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School's closure in Japan exposes tough times for foreign teachers
Nova, the largest language school, declared bankruptcy last week.
By Christopher Johnson | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitorfrom the October 30, 2007 edition
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Tokyo - Twenty years ago, native English speakers in Japan used to joke that they could make $100 an hour as an ESL teacher because they speak "a" language.
These days, teachers feel as if the joke is on them. Some 4,000 foreign teachers are without jobs and are owed $4,000 in back pay after Japan's largest school chain, Nova Corp., closed its 900 schools last week, declared bankruptcy, and failed to pay refunds to its 400,000 students.
The collapse of Nova might not just be Japan's largest consumer story this year. Foreign embassies, Qantas Airlines, and local unions and media are rallying behind students and teachers, who Sunday night set up a "Nova Relief Fund" to help hundreds evicted on short notice from apartments supplied by Nova. "We just need to think about the 1,300 Australians who are suddenly finding themselves out on the street there in Japan," said Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer.
Nova's demise is also illuminating Japan's worsening reputation for its dealings with thousands of skilled Western workers who, despite speaking Japanese and raising Japanese children, are denied voting rights, tenure at universities, promotions, and contracts beyond one-year agreements with few benefits.
An Industry Ministry survey in 2002 listed 15,800 foreign teachers and about 1 million students at private language schools such as Nova. Thousands more teach privately via networking sites such as findateacher.com, and at most public schools, with 3,800 in Tokyo alone.
"We're being treated like cheap migrant labor down in the southern United States," says Paul Baca, a young Canadian. One of thousands of "perma-temps," he has been going from job to job over the past decade. "About 99 percent of us have university degrees.... [W]e're not treated like skilled workers in other countries."
Ryan Hills quit his $18-an-hour insurance job in Indiana to fly to Tokyo in June in hopes of earning ¥260,000 (about $2,300) a month at Nova. "My flight landed, and the next day I heard about Nova on the news," says Mr. Hills. "I wanted to study Japanese language and culture but I've been too busy battling landlords and management at work."
He and his roommates from England and New Zealand were evicted after Nova didn't pay rent already deducted from their salaries. With only ¥9,000 left, he's hoping to receive an emergency loan offered by the US Embassy. "Ramen noodles are not that filling after a few days. The last job I applied for had 900 applicants. But I don't want to leave Japan. I cut off everything at home, for nothing."
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