I’ve mentioned before that I teach at an all boys school that is the least religious religious school you can imagine. Besides seeing how boys behave in the absence of girls, I also get to watch their slow descent into teenagerhood. This is not a pretty spectacle.

For the most part, teenagers are the equivalent of bottle of pop (Coke and/or soda to people from various soulless regions) that’s been shaken up and then set out in the hot sun to eventually explode. If it doesn’t explode, the longer it sits in the sun, the more flat and disgusting it becomes. With boys this happens in or around 8th grade (for girls it happens sooner but that’s another post).

At the school where I work, the boys arrive in 7th grade with a lot of positive energy and, for a while at least, are a lot of fun to teach. There was one exception to this rule. Several years ago we had a group of 7th graders we dubbed the “Demon Seed” class for their unusually high levels of noise and disinterest and general obnoxiousness. They were so bad that when we met their elementary school teachers, we held a trial to see who was guilty. The elementary school teachers, probably to save their own skins, assured us that the Demon Seed class were an exception and the next class would be nice. This turned out to be true. Most of the Demon Seed Class, though, stayed bad all the way through high school.

For the record: BAD in this case means annoying wastes of time; not violent and dangerous.Even compared to Japanese public schools, are boys are okay.

Starting in 8th grade the non-Demon Seed lads begin to hit the growth spurt in which their bodies get bigger whilst the switches in their brain cells begin shutting down. As a result, many of them get increasingly lazy. This is compounded in Japan because no one is actually allowed to fail until they start the 10th grade. Until then, education is both mandatory and compulsory. (I’ve proposed that, because the school is private, they kick out the bottom students in each class each year. The response is lots of teeth sucking which a Japanese way of saying “um no”.)

Once boys figure out this scam–especially the boys in the lower level English classes–they pretty much begin tuning out. The process starts with lots of “I don’t understand. I don’t understand” said whilst I’m trying to explain something so that they can understand it. This progresses to them saying “Speak Japanese” instead of listening and me saying “um no” which is Liveleese for “Hell no”.

By 9th grade, the boys are fully grown and their brains fully switched off. The lower level classes, especially if they have weak homeroom teachers, become unteachable. Last year I had a 9th grade class that was so bad I broke it into two sections. The “Play Room” for kids who never brought the textbook and just wanted to talk and the “Study Room” for kids who wanted to learn something. i do have a few tricks and have proven my willingness to stay late into the evening to get students to finish a project, but only  a few students are worth the effort.

In 10th grade, the dynamics change. Boys from outside the system are brought in and those who were cool in junior high suddenly find themselves not as cool. Also, failure is suddenly an option. Not surprisingly, that helps quite a bit.