Early Childhood English Education

Today, I will talk about the issue about “Early Childhood English Education”. Many of you know how big problem it is. The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology mentioned that from 5th grade elementary, English should be become a compulsory subject. Now, English is regarded as international common language among of the world. In Asia, lots of countries started to teach English to elementary school students. There are a lot of opinions about this plan. A survey was done for 3005 Japanese people. It asked people “Do you think English should be become a compulsory subject from elementary school?” 52% of them said “No”, 38% of them said “Yes”, and 10% of them said “I don’t know.” There are so many reasons for this and it is really difficult to decide what is wrong and what is right. The famous person who agrees with that plan is Mineo Nakajima. As you know, he is the president of our University. I discussed about the Issue in my circle activity. Yet we couldn’t make an answer. That plan doesn’t start yet, so I think we are going to face to a lot of problem and we cannot predict all of them now. We must consider this issue more carefully because education is really important and necessary or children.