Dai San Kai Asa no Dokusho Kyouiku Kenkyu Taikai Zenkoku Taikai, or The Third National Conference to Study Morning Read in Education, was planned and held by two groups, both started by an Ishikawa High School social studies teacher Shouji Kazuyuki.
A very quiet, or silent, movement is gathering heat and spreading among schools in Japan. It is called "asa no dokusho" meaning "reading books in the morning." Some people make the phrase shorter like "asa dokusho" or "asadoku." The students and the teachers read their favorite books just for ten minutes during early hours of the school day. So what? Many people think of this activity as a key, or the key, to save Japanese schools, many of which are looking for a way out of their troubles. Let's see why it is a big deal.
Dai San Kai Asa no Dokusho Kyouiku Kenkyu Taikai Zenkoku Taikai, or The Third National Conference to Study Morning Read in Education, was planned and held by two groups, both started by an Ishikawa High School social studies teacher Shouji Kazuyuki.
Most of the teachers wanted the students just to sit still and keep on reading, but some didn't. They went out of the school and started reading aloud to children. They formed a group called Ekute Moa, or Ecoutez Moi. It's a French phrase meaning "listen to me." Using a French phrase, except for the names of food and cosmetics, is unusual for Japanese high-schoolers. It may be a sign of how much they had learned from books.
The movements developed into the community group Ishikawa Bunka Forum. (Bunka means "culture.") Shouji managed to make newspapers report the activities. Ishikawa High started receiving visitors: teachers, librarians and professors from many other towns, cities and prefectures. They came to watch the practice. Some of them, with Ishikawa teachers, formed another group called Asa no Dokusho Network Fukushima. The Forum and the Network, led by Shouji who was then nicknamed as bulldozer, started a nation-wide meeting in 1998. This year, many local boards of education, foundations and companies helped the conference. (The Funabashi teachers, meanwhile, had formed a different group with teachers around Tokyo, called Asa no Dokusho Jissen Kenkyukai [Society on Study and Practice of Morning Read].)
In the morning of 18 August, before the Conference, a seminar on how to start a community reading room was held in a hotel meeting room. The Conference started after lunch. Following the keynote lecture by a publisher and former librarian, four teachers spoke what they were doing on reading, and one professor gave comments. Friendly discussion spread and continued during the dinner party and into the late evening.
The second day started with a short introduction to Ishikawa Machi by Secretary of Ishikawa Town Government.
Tanemura Eiko, an assistant professor at Kagoshima Two-Year College, gave a lecture on teaching life and death. A former librarian and cancer-patient, she showed a video about her own experience of living with the disease and reading to herself and children. After that she spoke about the experience, with more details, and writing a book. She finished the lecture with a booktalk.
Just before lunch, the audience laughed and cried, listening to Fukushima folktales told by two storytellers.
The afternoon sessions were held in three separate rooms. They discussed how to start 10-minute read, to develop community reading activities and to have SSR in the time slot of the new school subject called "whole learning."
Shouji, who also works on programs like Newspaper in Education, Education for International Understanding, etc., personally said to me that his various activities will be joined somehow in the future.
Japan used to have a highly literate culture, which meant schools didn't have much to do with books and libraries. After World War II, the American military people who took care of the new Japanese democracy ordered the government to have a librarian at each school. They didn't set the time limit, because of poverty and confusion in the society then. During the 1960's, Japan had a rapid economic growths, but most schools didn't yet have librarians. It was all right then because the people still loved reading and every town had a small bookstore and a commercial library which lent entertainment novels and comic books cheaply. But in the age of television that followed, the literate culture started to fade away. Leisure and learning became separate. The change might be a cause of the classroom disorder, teenage crime and child suicide which are now in the newspaper headlines almost every day.
Teachers have found out that many schools have managed to restore order and silence in the classrooms by morning read. The students have found out that reading has a calming effect and that they can read a lot in just ten minutes.
This activity, however, is sometimes criticized by booklovers that reading shoudn't be forced against students' will, though each student is allowed to choose what to read. It would be better if the teacher could make students want to read. To make it possible, schools need more books and bigger libraries. Teachers need more experience of reading to themselves, more time for reading aloud to students, and more time to talk about books. (This is not my original opinion. See the next section.)
Morning read was first made famous in Japan by teachers at Funabashi Gakuen, Chiba Prefecture. The success of Funabashi Gakuen is told in their moving book Asa no Dokusho ga Kiseki wo Unda.
Hayashi Hiroshi, the leader of the Funabashi movement, wrote a booklet for schoolteachers, titled as Asa no Dokusho Jissen Gaidobukku [A Practical Guidebook on Morning Read].
If you'd like to understand the activity in depths, you should read his another booklet Kokoro no Kyouiku ha Asa no Dokusho Kara [Education for Heart Starts with Morning Read].
Shouji, as I've written above, didn't stop with his success in morning read. He encouraged his students to form a read-aloud group and made his movement wider than local. What he's been doing is told in his book. It might be difficult to get a copy outside of Fukushima Prefecture, because it is published by a local company called Rekishi Shunjuu Sha. But don't give up. I'm sure you can order it from your local bookstore, because the publication information is available at the company's homepage. The title of the book is Asa no Dokusho.
The very beginning of the Japanese movement, according to Asa no Dokusho ga Kiseki wo Unda, was when Hayashi read the chapter on Sustained Silent Reading in the Japanese translation of a book, written by Jim Trelease, called The Read-Aloud Handbook. Of course it's about reading aloud rather than silent reading. Shouji, too, admits in his book that reading aloud not just for children. It works for teenagers and growups, too. The Japanese version Hayashi read is still available as Yomikikase: Kono Subarashii Sekai [Reading Aloud: This Beautiful World].
Yomikikase, however, is not a complete translation of the original. Two interesting chapters, on libraries and on what to read were cut out. The original English version, moreover, has since been renewed twice with more information. If you are a Japanese learning English, I'm sure you can learn from this book how to enjoy reading English. The chapter on what to read, especially, lets you know good picture books which you can enjoy. You can visit his homepage at <www.trelease-on-reading.com>.
Have fun reading.