that would supposedly yield results that correlated highly with TOEIC. D did not want students who would perform poorly in TOEIC to be admitted into the faculty. Their poor TOEIC results would prove too much of a liability in his bid to attract enrolments and make the faculty financially stable. The general public, especially parents and managers of large corporations, considered TOEIC results to be a very important measure of students’ English ability. Poor TOEIC results would make the faculty look bad in the eyes of wider Japanese society.
The fact that students would be doing academic courses in English requiring skills in academic literacies and the appreciation of the role of discourses and textual practices in knowledge construction and meaning-making (Benesch, 2001; Lillis, 2003; Williams, 2010) was lost on D. D’s concerns were trained on TOEIC results and TOEIC statistics. Neither did he appreciate the fact that what was tested in a reductionist bit-item multiple-choice test like TOEIC did not coincide with those skills and open learning dispositions in academic literacies that the students needed to acquire to study for their academic courses. Academic literacies and creative thinking were secondary. Statistics were more important.
Meanwhile, B lost no time in making a comprehensive list of the types of items that would be tested in the following year’s entrance examination paper: translation of short truncated sentences from Japanese to English; reordering of scrambled phrases, as well as decontextualized multiple-choice bit items on grammar and vocabulary. My suggestion that the examination should also include a written composition section was rejected with the excuse that extended essay writing was not tested in Japanese entrance examinations. Besides, reminded B, our task was to design an examination that would correlate positively with TOEIC, which meant creating a bit-item exam that would shadow and resemble TOEIC as much as possible.
Academic bullying and victim blaming
The bullying phenomenon ‘mirror[s] the way in which the pressures of conformity and ostracism operate in work environments and the community at large. (Sugimoto, 2010: 147)
The first was when the AG came to my office one day to ask me questions about the students’ TOEIC results in a threatening manner. He told me that the TOEIC scores were too low and that my team of EAP teachers should be spending more time on drilling students for the TOEIC tests conducted every semester. When I told AG that my priority was to teach English for academic purposes, his fist landed on the table like a mallet, in vehement disagreement. He told me that good TOEIC statistics were important for attracting new students. As English teachers, my EAP colleagues and I were expected to produce students with good TOEIC scores. My job as coordinator of academic English was to bring up the students’ TOEIC scores, or so he insisted.
At the same meeting, AG also told me that he would be asking a clerk from the administrative office to map out graphically the TOEIC scores of each individual student. Not long after this meeting, there was a meeting of the entire faculty where D expressed his worry that the students’ TOEIC scores compared unfavorably with the national average. He then said to the entire faculty that the responsibility of bringing up students’ TOEIC scores was not just the TOEIC instructors’ but also the EAP teachers’.
The second incident took place after the release of the results of the next TOEIC test. There were rumors among faculty members that the EAP teachers were being blamed by the administration for not doing enough for the students’ TOEIC scores. A, being the Head of Academic Affairs, was frequently seen conferring somberly with D in his office. Eventually, A came to my office and suggested that the EAP teachers and I should consider having TOEIC performance factored into each student’s final EAP grade as a way of emphasizing its importance. She suggested that 20% of the EAP grade should be allocated to TOEIC performance. To me, the drilling of students in the hope of improving their TOEIC scores was too incompatible with the teaching of academic English and academic literacies (Benesch, 2001; Lillis, 2003).
What happened after this meeting became even more worrying. Without the knowledge of anyone including D and AG, A took the unilateral liberty of sending a spreadsheet of the TOEIC results of the entire cohort of students in the faculty to C as an email attachment. C on his part then forwarded this same unencrypted spreadsheet containing the students’ names, registration numbers, year of matriculation and TOEIC scores to the EAP teachers (the majority of whom were part-timers who also worked in other universities). My guess at C’s reason for this rather indiscrete piece of action was that both A and C wanted to be seen as being part of D and AG’s efforts to emphasize the importance of TOEIC scores, perhaps as a way of ingratiating themselves to D and AG. Another motive was probably to assert their importance in the scheme of things and at the same time undermine my position as EAP coordinator.
