Making our migrant children love learning

by Cherry Piqueros-Ballescas

She had just come to Japan with her whole family. Her parents are Nikkeijin, descendants of Japanese allowed by the 1990 Japanese Revised Immigration Law to enter, work, and even reside in Japan.

During her first week in a Japanese school, she experienced being bullied by her classmates. Bullying has been a problem in Japanese schools. Her being different could have been an additional reason for being singled out. She and her sisters, similarly bullied, quit going to school.

We met them in church, very young, beautiful children but with very sad, pained look in their eyes. They must have questioned why they had to go through this unnecessary torture of being discriminated and missing school.

They are not the only ones experiencing this painful situation of being out of school in a foreign country as their migrant parents tirelessly work from early morning till evening just to earn enough to guarantee a better life for all of them.

We discovered that so many of the children of Filipino migrants here in Japan are not formally enrolled in schools. With both parents extremely busy with their work each day for the whole week, many of them are left by themselves at home or, in some extreme cases, they learned to amuse themselves by staying at game centers and pachinko (Japanese slot machines) , often frequented by gamblers and the unemployed.

Left in this state, the learning moments of these children will go to waste. Their present as well as their future is also compromised. Will the present work and earnings of their migrant parents be worth their future of being untaught, uneducated, and at worst, illiterate?

Migrant parents themselves experience the pain of seeing their children grow up uneducated. They cannot send their children home as often there are no caretakers left to responsibly care for their children. They also want their family to be together here, despite the pain and difficulties. The parents, however, do not want their children to suffer, if they have a choice.

Many of those on unauthorized stay here are also unable, due to fear of being deported, to enroll their children in Japanese schools although they are, in law, allowed to do so. Many want their children to be educated but there just was no alternative they could see to make this possible while they remained migrants here.

Those married to Japanese also want their children, who are formally enrolled in Japanese schools, to learn about their roots, to learn about the country where one of their parents came from.

Fortunately, Tsukuba City has the distinction of having the highest intelligence quotient throughout Japan because scholars and researchers are here in large numbers. Fortunately, there are many Filipino scholars and their parents here who have decided to share some hours of their Sundays to launch and proceed with the experimental migrant children education project. Fortunately, Fr. Michael Coleman agreed to host the experimental project at his parish, the Tsukuba Catholic Church.

The afternoon of May 18 was a memorable day for all. With God’s grace, the volunteer teachers, of varying religious denominations, joyfully and patiently greeted and mingled with the children as young as 2 years and 8 months up to 15 years old who came with their parents to register for this experimental project.

The goal, the volunteer teachers agreed was simple: make the children feel loved. With their emotions in control, migrant children will love to learn. As they learn, they will realize their world expanding.

Hopefully, these migrant children will also realize that as it was their parents’ love for them that brought them to Japan, it will be the love of the teachers for them that will bring them beyond their present restricted world to a much broadened horizon of learning to live together within this natural world.

Last May 25, there were already 22 children enthusiastically learning their English and Filipino, math, science and social studies. Should their family decide to return to the Philippines, at the very least, the experimental project hopes to serve as a supportive transition between these migrant children’s present and their future, between Japan and the Philippines. Should their family decide to stay permanently in Japan, the experimental project hopes to remind the children, with pride, about their roots and about their country of origin—their parents and theirs.*

Ed’s note - This article was published in both the Tsukuba Catholic Church Newsletter (June Issue) and in the June 5 issue of the Cebu-based newspaper, The Freeman.

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