The Power of Words, A Leader’s Power to Sense, Judge, Understand, and Reason

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Since seeing Mr. Kurihara of the Harvard Kennedy School this May I’ve written several columns about him.

Since then I try to see Mr. Kurihara every time he comes back to Japan.  He is a wonderful person of broad topics, and global thinking with a sophistication based on broad readings including history, philosophy, and literature.  He is also a rare person (a true human asset) who is capable of seeing Japan from the outside, thus has the ability to see the fundamental principles of our country.  Talking with him is thrilling because he introduces me to many perspectives that are seen from fields which are not mine.  

So, when he came to my office again the other day, time flew by and we could not help but talk for nearly two hours.  As you may know from my posting, he issues a periodical titled the Cambridge Gazzette (in Japanese). He kindly commented on our meeting in this yeat's final edition that features  power of insight and words.

His writing was again surprisingly dynamic, telling stories accompanied with rich references from books and articles about his friendships, human networks, historical views, and about how Japan has truly talented individuals on the one hand, and has fickle, intelligent idiots who mislead this nation on the other.

If you closely look at the current situation of “Sad Japan” you would inevitably notice that it basically has not changed, or rather, was incapable of changing, at all.  I am truly impressed with the huge volume of Mr. Kurihara’s readings not to mention his rich connections with people as an independent individual. His talent to assimilate a large body of information into one piece of writing and his huge knowledge from many layers of culture coupled with his eagerness for investigating different topics are most impressive. The process in which he thinks about the things is admirable.

At any rate, I have to say that the comments made by leading Japanese are the strangest of all.  Admitting that they have any extent of knowledge or information, they still do not have the ability to seize upon the principles and essences of things. Instead, their words sound uninspired and do not connect to the hearts of the people. I am quite concerned and saddened by this notion recently.  These leaders always have scripts in their hands when speaking, and they fail to convey their own will or thoughts by looking directly into the eyes of their audience. What is probably true is that they hold no confidence or genuine belief in what they are conveying. They do not have a good grasp of history or for any other topic for that matter, though I assume they made decent efforts for high scores at the university entrance examinations.  I feel obliged to say that everything from their policies to their discussions and work is shallowly conceived, despite the volume of knowledge they have.  These greatly respected individuals, don’t recognize how tragic they are; they only make excuses for their inabilities to step outside of their comfort zones and truly inspire the people who look to them for solutions. 

I also agree very much with Mr. Kurihara’s citation regarding Hirofumi Ito’s English ability.  However, I tire of persistently hearing the worn out discussions on policies for English education in Japan in this global age.

Today, facial and other expressions are clearly depicted on high resolution television. So I am even more convinced when I say that I cannot recall hearing insightful words that are spoken from the bottom of one’s heart, either from legislators questioning at Congress, ministers, high officials, distinguished professors, executives of companies, or so called journalists.

I think people of Japan share this feeling with me, too.  I am truly concerned and sad about the disgracing television programs, newspaper articles that originate from kisha club, and the meaningless words uttered by television people (all in Japanese language….)
 
Words are indicators of mental power and intelligence (not knowledge).  Since we cannot see inside people’s hearts we have to depend on words to judge the depths and broadness of one’s character, and their personality.

Mr. Kurihara is one of those people who has the sort of intelligence and heart that is lacking in Japanese intellectuals today.  He doesn’t let this show to many.  So, I am looking forward to seeing him again to partake in an enjoyable intellectual battle.

 

Exciting ORF2010

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Keio University’s Shonan Fujisawa Campus (SFC) presented the Open Research Forum (ORF) 2010 on November 22nd and 23rd at the Academy Hills in Roppongi during the Mita Festival, the Festival at Keio Mita Campus.  I participated in ORF2009 last year as well.  In comparison to last year’s this year’s atmosphere and student participation in displays and performance was much better and larger.  I enjoyed interacting with the displays and listening to the student-creator’s explanations for their projects.

Coincidentally, a book by Dr. Shigeru Nakanishi, Genealogy of Heresy (in Japanese) was published, and I was inspired to read how Keio SFC produces so many unique talents, entrepreneurs, and the like.  Equally wonderful is that professors spend such a large amount of time with and for the students that they’ve structured a system for students to teach each other.  The speech by the first Dean, Dr. Hiroshi Kato, at the first commencement ceremony was stirring, with words full of love and encouragement.  I was awed to read both about the devoted faculties and the active students.

