Messages from others can change your life

Having worked as a high school teacher in my younger days, I have always wanted to teach high school students.

It was over a decade ago. When I told someone that I wanted to teach English to high school students, they asked me if it was for entrance exams or for conversational English.

When I replied that it was neither, but rather focused on reading and writing global English, the person fell silent.

Their eyes spoke volumes, suggesting that the very idea of teaching high school students—who are already so busy—anything other than exam preparation or conversation was absurd, and that such a thing could never be accepted by society.

Exposed to that gaze, I felt discouraged back then, thinking, 'They're right, it wouldn't be accepted by society.'

However, I believe that both I and 'society' have changed significantly over the past ten-plus years.

First, regarding myself, I have completed the 'Mind and Language' model of grammar and translation that I have spent most of my life working on, and since then, I have continued to create texts and teaching materials to apply that theory and model in educational settings.

My educational practice at the Simul Academy has spanned over 20 years, and I have achieved a certain level of success.

What makes me so different now from who I was ten years ago is that, having gone through these experiences, I have finally been able to gain confidence in myself as an educator.

On the other hand, I think 'society' has also changed over these past ten-plus years.

For one thing, the era of the '100-year life' has truly arrived. According to Lynda Gratton's 'The 100-Year Life,' there is a 50% probability that a Japanese person born in 2007 will live to be 107. In other words, the majority of today's high school students will live to be over 100.

The idea that English learning for high school students is synonymous with entrance exam preparation might be 'common sense' in this day and age, but in reality, it is 'nonsense' for the new era. In 50 years, the current school system and corporate organizations will almost certainly have collapsed.

By that time, today's high school students will be in their 60s. They will still be only halfway through their lives. In such an era of upheaval, how much meaning will high school entrance exam English really have?

Everyone is starting to notice this contradiction. High school students, who are the ones directly affected, must be aware of it as well.

It is just that, while they may be aware of it, they perhaps lack the confidence to say so definitively. This is because many of the adults around them are still bound by the old 'common sense of society.'

As Lynda Gratton says, models from the past are no longer useful in the coming era. And it can be said that today's high school students have far too few 'role models' (people who serve as examples of how to live) around them.

That is precisely why I believe my duty is to send a clear message to them as much as possible: 'Entrance exam English and conversational English do not hold much meaning for your long lives. What is important for you is to continue making efforts to acquire the power of real language—the power of both Japanese and English. That will become the source of your human strength and the foundation that will support your future life.'

After I turned 50, I was able to meet Dr. Shigeaki Hinohara, who was in his late 80s at the time, and through that, I was able to decide that I would continue working until at least 90 and keep growing as long as I am alive.

Messages from others can change your life.

My life was changed by a message from Dr. Hinohara. That is why I now hope to change someone else's life with my message.