Kedves Diákok!
A következőkben fontos információkat találtok az angol Madách-kupa szóbeli fordulójáról. Kérünk Benneteket, a verseny előtt olvassátok el ezeket, hogy a vetélkedő minél zökkenőmentesebben és gördülékenyebben folyhasson.
A forduló első feladatát (újságcikkre épülő kiselőadás) egy társatokkal együtt kell megoldanotok, a másodikat (képleírás) önállóan. Az, hogy az első feladat alatt ki lesz a partneretek, a helyszínen derül ki. A pontozás természetesen, ahogy eddig is, egyénenként történik, így a partnered teljesítménye nem befolyásolja a te teljesítményed értékelését.
A szóbeli verseny ismertetése:
A szóbeli fordulóban két feladatot kell megoldani, a verseny két bizottság előtt zajlik.
- feladat: Kiselőadás (10 perc/pár)
A tájékoztató végén található 5 újságcikk közül kell egyet kihúzni, és az abban foglaltakat kell elmondani, részletesen összefoglalni, majd ezt követően az olvasottak alapján kell elmondani a véleményeteket az adott témáról. Erre 2-2 perc áll rendelkezésre, tehát összesen egy embernek nagyjából 4 percig kell folyamatosan beszélni. A versenyen a szövegek nem használhatók, azokból előzetesen kell felkészülni. Miután befejezted a kiselőadást, a partnered feladata az lesz, hogy az alábbi rövid kérdések egyikének segítségével reagáljon az általad elmondottakra. A következő kérdésekre lehet számítani:
- What could you add to what your partner has said?
- Do you agree with what your partner has said?
- Do you think most people would agree with what your partner has said?
- Would you have liked to talk about your partner’s article? Why (not)?
- Which was the most interesting part for you in your partner’s talk?
Miután ez megtörtént, a partnered beszél az általa húzott újságcikkről 2-2 percben, a te feladatod pedig az lesz, hogy a partnered kiselőadása közben figyelj, hisz most neked kell a fenti rövid kérdések egyike alapján reagálnod az elhangzottakra. A kiselőadásokra való reagálásra 1-1 perc áll rendelkezésre.
- feladat: Képleírás (3-4 perc)
Ebben a feladatban kettő vagy három, valamilyen szempontból egy adott témához kapcsolódó képet kell összehasonlítanod a képek mellett található két segítő kérdésre támaszkodva. Erre 3-4 perc áll rendelkezésre. Fontos, hogy nem a képen szereplő dolgokról kell beszélni, hanem a képek által megjelenített témákról.
Mindkét feladat esetén törekedjetek arra, hogy minél változatosabb nyelvtani szerkezeteket és szókincset használjatok!
Ha további kérdéseitek lennének, forduljatok bátran a szaktanárokhoz!
A felkészüléshez sok sikert kívánunk!
🙂
Phone Addiction Is Real — And So Are Its Mental Health Risks
A lot of us must be wondering if we’re hooked on our tech: Searches for “phone addiction” have risen steadily in the past five years, according to Google Trends, and “social media addiction” trails it closely. Interestingly, phone addiction and social media addiction are closely intertwined, especially for younger people, who probably aren’t playing chess on their phones or even talking on them—they’re on social media. And according to a growing number of studies, it’s looking more and more like this pastime is addictive. Even more concerning is the fact that this addiction is linked to some serious mental health risks.
Last month, MIT’s Sloan Management Review published a clever experiment—professors at two business schools in Italy and France made giving up one’s smartphone for a day a requirement of the students in their courses. Most of the students, who could plan what day they’d give up their phones, felt some degree of anxiety. They didn’t know what to do with the extra time, from eating breakfast to riding on public transportation. They also noted how often people who did have phones checked their phones—one student pointed out that his friend checked his phone four times in a 10 minute period—and that that was probably what they themselves looked like on a typical day.
An earlier study, in the U.S., which also had young people give up their phones, found that they performed worse on mental tasks when they were in “withdrawal,” and felt physiological symptoms, like increased heart rate and blood pressure. They also felt a sense of loss, or lessening, of their extended self—their phones.
But the reality, especially for younger people, is that phone use, especially heavy use, isn’t so lighthearted. A study last month looked at the rise in depression and suicide in teenagers in recent years. The CDC had noted a rise in the rates of both over the years 2010-2015, and found that girls were particularly at risk: Their suicide rate rose by 65% in those five years. The number of girls with severe depression rose by 58%.
