All I needed to know, I learned in kindergarten (from a couple of sociopaths)

I make a lot of jokes and exaggerate a lot for comedic effect in my blog, but I swear everything that follows is true.  Names have been changed to protect the Merican (from being sued).

Prior to moving to Osaka, I spent my time hunting the elusive foreigner-friendly job.  Having never applied for a "real" job outside of Japan, I have absolutely no basis for comparison, but there are a great many tools for the ex-pat job-hunter in Japan.  There are a couple websites to facilitate the search, though the sheer volume of competition for a single position (sometimes up to 300 applicants) can be a bit offputting.

I got a few interviews from a couple of different places, but there was one that captured my attention as an educator: an interview with an international preschool/kindergarten.  Finally!  The chance to follow my calling and do something I've always wanted to do: make money.

The interview was held at the school.  I showed up at the prescribed date and time just behind some Australian dude.  We had a chance to chat prior to the interview and he told me that he, like myself, had just gotten married.  And, unlike mine, his wife was pregnant.  It became quite clear to me that a lot was riding on this interview for both of us, and it was my duty to make sure that his child would be born in a barn.

While waiting for the interview to start, the other interviewee and I sat back and watched a lesson being taught by an Australian dude named "Keith."  The other foreign teacher at the school, "Derrick," walked by and gave us interviewees the slightest recognition in the form of a passing "hello."

The kids were smart.  Really smart.  As in, learning-math-in-a-second-language smart.  And I'm not saying that just because they're Japanese.  These kids seemed to have a hard work ethic and seemed to, even at three years of age, have an almost preternatural understanding of math.  Okay, yeah, they were Japanese.  But they were also really, really cute and sweet.  Unlike the little hellbastards I had been teaching at my last job, these kids seemed to actually want to be there and learn something.  It was almost like they had loving parents that actually cared about them or something.

Then I remembered that I wasn't in downtown Tokyo and realized that actually, yes, that was the case.

The interview was short.  Very short, actually.  If I were a smarter person, I probably would have noticed that it was too short.  It was almost as if they just picked the first guy they interviewed...

Days later, I got the call telling me that I got the job.

"Finally!"  I thought to myself.  "My hard work and sacrifice has paid off and I got exactly what I wanted: a steady source of income, a fun job, and some guy I just met's newborn is going to be drinking puddle water instead of baby formula!"

And then, the first day came.

The school was at the other end of a two hour commute, meaning I had to get up at 6AM every morning and be in bed by 11:30PM every night.  It was a sacrifice I was willing to make, and rarely have I ever been able to say that.  Christ, I couldn't get up at 10AM for doctor's visits prior to surgery on my toe.  I was barely able to peel the covers off at 9AM to go pick up my wife's engagement ring, and made damn sure she thanked me for it afterward, and on many occasions since.  But for these kids, I was willing to do it.

Like most, these kids were shy in front of their new teacher.  Fortunately, Keith was still going to be around for the next week-and-a-half, and I was just going to be observing for the first couple of days.  Enough time to get a handle on things and get to know the kids before the passing of the dry-erase marker.  Everything seemed to be going well during morning playtime until...

"Pass me the ball Hayato, you fucking faggot."

Um... that was Derrick.  And did he just call a two-year-old a "fucking faggot?"  I dismissed it as the senior foreign teacher having a bad morning until Keith joined us.

"Morning, you little shits.  So Merican, this is Sayako.  She can be a real cunt sometimes.  He's Ikuto, but we call him Ikutard because he's a bit of a fucking idiot.  That's Ryu over there.  That's Mari, she's always fucking drunk.  Here, check this out: Mari, come over here!"

A four-year-old girl ambled toward us, wide-eyed and looking like a pixie with a smirk permanently etched across her petite face, staring up at her teacher.

"How many beers did you have last night?" Keith said, brandishing a shit-eating grin.

"Um..."

"How many beers did you drink?"

"Five."

"And how many shots did you take?"

"Five."

"Alright, get lost."

I watched in silent horror as these kids as young as 18 months endured this withering volley of verbal abuse until the first lesson.  And through the first lesson.  And through lunch.

"Keith-teacher?  I need to go to the bathroom." said Maki, one of Keith's students.

Keith didn't miss a beat before snapping back at her.  "Are you going tell me every tiny detail of your life?  Are you breathing right now?  Hm?  Go to the bathroom."

The boss' mother was an assistant at school, and not much better.  Other than chain-smoking around the children, she changed diapers, helped feed the youngest kids, and screamed at them for not eating quickly enough.  I later learned that she also locked kids in the bathroom and turned off the lights when they behaved "badly."

