Quitting

We had one of our teenage students 'quit' recently. Sad. Of course they all 'quit' sooner or later as they move out of education or finish courses, but inevitably you always get some who 'blow up' and just pack up in the middle of their studies too. Thankfully we don't get too many.

This case had all the usual danger signs; a strong willed listless teenager, attendance becomes more erratic, homework left undone then the parent on the phone with ''the news". It feels to me that "juku" is always the first to give way in the unspoken contract between parent and child, the one that unhappy kids can score an intial victory over. The gradient is getting steeper, they struggle to keep up despite some extra attention and then one day the hillside gives way a bit and gravity takes over "I don't want to go and study there any more - I hate it!" Concerned, perhaps pampering parent, demurs but then eentually complies with the insistent demands of the child.

Avalanche is a good word for it. There's the illusion that once this 'problem' is resolved there will be an opportunity to 're-group'. Sometimes, and especially if kids haven't been well taught, that might be the case. But the much commoner pattern is that it is the first 'failure' in a long line of increasing inability to achieve. Once juku is abandoned, or swapped, then as Hamlet rightly observed 'sorrows come not single spies but in battalions'. Once you have learned that walking away is an apparently successful answer then it spreads like poison. It 'seems' an effective strategy - and here in Japan non-achievers are happily left alone as long as they go through the motions - but then ultimately it corrupts every life choice. There are few 'second chances' in Japanese society. Around twenty you will collect the consequences - around 700 yen an hour in a casual job (if you are lucky). Or for many the hikkikomori lifestyle, staying in your room, socially isolated and living off your parents.

There's nothing you can do about it, ever more kindness and featherbedding is no solution here. If kids make this deliberate choice learning by their mistakes is the only option, they are responsible for their own lives.

Goodness! I sound so reactionary! It is because I've experienced that sense of 'being sucked dry' by people who don't listen or respond in so many ways. Of course everybody has their own agenda but 'quitting' on anything is a very dangerous luxury, however you justify it to yourself. When something is coming to and end you need to see it through then draw a thick clear line under it, that is my feeling anyway.