The authors of the new study wanted to see what might be causing these disturbing trends. Though it’s only a correlation, the team found a tight relationship between mental health issues and a rise in “new media screen activities.” About 48% of those who spent five or more hours a day on their phones—a lot of time by any measure—had thought about suicide or made plans for it, vs. 28% of those who spent only one hour per day on their phones. No other variables—like household financial issues, homework, or school pressure—could account for the rise in mental health issues over that time.
“Although we can’t say for sure that the growing use of smartphones caused the increase in mental health issues, that was by far the biggest change in teens’ lives between 2010 and 2015,” study author Jean Twenge said in a statement. She’s the author of the book iGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy–and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood–and What That Means for the Rest of Us, and has been following this pattern for years.
Interestingly, teens who spent more time doing sports, homework, socializing with friends in real life, and going to church had a lower risk for both depression and suicide.
The problem is that teens are spending more and more time, not talking on the phone like they were in decades past, but Instagram-ing and snapchat-ing. These are dangerous pastimes because they give the appearance of social interaction, but they couldn’t be further away from it. The comparisons that are implicit in looking at other people’s lives online, which are often highly manicured (and misleading), is thought to be what’s so depressing about social media. “These increases in mental health issues among teens are very alarming,” Twenge said. “Teens are telling us they are struggling, and we need to take that very seriously.”
Another study, presented last month at the Radiological Society of North America conference, looked at the brains of teens who fell into the category of smartphone or internet addiction. The authors found some differences in the chemistry of the reward circuits of the brain, particularly in the ratio of the neurotransmitter GABA to other neurotransmitters. Interestingly, when the teens went though cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) for their addiction, their brain chemistry changed and looked more like non-addicted controls.
Earlier studies have also looked at activity in the addiction circuits of the teenage brain when they’re actually interacting with social media. It found that cells in one of these areas, the nucleus accumbens, were activated when participants viewed Instagram pictures with more “likes.”
Finally, a particularly telling sign that something’s wrong is that some of the developers of social media features have started speaking up about its addictive risks. Features like red, rather than blue, notifications were intentionally designed to grab people’s attention, and keep them coming back for another hit. Loren Brichter invented the pull-to-refresh mechanism for an app that Twitter eventually acquired. “Smartphones are useful tools,” he recently told The Guardian. “But they’re addictive. Pull-to-refresh is addictive. Twitter is addictive. These are not good things. When I was working on them, it was not something I was mature enough to think about. I’m not saying I’m mature now, but I’m a little bit more mature, and I regret the downsides.”
Part of the problem with “using” is that we think social media will give us a boost, but it doesn’t—it makes us feel worse. This is a “forecast error” that keeps us coming back, even though it often has a negative effect on our mental health. And this cycle sounds eerily like a classic addiction.
It will be interesting to see how our interactions with our phones change over time—maybe the pendulum will swing back the other way as cell phones, and social media, become less novel. But for young people who have grown up with both, it’s not a novelty, it’s just a way of life. It may take bigger pushes to help them see just how addictive phones can be, and how damaging to their mental health.
China bans foreign waste – but what will happen to the world’s recycling?
The dominant position that China holds in global manufacturing means that for many years China has also been the largest global importer of many types of recyclable materials. Last year, Chinese manufacturers imported 7.3m metric tonnes of waste plastics from developed countries including the UK, the EU, the US and Japan.
However, in July 2017, China announced big changes in the quality control placed on imported materials, notifying the World Trade Organisation that it will ban imports of 24 categories of recyclables and solid waste by the end of the year. This campaign against yang laji or “foreign garbage” applies to plastic, textiles and mixed paper and will result in China taking a lot less material as it replaces imported materials with recycled material collected in its own domestic market, from its growing middle-class and Western-influenced consumers.
The impact of this will be far-reaching. China is the dominant market for recycled plastic. There are concerns that much of the waste that China currently imports, especially the lower grade materials, will have nowhere else to go.
This applies equally to other countries including the EU27, where 87% of the recycled plastic collected was exported directly, or indirectly (via Hong Kong), to China. Japan and the US also rely on China to buy their recycled plastic. Last year, the US exported 1.42m tons of scrap plastics, worth an estimated US$495m to China.
So what will happen to the plastic these countries collect through household recycling systems once the Chinese refuse to accept it? What are the alternatives?
Plastics collected for recycling could go to energy recovery (incineration). They are, after all, a fossil-fuel based material and burn extremely well – so on a positive note, they could generate electricity and improve energy self-sufficiency.
They could also go to landfill (not ideal) – imagine the press headlines. Alternatively, materials could be stored until new markets are found. This also brings problems, however – there have been hundreds of fires at sites where recyclable materials are stored.
While it is a reliable material, taking many forms from cling film (surround wrap) to flexible packaging to rigid materials used in electronic items, the problems caused by plastic, most notably litter and ocean plastics, are receiving increasing attention.