I was left with no choice but to alert D of this breach in privacy protection. D’s response was to instruct the administrative office to send out a message to all recipients of the email to delete the file they received. No further action was taken. C came into my office and unleashed his anger on me for ‘having spoken to the Dean’ about his actions. It made him look bad in front of D. Uncontrollably upset that the recipients of his email were instructed to delete the file containing the students’ TOEIC scores, he asserted that there were, in fact, ‘no privacy protection regulations that he knew of’, while accusing me of ‘making up my own rules’ about breaches in privacy protection. His voice was shrill, and his manner was overbearing and boorish, quite unbecoming of an educator.
To draw attention away from what A and C did, I became the target of an organized blame-game for the poor TOEIC results, a matter which was represented to the larger faculty as a matter of my incompetence in running the EAP program. Poor TOEIC results had become conflated with incompetence in the administration of EAP. Moreover, incompetence in the EAP administration took on (however distastefully) a racialized dimension, hovering around the fact that as a Southeast Asian Chinese, I was not the typical English teacher – generally recognized by the Japanese to be white and Caucasian (Giri and Foo, 2014; Kubota and Fujimoto, 2013; Rivers, 2013).
On D’s instructions, a faculty-wide questionnaire was sent out asking all professors whether they were satisfied with the way EAP was taught on campus. B, the TOEIC instructor, was asked to compile all the findings and report them at a meeting of all EAP teachers, including me. Working in close ranks, D, AG and their collaborators sought to undermine my work through blaming and shaming. The questionnaire became a roundabout way of inciting dissatisfaction with me and my colleagues in the EAP.
Subsequent events
[S]ilencing dissent may actually cause more dissent from people of conscience, or it may force people of conscience to leave the organization. (Shahinpoor and Matt, 2007: 45)
My ex-colleagues, only a few of whom stayed on at my old workplace, told me that the university continued to experience problems with student quality and student numbers. I was repeatedly told by these well-meaning people that I had made my decision to leave at the right time. Students continued to be very weak in TOEIC even though, rid of my presence, more emphasis could freely be placed on TOEIC drilling and practice. Eventually, the university decided to cut back drastically on its academic courses in English, reverting to Japanese as the medium of academic instruction. As teaching returned to being almost entirely in Japanese, EAP became all but redundant.
Shortly after I left, B, the TOEIC instructor, was made the Director of EAP.
Commentary
Teachers within higher education are increasingly dehumanized by dictates from the managerial and bureaucratic classes that control the university agenda to protect neoliberal interests (Dale and Hyslop-Margison, 2010: 86)
Overriding concerns to do with credentialization (Dale and Hyslop-Margison, 2010) rather than education per se meant, moreover, that teachers had to compromise on the quality of teaching and ultimately on students’ academic literacies skills for the sake of making TOEIC statistics more palatable or presentable. The university became a vendor of TOEIC scores rather than a provider of a wholesome critical education. TOEIC statistics (or at least those aspects deemed fit for public consumption) were proudly cited in university advertisements and brochures. ‘Education’ became more of ‘an act of economic exchange between a seller and a buyer, rather than a relationship that involve[d] intellectual interaction and dialogue between teachers and learners’ (Dale and Hyslop-Margison, 2010: 76). Parents and students were treated merely as customers and consumers as such.
