The good news is that Japan's education bureaucrats realize that despite six years of middle and high school study many Japanese are still unable to speak English well. The bad news is that the bureaucrats plan to solve this problem by giving us more of what caused the problem.
True, there is nothing wrong with the move to have primary schools provide two or more years of basic English, mainly simple conversation, writing and songs. However, qualified teachers are few and the primary school curriculum is already crowded. But the main problem, teachers say, is that any benefits gained disappear rapidly once students move on to middle school. Children are bewildered by the sudden shift from living English to textbook English.
The bureaucrats focus on high school teaching. They say they want more English vocabulary to be taught, and will require Japan's large army of middle and high school English-language teachers to speak more English in the classroom. But is making Japan's children listen even more to the poor accents and pronunciations of their English-language teachers likely to improve things?