It was a privilege to see Dr. Hiroshi Kato, the leading figure in the foundation of SFC, again after a long time

At the ORF2010 I participated in the last panel on November 23rd, ‘Considering the Future of KEIO and SFC’s Direction’ with Dr. Rakutaro Kitashiro, Hiroshi Fujiwara, and hosted by Ms. Maria Yogo, a graduate of the first class of SFC currently working in Abu Dhabi.

People expressed various opinions(in Japanese), but I think we agreed to wrap up the session with the recognition of necessity for SFC to expand its international exchange with overseas students and faculties.  My point was, as always, to recommend students take a leave of absence from school in order to see, hear, and sense the outside world first hand.

At the reception after the event, I had the impression that our session was well received by many.  The challenge now is to establish and cultivate action based on our opinions. 

A Meeting With Dr. Margaret Chan, Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO)

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Dr. Margaret Chan (Ref.1) visited Tokyo after attending a meeting at the WHO Kobe Center.

For about thirty minutes 4 staff members of our Health Policy Institute who specialize in Global Health  joined me in exchanging opinions about Global Health with Dr. Chan. I’ve had many chances to see her in the past (Ref.1,2), but I was particularly thrilled to see her this time because it had been such a long while since the last time we had met. Dr. Nakatani, one of the Assistant Directors of WHO, accompanied by an official from the Ministry of Health, also joined us.

The topics of our discussion covered issues such as Global Health, the meeting at the Chatham House, the number of increasing patients suffering from chronic diseases, social determinants of health, the Davos Meeting that will be held next January, and so on.

I think this meeting with Dr. Chan, the top female leader of WHO, was an exciting experience for our young staff.
 
Providing opportunities for young professionals to interface with the leaders of the world in person is very important and meaningful.  It is a very stimulating experience, one that will encourage our young generation to set higher goals for themselves.
Asking questions such as ‘What’s the point in trying to become the best?’ is irrelevant here.  People work harder when they see higher goals.

These important interactions serve as the seeds of ASPIRATION within the hearts of youth. 

GEW2010@GRIPS, Communications in Broken English

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I reported about the Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) several times last year (Ref.1).   This year, the event is being held from November 15th to 20th and 100 countries from all over the world participate.  A variety of GEW events will be held in Japan, too.

My home institution, GRIPS, collaborated with Nikkei Newspaper to focus on Design Thinking. On Tuesday, November 16th we invited young professionals with the entrepreneural spirit who were working actively at places  such as TEDxTokyo, D-Lab Japan (in Japanese) , See-D, Soket, and Kopernik (in Japanese) to gather at GRIPS in the for a practical Workshop.  The event started at 7pm and all participants quite enjoyed it for 3 hours.

The guests included many young, hot ‘role models’ of entrepreneurs such as Mr. Kota Matsuda (in Japanese), current member of the House of Councilors and the founder of Tully’s Coffee, Japan (in Japanese), Mr. Kohei Nishiyama of Imaginative Life (cuusoo seikatsu) and Elephant Design, and Mr. Magnus Jonson. 

Other events for this weak are planned and organized by the initiatives of Impact Japan.

These activities are part of an ongoing process ? a 24hours a day, 365days a year of effort -  of connecting the activities of young innovators, of people who’s creative thoughts and actions drive society into new directions. This conference introduces them to worlds beyond Japan or their native land, expanding their networks and perspectives. Although the internet is a strong connective tool, it is just as important, if not more, to share time and space with others who pursue common values and dreams. The internet in combination with these conferences expand possibility of expanding in multiple orders, not just additional ones.

I ask you to support them.  I ask that you help to cultivate future paths for youths. They are the fundamental structure and basis for the future of our Nation.

By the way, the communication tool during this event was broken English. There were no interpreters.  Everyone did a splendid job in making themselves understood.  Yes, you can do it!  You were all truly wonderful.

As Serbian IT entrepreneur, Sinisa Rudan put it: "We are taught to take business rationally, to focus on profit. However, I suggest that if you feel a particular project is good for you ? even a non-commercial one ? take it, because it will advance your skills or expand your network, possibly bringing you other, more-profitable projects. Choose projects you love. Do your business from the heart, and business comes to you!" (Quote from GEW website, http://www.unleashingideas.org/)
 

 

 

Learning by Taking a Leave of Absence and Going Abroad: An E-mail From Ghana

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Do you remember a student I introduced on this site some time ago who took a leave of absence from school and went to Ghana?(ref.1).  The purpose of his visit was to participate in an AIESEC program in Ghana. AEISEC (Japan Office) is a student-run organization from more than 100 countries that focuses on creating youth leadership development, offering young people opportunities to be global citizens.  This particular student sent me an e-mail from Ghana. After staying in the capital, Accra, for about 10 days he described what he saw, felt, and learned as being much more than he expected.

