When I was at senior high school I decided to become a teacher.
My Dream
When I was at senior high school, I decided to become a teacher, but the reason must seem very strange.
My history teacher was not a human being. He was a machine in humane shape. He wrote meaningless words on a blackboard automatically and told things without content. I didn’t listen to his lecture because it was boring. I believed (and still believe) that history was the most interesting of all the subjects I had at school. But why could his lecture make me so completely fed up? I thought I could teach history better than him. This belief made me a history teacher.
However, when I became a teacher I had to face up the severe reality. Of course I was interested in history and my belief that history was the most intriguing subject hadn’t changed. But students didn’t show any interest in it. Some students were just sitting in my class reluctantly; otherwise, they couldn’t have finished school. Their attitude to my class discouraged me.
I taught Japanese at schools in Australia and Canada. One of the things which impressed me was this: when I was in Canada I went to elementary school as an assistant Japanese teacher. There I found pictures of students in old times displayed on the wall. Some graduates might go to the school occasionally to recollect old times and they would find they are still there!
My dream school will be a place where teachers can teach their subject freely. They talk to their students from heart (not like a machine), and they raise good citizens who always think about politics, economy, peace keeping, welfare and so on and who try to make our world better.
It will be also a place where students can enjoy their school life, where graduates receive a hearty welcome, and where they can look back on their old days longingly when they come back to school.