Education

★Do you agree with the writer Minae Mizumura (“The Fall of Japanese in the Age of English”)　when she says that”, “the dominance of English, especially with the advent of the Internet, threatens to reduce all other national languages to mere “local” languages that are not taken seriously by scholars. The education system, she argues, doesn’t spend enough time teaching Japanese.”Why? Give at least 3 reasons to support your answer.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/books/review/EParker-t.html?scp=1&sq=japan%20english%20education&st=cse　

I agree with her, because I feel my kanji skill is little lower than when I was younger.

First, I hardly write characters directly. As the computers spread, I don’t try to write characters. In general, human beings can’t remember without writing. We always write something and remember it. When I study English, especially remember vocabularies, I absolutely write them. However, I write reports by my computer and I don’t write Kanji by my hand. So, I take notes of lectures, I often can’t remember Kanji, even easy one like “適”. When I was in a junior high school, I always wrote characters, and of course I could do it without going on a dictionary. I think this reason is using computer and not writing characters.

Second, I think cell phone novels are not novel. They are organized very simple sentences. I’m going to give an example. “What are you doing?”, said I. Bang! I surprised and my left arms are starting to hurt. I cried a lot. He apologized to me again and again. Cell phone novels are like these sentences. I scarcely understand what the characters are doing. I can’t get something which we can’t see from cell phone novels.

Finally, I think people today obviously read few books. When I was in a high school, I had a ASADOKU time. It is that students must read a book for 10 minutes before starting 1st class in the morning. I think this rule epitomizes that people today doesn’t read book.