After sending me this message, he traveled to the northern parts of Ghana and stayed there for about 3 weeks. He returned to Accra and sent me another e-mail.  I could sympathize with his long silence, since I too, while traveling in Ghana(ref.1,2), had a difficult time finding internet access, even in first-rate hotels.

His e-mail was as below:
●I spent some time at a rural village located in the northern part of Ghana and am now back to Accra.  I chose to go to this village because I wanted to learn more about Ghana, and a farming village seemed to be a good place to see the poorest part of this country.  There, I started to observe distant affects from our development aids which I would not have known had I not gone to this place in person.

●I assumed this village to be highly dependent on the aids from the NGO, since I was told that this village was poor, even by Ghana’s standards. However, they were apparently self-sufficient people.  They hunt chickens running around in the village, grow corns, yams, vegetables, beans.  They are not at all in hunger.  When they need cash, they get them by selling things to passengers on the buses that stop by their village occasionally.  Men do not seem to have particular jobs, they love to play board games, or just hang around all day.  Women, on the other hand, appeared to be busy farming, cooking, doing laundry…

●There is a primary school in this village, but since only two teachers are taking care of all 6 grades, their workload seems to be very heavy.  The fee for school seems low, but even so, some children were not attending.  Financial excuses were not so much the explanation for not attending school as the need of parents for domestic labor (mostly doing laundry).  As a foreign person, I worried about their lack of education, since I had been taught that, ‘if you don’t learn English, your perspective of the future will be very narrow, and you might end up staying in this village your whole life’. But this anxiety seemed to be pointless to them. For them, they probably figured understanding the local dialect would be sufficient for their long tradition in living a self-sustained, local life in their village.

●The most shocking of it all was to feel that the activities of the NGO that was so instrumental in my travel, was not so appreciated by the villagers. This NGO is run solely by the money of its founder.  The salaries of the local staff also come from the founder’s pocket money.

●This NGO is working to support developments through agriculture, and is currently focusing on rice planting.  Their plan is to get the villagers involved in this effort.  So, they are donating used tools, giving text books and providing uniforms to village school.

●I was impressed with the volume of the donation and support, but, strangely, no one in the village seemed to be truly thankful of the NGO.  Rather, their attitude implied a stance of ‘It is not because we are in need, but because they offer it us that we accept their aid’.  Maybe this lack of appreciation is due to the fact that this NGO is run by its owner’s pocket money and so the support is given according to the needs that he perceived from from an outsider’s viewpoint.  In other words, he gave what he wanted to give.  In a way, he did not try to understand the true needs of the villagers, or try to support them as one of the foreigners.  Actually, whenever I talked to local NGO staff or villagers and said ‘I think our NGO is doing a great thing!!!’, all I got in return were smiles, not agreement.

●Through this observation, I strongly felt the difficulty of giving support to the people with respect to the values they live with.  It is easy for us, people in developed countries, to point out the ‘needs’, as we see, of the developing countries.  The lesson I learned was that whenever we seek to build relationships with developing countries, we must always be careful not to become ‘preachy’.

●Another thing I noticed by staying in Ghana is that African people do not think ‘being different’ is a bad thing.  In Japan, if someone can not do things as you do, the most commonly heard comment is; ‘You can’t do even this?  What a shame.’  If someone is not capable of doing things that you can do, then you take it as their failure because you think they should also be good at what you do.  In short, we see what is different from ourselves as being not good. However, during my stay, the Africans were very kind to me.  They always tried to find cool tree shade for me, and cared much about my appetite.  ‘You are Japanese, you come from where food and climate are so different’, they said, and treated me, a foreigner, with respect to the differences that I hold.  They never made me feel bad because of I was different from them.

●So, as for the ability to accept different values, and the ability to build relationship with respect to those differences, I came to think that Japanese is far behind African people.

I was happy that this student sent me such a long e-mail to share his thoughts with me.  Although I trust that many ODAs are aware of such issues and they take them into considerations before putting their plans into actions, there is still much to be done in terms of understanding the value of local people, and the way they feel about our aid.

