Rowland Harker
LIOJ Principal, 1968-75
[Rowland Harker was co-founder of LIOJ, and the institute's first principal from 1968 to 1975. Mr. Harker and his wife, Terttu, were the ideal people to lay the foundation for what was to come, and provide the energy that the new institute needed. Mrs. Harker now resides in southern Oregon, and we deeply appreciate the essay that she contributed to this project. Mr. Harker passed away in Oregon in May 1996, but he is remembered at LIOJ for his enduring inspiration and the service that he gave to the school.
In an article entitled "Why LIOJ?" in the first issue of Cross Currents (LIOJ Journal, Summer 1972, pp. 73-76), Mr. Harker gives his thoughts on English education in Japan and describes the goals, programs, and staff of LIOJ during his time as principal. To begin tracking the evolution of LIOJ, we would like to look back at Mr. Harker's own words, a description of LIOJ during his tenure.]
Rowland Harker
Principal, LIOJ
Japan today is emerging into a position of new responsibilities and new opportunities. These involve contact with the rest of the world greater than any imagined heretofore. This fact, along with the problems inherent in changing an old style of language education has resulted in a great shortage of people adequately fluent in English. The Language Institute of Japan was founded in order to help train the people efficient in English that are needed [sic].
The first session of the Language Institute of Japan was organized in order to help a group of young people associated with the activities of the sponsoring foundation prepare for college study in America. These young people had been through the normal six years of English in Japanese junior and senior high schools and had had more than usual contact with English speaking people, but even their English was far from adequate for entrance to an American college.
As with other Japanese high school graduates, they knew fairly well how to read difficult English and translate it into Japanese, but as far as speaking or writing English was concerned, they had very little to show for their six years of study of the language.
At this point it may be proper to give a word of appreciation for the Japanese educational system. For a hundred years after the opening of the country to the rest of the world, the primary aim of foreign language education was to make the learning and experience of the world available to the Japanese. One can only marvel at the success in achieving this goal.
However, this success itself sometimes seems to be the greatest barrier to creating the kind of English education that is needed today, when Japanese contacts with the world in every field are exploding in number, and the need to give ideas and information is as great as the need to get them. Those who have grown up to positions of leadership in education, because they have succeeded in arriving at the old goals so spectacularly, find it hard to believe that what was good enough for themselves is not adequate for their grandchildren. Thus, the heads of English departments in universities, who set the entrance examinations for new students, create tests that coerce teachers in the schools at lower levels to teach English in the old way with the emphasis on reading and translation.
It is a strange thing that in the countries of southeast Asia which do not have long histories of successful public education, it is the governmental agencies that are pushing the use of the latest methods in teaching English, while in Japan the educational authorities tend to stick to the old ways and it is the great business concerns, desperate for people who can use English who are pressing for modernization.
All this leads to the fact that today there are many people like those students who first entered LIOJ and the need for schools where people are taught English with which they can communicate is greater than ever.
In LIOJ we aim to do the following:
1. We try to create the habits needed for English speech. Learning to speak is a matter of acquiring patterns of habitual action that are more akin to a physical skill such as swimming than an intellectual understanding such as mathematics. It might be said that traditional language study is like reading books about the theory of swimming while our work at LIOJ is like throwing people into a pool of water and helping them get the skills that will keep them afloat. Teaching people about English (grammar, syntax, etc.) is like studying books about swimming. Because we want to create a whole new system of habits as quickly as possible so as to make people able to use English in real situations, we spend a great deal of time on drills and we insist that our students speak "English only."
2. We undertake to give an understanding of the culture and patterns of feeling and reacting of English speaking people that will make possible an understanding not only of the vocabulary and grammar of English but also the underlying attitudes, concepts and feelings that must be known if successful communication is to take place. This we try to do through the interchange that comes both in intimate contact between teachers and students in very small classes and in our life and meals, in parties, and in the association that comes from living all in the same building 24 hours a day.
3. We want to give an outlook on the world that will make the knowledge of English not only a tool for personal communication, but also a means of participating as world citizens in the on-going life of the community of nations.
LIOJ has five main types of courses:
1. The basic course, running from 10 to 13 weeks (autumn, winter, spring) primarily for those planning to study abroad. These students attend eight 40-minute periods per day as well as participating in the social and recreational life of the school. Students can come for a portion of these longer terms if their circumstances make a longer time impossible.
2. Four-week courses for businessmen who are planning to go abroad for work or research. These students attend twelve 40-minute periods per day as well as taking part in the life of the school.
3. Two-week vacation courses in spring and summer, primarily for high school and university students who want to supplement the English they are studying at school. These courses have eight periods a day of study and many sports and recreational activities suitable to a vacation program such as picnics, beach parties, dance parties and the like.
4. Workshops for Japanese teachers of English. These are one-week sessions in the summer where half of each day is spent on the theory, methods and materials for modern language education and half on teaching English to the teachers themselves.
5. Night school and afternoon classes for the local community where LIOJ is located. These classes range from one hour per week for children to two or four hours per week for adults.
The staff of LIOJ is recruited from the United States and Canada. We aim to have a mixture of mature, professionally trained teachers who can set the teaching standards for the school, and younger men and women freshly out of American and Canadian universities who can easily establish rapport with young Japanese and inform them of the latest social and linguistic trends.
For the workshops for Japanese teachers of English a special staff, principally from the University of Southern California, is invited to come and lead the sessions.
The solid growth of the Language Institute of Japan over the last four and a half years since its founding indicates that it is meeting a real need. While we trust that some day the educational system of Japan will develop to the place where a school such as LIOJ will not be needed, we hope to be of service for some years to come.
1972
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