One way forward might be to limit its functions. Many disposable items are made from plastic. Some of them are disposable by necessity for hygiene purposes – for instance, blood bags and other medical items – but many others are disposable for convenience.
Looking at the consumer side of things, there are ways of cutting back on plastic. Limiting the use of plastic bags through financial disincentives is one initiative that has shown results and brought about changes in consumer behaviour. In France, some disposable plastic items are banned and in the Britain, leading pub chain Wetherspoons has banned disposable, one-use plastic drinking straws.
Deposit and return schemes for plastic bottles (and drink cans) could also incentivise behaviour. Micro-beads, widely used in cosmetics as exfoliants, are now a target as the damage they do becomes increasingly apparent and the UK government has announced plans to ban their use in some products.
This follows similar actions announced by the US and Canada, with several EU nations, South Korea and New Zealand also planning to implement bans.
Many local authorities collect recycling that is jumbled together. But a major side effect of this type of collection is that while it is convenient for the householder, there are high contamination levels, which leads to reduced material quality. This will mean it is either sold for lower prices into a limited market, will need to be reprocessed through sorting plants, or will be incinerated or put in landfill. But changes to recycling collections and reprocessing to improve the quality of materials could be expensive.
Alternatively, recycled plastic could be used to provide chemicals to the petrochemical sector, fuels to the transport and aviation sectors, food packaging and many other applications.
The problems we are now facing are caused by China’s global dominance in manufacturing and the way many countries have relied on one market to solve their waste and recycling problems. The current situation offers us an opportunity to find new solutions to our waste problem, increase the proportion of recycled plastic in our own manufactured products, improve the quality of recovered materials and to use recycled material in new ways.
Homeschooling could be the smartest way to teach kids in the 21st century — here are 5 reasons why
Homeschooling isn’t what it used to be.
What largely started in the 1980s and ’90s as a way for Catholic parents to infuse religion into their kids’ education now has more mainstream appeal.
Homeschooled kids have the same access to online learning, friendships, and extracurricular activities as the typical public school student — but without many of the drawbacks, like standardized lesson plans and bullying.
Here are a handful of reasons homeschooling makes sense in 2018.
Personalized learning is a strong method of instruction.
The core idea of homeschooling is the idea that kids need to learn at the speed, and in the style, most appropriate for them. In the education world, enthusiasts call the approach “personalized learning,” and it’s in place in a number of schools already.
Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg are big fans of personalized learning, since it tends to use technology as a way to tailor lesson plans to students. In a recent blog post, Gates pointed to research that personalized learning helps boost scores in reading and math.
Homeschooling parents can take the method a step further. As parents, many are in the best position possible to know, and provide, the right kind of instruction.
Students can learn more about what they really care about.
Without formal curricula to guide their education, homeschoolers get the chance to explore a range of topics that might not be normally offered until high school or college. They can study psychology in fourth grade, or finance in eighth grade.
Some parents are capable enough to pass on this knowledge themselves. But many parents Business Insider has spoken with rely on online learning platforms like Khan Academy or workbooks. Some take their older kids to local community colleges.
While many homeschool families do teach English, math, science, and history, education is by no means limited just to those subjects.
Social media gives kids a way to form lasting friendships.
The most common misconception about homeschoolers is that they lack social skills. Before the internet, there was some truth to the stereotype.
But today’s students have just as much opportunity to see kids their own age as those in private or public schools, and often without as much distraction. Homeschoolers still use apps like Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook — which may foster unhealthy and even addictive relationships to tech — but also lets them meet up with other homeschoolers or those from traditional schools.
“They’re doing just as well or better,” Brian Ray, a homeschooling researcher at the National Home Education Research Institute, told Business Insider.
Students don’t deal with cliques or bullying.
Homeschoolers don’t deal with all the downsides of being around kids in a toxic school environment.
Plenty of critics argue these downsides are actually good for toughening kids up, but kids who are bullied more often face symptoms of depression and anxiety, do worse in class, and show up to school less frequently.
Homeschooled kids are able to learn in a more harmonious environment.
Schooling isn’t set apart from the “real world.”
Contrary to the name, homeschooling takes place in an actual home only a fraction of the time. A great deal of instruction happens in community colleges, at libraries, or in the halls of local museums.
These experiences have the effect of maturing kids much more quickly and cultivating “a trait of open-mindedness,” as Harvard junior and former homeschooler Claire Dickson told Business Insider.
Since kids spend more time around adults in the “real world,” they rarely come to see school as set apart from other aspects of life.
Students may achieve more in the long run.