Regarding the activities of ODA, Dr. Toshiharu Yamamoto provides lots of good information and also points out many local issues in his blog.  Here, I found many observations similar to the student. In my mind, what really counts is whether or not you have been to the country, whether you have a sense of that place, and whether you will take actions.  It is by these measures that you will be judged in the future.

Going to the area and having first hand experience during early stages of your life, such as this student did, can be very helpful in the process of building your career.  Of course, you could choose to go through tons of research before you go and I wouldn’t deny the importance of ‘careful planning before taking actions’, but quite often, excessive prudence ends in inaction ? that is, with nothing being done.  It seems to me that the power of putting things into action, as this student demonstrated, is hopelessly lacking in Japan today.

There is more value than you think in lessons you gain through actions, and I recommend actions particularly to the young generation.  Understanding the local situation by being on the site and having your senses refined is not something you acquire overnight.  I am confident that this student will continue to grow, because through this experience the way he sees the world has changed, his point of view has become much broader, and without doubt this will work positively in his search for his dreams and in his efforts toward his goals.

A week after his return to Ghana, this student sent me an e-mail saying, “In just one week I came to feel that I became friends with so many people, that I am connected, and the world is going to change.  I am filled with so much wonder.”

With telecommunication technology ?e-mails, cell phones, and websites ? you can sense the powerful connectivity.  Indeed, today, this world is one world.

‘Book Return’ Project: Let’s Support Learning For All

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I assume that you remember my postings on ‘Learning for All’ (Ref.1).   Mr. Matsuda and his colleagues are working hard every day.

I think this activity will become one of the major movements for creating a positive cycle of change in Japan for the future.  If you look at Teach for America’s 22 years of history  in the United States, it is quite clear that the outcomes stemming from it are extraordinary.

Raising funds to support Teach for All is a very difficult task.  Hard work does not necessarily mean enough funding.

Because of this, Mr. Matsuda and his colleagues have been trying to think of ways to lessen the expenses. One idea is the Book Return Project  (in Japanese).  This project is basically about recycling used books.  As you see at their web site (in Japanese), the books can be of any category.  If you have more then 5 books to give, the Yamato Transport will come to your place, pick them up and will deliver them to the Project collect.  All you need to do is fill in the form and call the organizer.
 
What a beautiful idea this is to support the future of less priveledged children.

Such small things accumulated become a forceful power in making children’s future bright.

Here is my message of support to Learning For All:
By teaching, you teach yourself.
Education for poor youths, by youths.
Through this youths will grow to become true leaders.

Learning For All – Anyone can participate in this fantastic project. By participating you are taking part in that which will trigger a positive cycle for the future by educating children and nurturing youths to become leaders.

From Dhaka ? The Dragon Cherry Blossom’s Great Achievement!

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Very late yesterday evening I received an e-mail from Mr. Saisyo (Ref.1). If you recall, he is the founder of the Bangladesh Dragon Cherry Blossoms (in Japanese) (Ref.1). With the partnership of the Grameen Foundation, Dragon Cherry Blossoms help impoverished Bangladesh high school students try for the area’s top university, Dhaka University. Mr, Saisyo and his colleagues help prepare the students for the entrance exam, and according to his email, he’s had an amazing experience.

Mr. Saisyo’s email read:  “We are receiving phone calls from the villagers like mad.  Most of the calls are to tell us how surprised they are of the successes we’ve had and to shower us with congratulations!!!  It seems that the whole village has been thrown into a whirl of excitement.

“The entrance exam was for the B course (humanity) at Dhaka University. 36,000 students took the exam and 3,000 passed.  From Dragon Cherry Blossoms, 13 students sat the exam, and 1 student, Boran Udin Heral, passed and scored in 1276th place.

“A student at a top-ranked high school passed at 2300th, and a student of an elite prep school passed at 1500th.  Our Heral, from our village, passed at the score of 1276th!  This is a huge accomplishment!

“13 students took the exam and 1 student passed from our Dragon organization.
1000 students took the exam and 50 students passed from a major prep school called UAC.
2000 students took the exam and 180 students passed from a major prep school called UCC.
This shows how well our students competed against the major prep schools.

“Two more entrance exams are scheduled at Dhaka University;
C course (November 26th)
D course (December 3rd)
Dragon students will challenge both!

‘Heral proved that nothing in the world is impossible.  He will without doubt become a role model for the village children next year, and eventually a thousand and then ten thousands students will follow.

‘Heral is the first case in Bangladesh to have passed a Dhaka University entrance exam through e-education study!  Mahin, my partner, exclaimed,  ‘E-education will change human life!!!!’”.

