Archive of CRN Home Page Topics for Discussion

Mar. 12, 2004 hunting season is underway! Hillel Weintraub, Future University - Hakodate

Hunting Season! Certainly these words bring different images to people in different cultures. Even within cultures many subcultures exist and people have a wide range of feelings about hunting; for example, think about England, and the different views of fox hunting which exist there. I remember an uncle who always looked forward to the deer hunting season, which was limited to a few months a year in my home state in America. Except for this one uncle, no one else in my family had any interest in hunting, but he went every season and sometimes invited me to go with him. Once I did, but it wasn't something I enjoyed. I remember holding the rifle for a short time, but I never shot it. I just watched him, rooting for the deer to get out of my uncle's rifle sight. Somehow, I've always been for the "underdog" (or underdeer, in this case), and I felt that a human with a gun had a big advantage over any animal. But where am I going with this analogy? What's the connection of hunting to life and learning in Japan? The hunting season that I want to talk about is quite different from the one-way hunting of animals that goes on both in Japan and in other cultures. This is "job-hunting season", one in which the hunting goes on from two sides, kind of like not only are people hunting deer, but at the same time, deer are hunting people! And in my opinion, both get hurt by the present system. Job hunting in Japan takes place in the late winter and early spring every year and involves students looking for jobs and companies looking for workers. A great deal of attention is given to this hunt. On-campus recruitment is set up for two weeks in my university. It isn't unusual for students to miss a lot of classes until they have secured a job. Most faculty seem unconcerned about missed classes perhaps because an important part of the reputation of a university is based on the percent of graduates who have secured jobs, and this figure is available and widely know by students, parents and high school advisors. I have a feeling that university administrators and faculty and students themselves give too much attention to entrance exams and exit jobs. And not enough attention is given to what happens in between. Certainly career guidance and job placement are important in other countries too, but I think that the system in Japan puts more pressure on students to have a job immediately after graduation than in other countries that I am familiar with. Just as I had some concerns about the deer, I have some concerns about the students in this country during job hunting season. And I also have some concerns about the development of company culture in the present situation. Look at this situation: a student in Japan graduates from college and has a certain time period to look for a job. That's the message put out by the companies and the local and national government agencies who hire new employees. If a student does not join the job hunt during the right season - that is the final term of third year, the chances of getting a job are greatly decreased. Furthermore there is little or no support from the advisory system in place to help a student consider other possibilities after graduation such as travel, service, or study. Wouldn't it have many positive effects on students to have some physically, emotionally and intellectually challenging experiences after college and to take a thinking break after 16 years of study? And wouldn't bringing such people into company and government culture also have many positive effects? I have heard that a few companies and agencies have started to look favorably on applicants who had joined a volunteer agency after university, but this is still the exception. There's a lot of talk about encouraging creativity and independent thinking of young students through a new curriculum. But if things don't change at the university and company level, these changes won't have much meaning in the lives of our deer (!) young people. I'd like to hear about job hunting and after-college experiences in other countries. It would be interesting to post some little dialogs with people in our new "Dancing Dialog" section of R&R cafe. Keep your eye open for it!

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