Abstract
The aim of this research is to depict the present situation of educational practice in connection with a childʼs identity from fieldwork investigation in one public junior high school and one NPO.
In the authorʼs research area, there are many Vietnamese students who use an “assumed name,” i.e., an alias, in which the real name is changed to a Japanese-style name. Concretely, the educational practice called “real name revealing” is mentioned and it is shown how teachers and NPO staff treat the studentsʼ “assumed names.” The analysis can be summarized as follows.
Firstly, the conventional practice has been a fluctuation of the story “an assumed name to the real name” as a symbolic notion. Expressing a real name was thought to be important in the practice for students of Korean origin living in Japan. However, that educational practice poses the problem of what the “real name” is. Those students who are from multicultural backgrounds or some Vietnamese students who were born in Japan do not have an ethnic name. The Japanese name is their “real name.” One teacher said, “Their identity, or real name, is not always the ethnic one. And if they have two names, they do not have to choose their name now. It depends on the person, I think.”
The second shift in educational practice now emerging is consideration to not force re-naming on children when the name has been revealed through independent action. One NPO staff member said, “When the name which the person himself or herself and the parents have decided on is used, I would not force the student to use his or her ethnic name in school.” Thus she calls the children by their ethnic names, but she does not force re-naming on them. The interview script says that she turns a blind eye to the childʼs Japanese-style name in the school. This is a new practice technique aimed at avoiding a “doctrinarian” relation by expecting too much of the“specific identity or real name.”
The directionality of the new educational practice set by both old-comers and new-comers became clear from the above analysis.
Moreover, this article examines educational practice not only in a public school but also in an NPO. The comparison between the public school and NPO permit a deeper analysis of this issue. I think that considering the present condition of this educational practice offers a viewpoint from which to develop our “foreign residentsʼ education” in Japan.