Under normal circumstances, there can of course be no excuses made for bullying or victimization of the people one works with, least of all in the context of an education institution where it might be reasonable to expect behaviors ‘founded on human empathy and on shared human qualities and aspirations based on reason’ (Dale and Hyslop-Margison, 2010: 77) if some ‘form of cosmopolitanism characterized by [a] disposition of “openness” towards others’ (Peters and Roberts, 2012: 5) was too much of an asking. Yet if one were to consider the strongly neoliberal and conservative ideologies that militated against aspirations for more humanizing forms of education, one may just be able to account for the sorts of closed-mindedness as well as bullying and victimization described above. This would have been a picture-perfect case of neoliberalism and corporate protectionism infiltrating academic hallways, a matter which scholars discuss at length. Bullying and victimization became a projected or enacted form of closedness, a fear of the openness required to embrace change for the better, in turn attributable to larger ideological regimes or systemic forces of corporate managerialism and social control. Such regimes and forces would also have stoked fears that creative and dynamic applications of EMI would impinge on the Japaneseness of the entire system if too much room were to be given in EAP classes for critique and reflection. As a foil for a more dynamic role that might have been given to EAP and hence to English, TOEIC as a homegrown product of Japanese business and bureaucracy (Kubota, 2011), too, became a technology of reaction and control. Seen in this way, the bullying and victimization would have been a way of asserting a closure of ranks amongst the Japanese actors D, AG, A and B (with C as the puppet of the piece) in defense of the system’s Japaneseness. Even though it involved a strange and unholy combination of corporate and academic actors, the common denominator among them was a form of sociocultural cloisteredness or closedness. Under such circumstances, a teacher like me who stood up on principle for a wholesome education and the teaching of critical thinking and academic literacies, was viewed as stepping out of line: ‘[p]eople who seek to change the current structures are a threat to the … structural status quo’ became a relevant observation (Dale and Hyslop-Margison, 2010: 92). The system was not ready for anything it considered unfamiliar – an obvious case of unfamiliarity breeding contempt.
Enrolments, institutional solvency and ostensibly, a protection of Japaneseness, took priority over education or other forms of openness including ‘freedom, justice, forms of participation, transparency, sociality, collaboration, solidarity, and democratic action’ (Peters and Roberts, 2012: 1). D, AG and those who connived with them while ‘ensconced in the structural system of the oppressors’ (Dale and Hyslop-Margison, 2020: 92) acted as institutional whips to keep potential dissenters at bay. Dissenters would be harassed or browbeaten back into line. The powerful element of oppressive managerialism played a considerable role in de-professionalizing the work of the EAP teachers where ‘quality’ became ‘a powerful metaphor for new forms of managerial control’ in a strictly regulated setting where key performance indicators, internal monitoring and external reporting were given priority (Olssen et al., 2004: 191). The emphasis on cold statistics created a defiled work environment that eventually staved off any hopes of success with innovation and authentic curricular reform. A meaningful form of academic English became a threat to the tokenistic (but meaningless) role that was apparently consigned to the language. Such constraints on English would have been consistent with the closed nature of nihonjinron beliefs (see McVeigh (2006) for a similar situation). Nice statistics, while very useful for advertising, doubled up as a smoke screen for the fact that English as a medium of instruction was merely a façade for pretend reform (McVeigh, 2006). Academic courses in English were actually set up to fail. Bullying became a cover-up weapon in this specious set up besides being an unfortunate outworking of human bigotry, institutional dogmatism and systemic closedness.
Conclusion
While internal politics and jostling for power and attention is not unusual in any workplace where one party or faction seeks to get the better of another, the present situation presents an instance of the way a wholesome education can be compromised through unsavory conduct resulting from the operation of more powerful or more sinister agendas. Whether the situation is viewed as one of corrosive institutional culture, managerialism, closed mindedness or simply self-interest, it may be argued that the people involved were also themselves subjects or victims of institutional pressures and larger ideological discourses. In this instance, such ideological discourses had much to do with Japaneseness on the one hand, and Japan’s neoliberal market economy, where even education was commodified, mobilized and monetized for the balance sheet, on the other. Bullying and victimization were enactments played out to reify the former in order to buttress the latter. The resultant demand for conformity, adherence to dominant beliefs and the status quo meant that openness, creativity, diversity and difference were severely frowned upon and dealt with ruthlessly. While not discounting the sad reality of selfish or opportunistic behavior exhibited by people like C, discussions like this should not predominantly be about apportioning blame or about determining who was ‘nice’ or who was ‘nasty’. Ideally, they should be about understanding and exposing larger forces and histories that invariably awaken human insecurities and influence human behavior – hopefully to drawn attention to the need for more decent and principled alternatives.
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.