Eikaiwa: Is it "teaching or torture?"

[Taro Toporific]

Who knows if it is teaching or torture?
review--I WOULDN'T WANT ANYBODY TO KNOW: Native English Teaching in Japan, edited by Eva P. Bueno & Terry Caesar. JPGS Press, 2004, 252 pp., 2,500 yen, $25.00 (paper).
The Japan Times: Sept. 26, 2004
....in this system form takes priority over meaningful communication, causing "another essential mechanism" of language learning to be subverted, "that mechanism being the negotiation of meaning."
....it is the instructors who are often the real victims of this system. Things can get very bad out there, leading to mind-distorting levels of despair. In one instance, one of the writers' colleagues describes a dream in which "she was yelling at a student, 'Blink if you understand me!' "We all knew where she was. It was not a pretty place. We all lived there."....classes of "dead and expressionless" faces....
..... "I Wouldn't Want Anybody to Know" turns out in fact, to be just what you do need to know as an untested, working, or prospective teacher in Japan, or indeed as any kind of newcomer expecting to function within an English-language milieu here.