Again, let me restate that these were the sweetest, nicest, smartest kids I've ever had the pleasure of working in my fifteen years of teaching both professionally and as a volunteer both in the US and Japan.

"Can I get a tissue?" said my new favorite kid, Megumi.

"No, but you can shut up" said Derrick instinctively.

That one stung.  Megumi looked up at her teacher, tiny lips trembling and sunk in front of him, shoulders down.  English wasn't her first language, but she had enough exposure to the language to speak it quite well for a three-year-old.  She knew what that meant.  Derrick had a good laugh as he related his misfortune of having a kid understand his latest verbal barrage to Keith a few minutes later.

There's no need to list absolutely everything that happened.  Simply stating that a hailstorm of silent rage bombarded the kids throughout the day, often with either of the two foreign teachers antagonizing the kids to the verge of tears... or straight into them.  The most outstanding example was when, during the after-school playtime, was running a game of Uno.  Everyone seemed to be having a good time and the after-school games had been running smoothly.  Right up until Hayato won.

"You lose, Hayato," said Keith.

Hayato looked up at Keith, bewildered.

"You didn't say 'uno,' that means you lose."

"But..."

"Did you say Uno?  No, you didn't.  You lose," said Keith, continuing an entirely uncalled-for tirade.

Confusion turned to a brief flash of anger and then defeat as tears began to well up in the child's eyes as he slumped forward, clutching his face in his tiny quaking hands.

"Okay, okay, fine.  You win.  You win, Hayato!  Okay?  Why are you acting like such a baby?  You win.  Even though everyone I've ever played with knows you lose if you don't say 'uno.'"

Crisis averted.  And so ended day one.

Day two was more of the same.  Verbal and emotional attacks on fragile kids that made the mother in "A Child Called It" look like Maude Flanders.  It was difficult keeping my cool Keith and Derrick told tales of parents threatening to pull their kids from the school and of the boss cutting pay for the foreign teachers and telling them that the school was in financial trouble the day before buying a 32" plasma TV for his mom to watch all day in the teacher's lounge.

All while a three-year-old girl worked on a puzzle right in front of us.  After her mom picked her up, I turned to Keith.

"Mark my words, one of these days, one of those kids is going to say 'fuck' and you're going to have to answer for it," I said, half-jokingly.

"Nah," said Keith.  "They seem to know what it means, but they don't ever repeat it.  It's like they know it's bad and they shouldn't say it."

Great, I thought.  A bunch of kindergartners have more sense than my co-workers.

It would have been an amazing comedic callback if it were actually funny when Kanako, a four-year-old girl said "faggot" during a game of memory later that day.

But the last straw came at the very end of the second day, as Derrick and I sat in the kids room during after-school playtime.  Ryu darted out of a child-sized plastic playhouse to grab something that Derrick had stolen from him and dropped on the ground.  As Ryu turned to crawl back into the playhouse, he smacked his noggin against the door-frame.

I had never heard Derrick laugh so hard.

Keith came into the room a few seconds later and I couldn't believe what he asked.

"What happened?  Did he hurt himself?"

Derrick nodded, still chuckling a bit, and Keith joined him.

Clearly, this was not the first time this happened.

I went home that night defeated, hurt, and exhausted..  My dance card was filled with tending to crying children after these two dicks fed off of each other's misanthropy.  I had spent the entirety of day two running damage control as these two assholes ran wild like wolves in a chicken coop. 

Or like sociopaths in a kindergarten.

I went home that night and spilled the story to my wife and father-in-law.  They both said I should quit, but I thought that, since I had just another four or five months until graduate school started in the States, I could hang in there for that long.  By the next morning, I had had a change of heart.

Waking up again at 6AM, I awoke and trudged downstairs.  I brushed my teeth and mulled over the events of the past 48 hours.

It was altogether too much.

Terrible pay, long commute, constant verbal and emotional abuse to the children, six-day weeks, and barely any time left in the day to spend with my wife.  It didn't add up.  I couldn't do this for four more months.  I couldn't do it for another day.  As I walked to the station, I stopped and considered if this is really a system I wanted any part of.  They weren't willing to clean up their act when parents started complaining, so the definitely wouldn't listen to some guy who had just been there 2 days.

I hovered in indecision in the cold morning air just a second longer before, turning my back sharply from the station, I walked back home and sent my letter of resignation.

I'm really sorry that this installment wasn't funny.  In fact, it was a huge downer.  If anyone read through all that, I'm sure you're probably waiting for the punchline.  Unfortunately, for this story, there is none.  But for your grit and determination displayed in hanging in there to the end, here's a picture of Japanese Rob Schneider.

 

Japanese Rob Schneider says: "I'm only marginally more funny than child abuse!"