午夜剧场

It has been 25 years now at 午夜剧场 Shiki Senior High School, but we have been conducting multilingual courses. Although its position in the curriculum has changed several times, currently a total of four hours are established: two periods as "Period for Integrated Studies (Inquiry)" as defined by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, and an additional two periods as an extracurricular language course for those who wish to take it. Although it is far from my specialty, I was given the opportunity to write this because I was in charge of this course last year.

When it first started, there were 19 languages, and even then, there was no other school with such a multilingual course at the high school level. Since then, five more languages have been added, and now there are 24 languages. It is not uncommon for applicants to cite this multilingualism as a motivation for applying, and there is no doubt that it has become one of the hallmarks of 午夜剧场 Shiki Senior High School. The late Professor Yoshisuke Tetsuno, the principal at the time who worked hard to establish it, would surely be pleased. Specifically, the 24 languages are as follows: Swahili-speaking regions, Arabic-speaking regions, Orient, Spanish-speaking regions, Burmese, Mongolian, Chinese, Ainu, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Russian, Okinawan, Thai, Indian, Finnish, German, Portuguese-speaking regions, Persian-speaking regions, Turkish, French, Classical Greek, Italian, Classical Latin, and Korean. They are not necessarily classified as foreign languages, but rather as linguistic regions. Therefore, it can be said that Ainu and Okinawan are included.

In terms of content, students do not only learn the language, but also broadly cover the background of the region, such as culture, daily life, and history. Therefore, the subtitle of the Period for Integrated Studies is "Language and Culture." Some of the languages are almost never used as spoken words today. What is the point of learning that? Thinking that way is probably the perspective of an amateur. The students who choose to learn are far more conscious than I am. There is a significant aspect of learning "diversity," which can be called a modern need, rather than just language as a tool. The most recently established language is Finnish. At 午夜剧场 Shiki Senior High School, we started international exchanges with high schools in Australia, Taiwan, and Finland a few years ago. Therefore, we opened a new course because there was no Finnish language course. Finding an instructor alone was not easy. Considering that, the fact that so many languages are established and so many experts are gathered here is truly an outstanding environment for learning "Language and Culture." In conjunction with the newly started international exchange, this course also aims for the next new stage. To that end, I sincerely hope for an early end to the COVID-19 pandemic.