For last Friday's American Culture class the students were supposed to bring their ideas on the purpose of university and on the degree to which Fukuoka University is fulfilling that purpose for them, and their responses were interesting and nice (though I had to call on people randomly to answer because, being Japanese, most of the students are so shy about volunteering to talk in class).
There were practical, utilitarian answers, like university should help me get my dream job, help me get a necessary license, help me learn English more deeply, give me stimulating (not boring) tasks, and psychological or emotional or developmental answers, like university should help me build good relationships and make friends and enrich me and make me a more active and positive human being with wide knowledge about many things. Interestingly, when I asked them what percent our university had fulfilled those purposes so far (most are third year students with a handful of fourth years), the answers were higher for the more psychological purposes (80% to 100%) than for the more practical ones (30% to 70%). I suppose that's because they know that they have made good friends and learned some interesting things here so far, but have not graduated or finished their education with us yet and so don't know how much their practical purposes will be satisfied? Anyway, I wrote their answers on the board in different colored chalk (only the second time I've used the black board in our class all year, with only two more classes to go), white for practical purposes, pink for psychological ones, and yellow for in between ones. It was a fun ending to the class; I'd begun by explaining the differences between Private and Public American universities and going through parts of the University of Michigan's website so they could see what a top American public school looks like, and compare UM English Department classes with ours (ours have way less variety and less topical themes and are much fewer in number). And I really hope our students will find that Fukuoka University has fulfilled both kinds of goals for them when they graduate!
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Jefferson Peters (JP)
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December 2023
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