Mr. Saisyo explains the intense academic competition in Bangladesh as follows:

“I talked with the local university student team and a reporter from a major newspaper who is specializing in education issues.  In Bangladesh, I learned,
730,000 students take the High School Certificate (HSC) exams.
530,000 students pass the HSC and go on to sit University entrance exams.
Out of those 530,000, 290,000 of the students receive an A rank .
But Universities only have the capacity for 107,000 students.

“Among these 107,000 seats, 70,000 are offered by private universities  Students from farming village can not afford to pay the high tuition of private universities.

“ With these facts I have come to understand why it is that so many talented students compete for the very limited seats at National Universities.”

It was just two years ago when Mr. Saisyo came to my office for advice. Since then he’s taken a leave of absence from Waseda University for two years, and endured many challenges and struggles.  And today, he is celebrating a true accomplishment and a tremendous success.

By putting his passion to work, Mr. Saisyo proved that nothing is impossible in this world.

So, you see, youths today are not as bad of a place as you think.

The Job Fair in Boston:　An e-mail from a local observer

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On October 20th I reported about the job fair in Boston for Japanese companies to recruit bilingual (English and Japanese) young professionals.

In this regard, I received an e-mail from someone who had been at the Forum both this year and last year. The person said this year’s experience was completely different from last year’s.

The person wrote the following: “I was astonished. By just strolling along the streets of Boston, I felt that something was different from last year.

“I thought that this Job Forum was a U.S.-Japan Career Forum, focused on English-Japanese bilingual professionals. But, throughout the city I saw mostly Chinese and Korean people carrying plastic bags distributed at the Job Forum.  I even saw some Western people, which made me think that this Job Forum has now become a place for Japanese enterprises to recruit professionals from all over the world.  I was told that these non-Japanese people do not necessarily speak Japanese.
 
“I had an opportunity to listen to a Japanese person who had interviewed with some companies. This person said, ‘there was a time when it seemed that I was the only Japanese in the interviewees’ lines.’  Given this information, I think that current companies are shifting their recruitment strategy; from limiting to Japanese students studying abroad, to accepting any good talents regardless of their nationalities.

“I also talked with one of the people in charge of recruiting the students. When I asked what was his/her impression of this year’s Job Forum was, the person replied that the overall preference was changing from hiring Japanese to hiring non-Japanese.

“Apparently going abroad and broadening one’s views is not enough any more.  Companies are seeking people who are capable of enhancing ‘their own unique talents’, and this trend is getting stronger every year. Which means, it seems to me, that the key word is probably not ‘quantity’ but ‘quality’.  Recent Japanese media seem to be concerned only about the number of students studying abroad, but we have to understand that ‘the issue is not about numbers but about what students do with their life after going abroad.”

The observations from this individual are very important and valuable information to us.  However, though this impression is based on the Job Forum itself, we also have to consider extending those observations outward toissues existing in Japan regarding conventional Japanese employment and working style.

In Japan, University of Tokyo is regarded as the top university. But let’s admit that the students are selected by just one entrance examination: the T-scores.  What we should really care about is how to help students discover their potentials, and nurture their unique talents while they are within the university to become true assets of our society. In other words, we must be able to distinguish between between the person who ends in Todai, with the person who starts from Todai. (in Japanese)

Furthermore, we must admit that it is not good to linger on the conventional habits of companies providing informal employment offerings exclusively to students in the 3rd year of college, or of limiting recruitment to newly graduated students only.  Also, we need to closely monitor how the companies, especially the top ones, treat those bilingual talents after they are hired.

Students and youth, I want you to know that confining yourself within Japan will not broaden your perspectives for your future.  Why not collect your courage and take a leave of absence from school (Ref.1, 2). Go abroad for a while. Explore for even a few months. By doing so, there is a good chance for tapping new potential and talent within you. Taking time to travel more extensively -  maybe for about the length of a year – to broaden your perspective and refine who your are is so important.

Youths’ futures lay ahead of them.  I don’t see any promising future in any Society or Nation that is not willing to carefully and patiently nurture its younger generation.  Elders must encourage and support youth. They must refrain from oppressing their future by getting in their way.  There are no excuses for interrupting a young person’s potential. That you are older or wiser should only be an excuse to withhold your meddling and to support from a distance by encouraging exploration of opportunities.

The See-D and D-lab Activities Continue

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Previously, I introduced the event called ‘Technologies Appropriate to Local Needs Will Save the World’ . It was held in July by the students’ initiatives of D-Lab at MIT and Kopernik, (in Japanese).

