Prejudice or an Educational Decision? A Scene I Witnessed on a Bus

Some time ago, I was riding a bus.

A white family boarded: a grandfather, his son and daughter-in-law, and their young child—a family spanning three generations.

The grandfather apparently spoke Japanese. As he pointed to things outside the window, he taught his grandchild Japanese words.

“That is a bird.”

“This is a car.”

“This is a road.”

It was a heartwarming scene.

Then the son, who appeared to be the child’s father, suddenly became angry.

“Please don’t teach the child things like that!”

Looking troubled, the grandfather tried to calm his son by saying, “All right, all right.”

It was a very strange scene.

What Is Wrong with Teaching Japanese?

The first possibility that came to mind was prejudice or discrimination.

The grandfather seemed familiar with Japan and understood Japanese. His son, on the other hand, might have had no interest in Japan and might not have wanted his child learning Japanese.

“There is no point in learning the language of an Asian country.”

If that was how he thought, his anger would make sense.

But after thinking about it for a while, another possibility occurred to me.

Perhaps he simply had a clear policy for his child’s language education.

Is Bilingual Education Really a Good Thing?

People generally believe that exposing children to multiple languages from an early age is beneficial.

Certainly, naturally acquiring two languages from childhood can become an enormous asset.

But exposure to multiple languages does not automatically make a child bilingual.

The risk that a child may receive insufficient education in either language and fail to develop the language proficiency needed for learning is also discussed in educational settings.

This does not mean that learning two languages is itself harmful. What matters is the kind of educational environment provided in each language.

Perhaps the father wanted his child first to develop a solid command of the language used at home.

If so, the grandfather’s attempt to teach Japanese went against the father’s educational policy.

Of course, it is difficult to imagine that learning a few words for birds and cars on a bus would cause any problem with a child’s language development.

Even so, it may have mattered to the parent.

Human Behavior Cannot Be Understood from the Outside Alone

In the end, I do not know what the father was thinking.

He may have been prejudiced against Japanese, or the incident may have reflected a conflict between father and son over the child’s education.

It is also possible that the family had already argued about the grandfather teaching the child things without permission.

An outsider who does not know the circumstances cannot judge.

What I found interesting about the scene was that the same behavior can be evaluated completely differently depending on the reason behind it.

A father angrily tells someone not to teach his child Japanese.

Seen by itself, that makes him look remarkably narrow-minded.

But if some educational policy lay behind it, the situation looks different.

People tend to observe someone else’s behavior and assume they understand the reason for it as well.

And after merely finding myself on the same bus, I ended up thinking this deeply about the educational policy of a family I had never met.

When it comes to being nosy about other people’s affairs, perhaps I was no better than the father.