Teacher's Day

Recently there is not so strong vitality to educate and bring up children whom we
are able to entrust with our futures at schools and homes in Japan.
I have devoted my life to the school education for a long time,and if it would be
possible for me to go back to my principal days, I would like to make Teacher's Day
as a school event.

Mr. Juji YAMAMOTO, a close friend of mine, told me, " Last year I traveled to
Thailand, and on June 20, I saw a lot of kids and their parents dressing up and
carrying bunches of flowers in their hands in the streets, so I asked them what
they were going to do. Then, they answered me enjoyably that the day was their
Teacher's Day, so they were going to schools and to give their teachers some
flowers as tokens of their gratitude for teachers."
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I have had the same experiences. When I visited Korea, China and Taiwan, I
talked with some teachers there. They told me they had Teacher's Day as a
National Holiday, and the people have always instructed their children to respect
teachers, and teachers themselves have thought the teaching should be a kind
of holy jobs. In fact, I thought they had prides and confidences in their teachings.　
It made me think deeply about Japanese modern education. Unfortunately in our
country such a holy thiniking is less and less now.

I think teaching is a hard job to educate children and to make them good citizens,
so it always demands a lot of communicatios with them in love. But recently
through the mass-medias I hear, for exaple, corporal punishment is bad measurues
for children,　but there are few opinions about other disciplines to children.
I think we have to teach the youth the pleasure of achievements overcoming
something hard.
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I had had responsibility as a main staff of the course of some teaching deparment
of Aichi Shukutoku University for fourteen years, and a lot of our students became
teachers after their graduations.　And none of them said ," Teachers are labors.",
but said, " We are goineg to do some precious jobs in teaching, and also much
pride of our lifeworks." Recently I don't feel such sincere will so much. Why not ?
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I think we have to create atmosphere of domestic, educational and academic
schools in managing them as principals, so we should build reliable relationships
with teachers, students and parents keeping in mind of " Respect, Love and
Trust each other".

Here, I remember an old story I was impressed.　That is Mr. Saburo KATAYAMA,
principal of Aichi Commercial Senior High School in 1955 told me the following.
He said, " I fixed Teacher's Day in my school. On this day, I invite families of
the teachers to my school and express my appreciation to them for co-operation
with my school education, and also show the videos of teacher's activities in my
school, and then have lunches all together."

And also when I was a principal of a senior high school, I asked teachers to visit
the homes of their students and I myself had visited the homes of the teachers
and had expressed my appreciations of　their co-operations and had reported the
activities of teachers in my school to their parents, husbands and wives and had
encouraged their children, too.
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As I mentioed above, if it would be possible for me to go back to my principal days,
I would fix a Teacher's Day in my school as a school event and getting co-operation
with the student association and PTA, I would do something suitable for the special
day expressing of appreciation to my teachers. And thinking my experience I would
also appeal to the Prefectural Association of PTA at first and then to the government
to create Teacher's Day as a National Holiday in Japan. Of course, the events shall be
not only in some schools, but all over our country.

If the teachers would criticize of the parents' disciplines to their children and on the
other hand parents would criticize of their schools severely , there would be opposite
educational environment. But I believe Japanese preserve to respect teachers even
now.

　　　　　Japanese version, here