Their activities later developed into sending students to East Timor in order for them to see the place firsthand -  to feel the situation, identify the issues, search for solutions, and craft plans for possible projects.  The results of their observations and analyses were displayed and presented at GRIPS, my home institution, on October 22nd.

Participants commonly reacted with surprise to experiences in East Timor.  Much of this reaction was reflected in their work. They described the proposed projects with strong emotion ? with a passionate drive to introduce solutions to the issues they observed.

To have a discussion about their plans was part of their objectives and was also included in this event. Together, with the participation of commentators and Professor Yonekura of Hitotsubashi University (Ref.1), an avid supporter of this sort of activity, triggered not only great excitement, but also materialized great learning opportunities to all who participated.

A review  of this gathering is available at Kopernik, and ‘here’ (in Japanese) and ‘here’ (in Japanese)

Like the lively discussion that took place at this conference, I advocate for analyzing ideas in a serious but positive manner. Where there is room for support or opinion do so cautiously. Give constructive criticism that encourages the students to further think about the problems and tasks at hand. Refrain from merely providing the solution, especially since you don’t know if different sorts of creative solutions will emerge from those students, youth, or young professionals.  Provide support, but without too much meddling.  And most importantly, never discourage the youth. If you do so, the only service you will provide is to chill their passion. Encourage youth by helping them see for themselves the world around them. Be silent but strong for them, and remember that our future lies in their hands.

As for the young individuals you gathered in the conference room to discuss East Timor, each and every one filled to the rim with passion for what they spoke about. We need this sort of energy to be felt more.

 

Hot Youths Helping Themselves to Create Careers

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As I have written on many occasions, today’s Japanese youth is not in as bad of a place as you think (Ref.1). They are just perceiving the world differently from conventional Japanese views, and therefore are taking courses of action that diverge from traditional paths.

I hope you remember Mr. Saisyo (in Japanese), a Waseda University student who took leave of absence from school and founded the ‘Dragon Cherry Blossoms E-education’ in collaboration with Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. I have great respect for his work and so I’ve written about his story and his progress in many different entries (Ref.1, 2). 

After being on ‘sabbatical’ for two years, he has returned to school. To hold his place, Waseda charged him 100,000 yen (1,200 dollars) for each year of absence.  I do not agree with this policy. It seems to me the University should encourage such experience by reducing the tuition. Still, Mr. Saisyo’s friend, Mr. Miyoshi (in Japanese), is now traveling around the world to discover his passion for the thing he really wants to do in his life.

I spoke with Mr. Saisyo soon after he returned to Japan. I listened to the difficulties he faced, learned of all the plans he worked on, and discovered how though his work was very challenging, the tasks were extremely rewarding. He also told me that after spending 2 years in Bangladesh, he is able to see that the focus and seriousness between the teachers and the students at Waseda is severely lacking.

Recently, I introduced another group, Mr. Matsuda  (in Japanese) (Ref.1) of ‘Learning For All’  (in Japanese) and Ms. Muto, a proxy for Mr. Fukazawa, the secretary-general, to speak at a 2 hour meeting hosted by the National Institute for Educational Policy Research of MEXT (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology).

 They spoke about a new organization that will appear in Japan soon. ‘Learning For All’ is a new project in Japan that is a prerequisite to associate with ‘Teach for America’, a highly respected organization  amongst American college graduates of which I wrote about 2 years ago.  Teach for America is a body of outstanding college graduates from all different backgrounds. They commit to two years of teaching in urban and rural public schools of underprivileged communities of USA, abecoming leaders and broadening opportunity for themselves as well as for the students they teach.  Still in it’s infancy, Mr. Matsuda and his colleagues plan to test and prepare the details and operations of ‘Learning for All’ for two years before making ‘it a public opportunity in Japan.

In the beginning of the meeting, the officers at MEXT were curious about many things. In particular, they wanted to know why Mr. Matsuda began such a project and how it could be funded.  But as they listened to Mr. Matsuda, they gradually understood his passion and the deep implications such an organization could have on the Japanese youth and education.  I felt this visit very worthwhile.  Thank you all for your time and commitment.

As adults, it is our responsibility to help youth with dreams and passion explore as many paths as possible and to alleviate whatever obstacles might be in their way  They will benefit from our helpful guidance, but to block their way is a sin.  Big cheers to all the youth!!  I ask you all to please join me in supporting them in becoming diverse and impassioned. . They are our only future.