Since 1987, the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) program has brought young Westerners — often straight out of college — to Japan to teach English at high schools. But now, Japan's massive public debt and the need to cut costs have put JET in the spotlight.
In May, the program came up for review by the Government Revitalization Unit, the jigyoshiwake budget review panel, which recommended JET's necessity be reviewed. Since then, local governments and school boards, Japanese and foreign academics, and current and former JET teachers have all been passionately arguing for or against cutting the program. Briefly, here are some of the main arguments:
The JET program is one of — perhaps the only — project carried out by the Japanese government during the bubble-economy years of the late 1980s and early 1990s to promote kokusaika (internationalization) that actually had some success.