Students at a posh girls high school in Kyoto were left bewildered when their English lesson went off-script in a big way on Thursday during a grammar lesson. The lesson was intended to begin with light ‘n’ fluffy story reading about a fireworks event held in 1988 to mark the 750th anniversary of Berlin, but their assistant language teacher turned it into an intense history lesson on the divided nature of the city.
“At one point, the Japanese teacher sternly told him to be quiet as she needed to focus on exam-related grammar. But Mr McDonnell went off at her. He said, ‘How dare you? I’m teaching about the world, and you’re concerned about some passive-voice past tense. These kids don’t even know why there are two Koreas. They’d probably believe that Rudolph Hess died from natural causes.’ ”
This is how one slightly unattractive, yet reasonably bright student (who’ll probably end up in politics) explained how Assistant Language Teacher Cooper McDonnell behaved during a recent English class at her prestigious private school. “He drew an astonishingly accurate and detailed map of Berlin, and then talked about Spandau Prison, Checkpoint Charlie, and the blockade,” she added. “But he didn’t stop there. He got into stuff like the practical cooperation involving the sewerage system and Friedrichstaff Station. Then he told us all to watch one of the worst sequels ever, Wild Geese 2, for homework.”
Responding immediately to our enquiries, McDonnell made his dissatisfaction with the curriculum clear. “There’s so much content when it comes to Berlin, but we were told to teach about some Japanese guy uniting the city by curating a propaganda fireworks event in the late 80s,” said the thinly-haired Englishman. “What next? We all join hands and sing that Scorpions soft-rock song? No way! I played The Sex Pistols’ “Holidays In The Sun” in a pre-emptive strike against that hippy bollocks.”
Teacher Aneni Kokuhaku had no way to respond when she found that her meticulously planned lesson was being highjacked by her assistant. “Traditional classroom hierarchy places me way, way above an assistant language teacher,” said the A-cupped veteran. “McDonnell really ought to know his place, and he ought to remember that the sole purpose that we’re here is for test prepping rather than practical language acquisition. The fact that none of us give him a souvenir nibbly when we come back from vacation should give him an idea of where he stands.”
McDonnell, a 46 year old West Midlander who still goes out in Roppongi, took over the 50 minute class in order to LARP as a history professor, going so far as to wear an old tweed blazer and eat some kind of foul-smelling sandwich prior to the class. School Principal Wazato Seki has chosen not to discipline McDonnell, but offered his comments on the situation during a one-to-one interview with me. “The clothes, the sandwich, the Sex Pistols song; it’s like he’s heading toward an ideological clash which won’t benefit the class in the long run,” he said.
“And while I admire McDonnell’s initiative, he needs to understand why the Berlin story featured a Japanese pyrotechnician. You see, when we can shoehorn a Japanese angle… err… a good Japanese angle… into an international story, we’ll do it unapologetically.
“You have to remember a few key historic matters. The first person on the moon was a Yank. The first person to conquer Everest was a Kiwi. The first person to reach the South Pole was a Norwegian. What first does Japan have? Sure – the first person to draw an octopus molesting a schoolgirl was Japanese. We don’t celebrate that. Well… not in international forums.”
“Ok – we’ve done some stuff with cars, toilets, and entertainment systems,” continued Seki, perhaps eager to steer the topic away from tentacle porn. “But, these days nobody gives a rat’s clacker about the Sony Walkman or automated multistory carparks. The tamagotchi didn’t exactly set the world on fire, did it. And the mini-disc was a wet fart of an idea, flicked away by the Internet.
“We’ll continue to include feel-good stories such as how a Japanese woman saved an African village with rice balls, or how a Japanese team won an international goat racing tournament because they had a deep bond and exceptional teamwork, and McDonnell can choose to teach this feel-good propaganda or piss off home. We have to wedge this stuff into the curriculum, and melon heads like McDonnell shouldn’t make light of it.”