Homeschooling makes sense from an achievement point of view.
Research suggests homeschooled children tend to do better on standardized tests, stick around longer in college, and do better once they’re enrolled. A 2009 study showed that the proportion of homeschoolers who graduated from college was about 67%, while among public school students it was 59%.
Students from Catholic and private schools fell even lower in college graduation rates, with 54% and 51% of kids, respectively, completing all four years.
What is the best age to learn a language?
When it comes to learning a foreign language, we tend to think that children are the most adept. But that may not be the case – and there are added benefits to starting as an adult.
It’s a busy autumn morning at the Spanish Nursery, a bilingual nursery school in north London. Parents help their toddlers out of cycling helmets and jackets. Teachers greet the children with a cuddle and a chirpy “Buenos dias!”. In the playground, a little girl asks for her hair to be bunched up into a “coleta” (Spanish for ‘pigtail’), then rolls a ball and shouts “Catch!” in English.
“At this age, children don’t learn a language – they acquire it,” says the school’s director Carmen Rampersad. It seems to sum up the enviable effortlessness of the little polyglots around her. For many of the children, Spanish is a third or even fourth language. Mother tongues include Croatian, Hebrew, Korean and Dutch.
Compare this to the struggle of the average adult in a language class, and it would be easy to conclude that it’s best to start young.
But science offers a much more complex view of how our relationship with languages evolves over a lifetime – and there is much to encourage late beginners.
Broadly speaking, different life stages give us different advantages in language learning. As babies, we have a better ear for different sounds; as toddlers, we can pick up native accents with astonishing speed. As adults, we have longer attention spans and crucial skills like literacy that allow us to continually expand our vocabulary, even in our own language.
And a wealth of factors beyond ageing – like social circumstances, teaching methods, and even love and friendship – can affect how many languages we speak and how well.
“Not everything goes downhill with age,” says Antonella Sorace, a professor of developmental linguistics and director of the Bilingualism Matters Centre at the University of Edinburgh.
She gives the example of what is known as ‘explicit learning’: studying a language in a classroom with a teacher explaining the rules. “Young children are very bad at explicit learning, because they don’t have the cognitive control and the attention and memory capabilities,” Sorace says. “Adults are much better at that. So that can be something that improves with age.”
A study by researchers in Israel found, for example, that adults were better at grasping an artificial language rule and applying it to new words in a lab setting. The scientists compared three separate groups: 8-year-olds, 12-year-olds, and young adults. The adults scored higher than both younger groups, and the 12-year-olds also did better than the younger children.
This chimed with the results of a long-term study of almost 2,000 Catalan-Spanish bilingual learners of English: the late starters acquired the new language faster than the younger starters.
The researchers in Israel suggested that their older participants may have benefited from skills that come with maturity – like more advanced problem-solving strategies – and greater linguistic experience. In other words, older learners tend to already know quite a lot about themselves and the world and can use this knowledge to process new information.
What young children excel at is learning implicitly: listening to native speakers and imitating them. But this type of learning requires a lot of time with native speakers. In 2016, the Bilingualism Matters Centre prepared an internal report on Mandarin lessons in primary schools for the Scottish government. They found that one hour a week of teaching did not make a meaningful difference to five-year-olds. But even just one additional half-hour, and the presence of a native speaker, helped the children grasp elements of Mandarin that are harder for adults, such as the tones.
As babies, we can hear all of the 600 consonants and 200 vowels that make up the world’s languages. Within our first year, our brains begin to specialise, tuning into the sounds we hear most frequently. Infants already babble in their mother tongue. Even newborns cry with an accent, imitating the speech they heard while in the womb. This specialisation also means shedding the skills we do not need. Japanese babies can easily distinguish between ‘l’ and ‘r’ sounds. Japanese adults tend to find this more difficult.
There is no question, Sorace says, that the early years are crucial for acquiring our own language. Studies of abandoned or isolated children have shown that if we do not learn human speech early on, we cannot easily make up for this later.
But here is the surprise: that cut-off is not the same for foreign language learning.
“The important thing to understand is that age co-varies with many other things,” says Danijela Trenkic, a psycholinguist at the University of York. Children’s lives are completely different from those of adults. So when we compare the language skills of children and adults, Trenkic says, “we’re not comparing like with like”.
She gives the example of a family moving to a new country. Typically, children will learn the language much faster than their parents. But that may be because they hear it constantly at school, while their parents might be working alone. The children may also feel a greater sense of urgency since mastering the language is crucial to their social survival: making friends, being accepted, fitting in. Their parents, on the other hand, are more likely to be able to socialise with people who understand them, such as fellow immigrants.
“Creating the emotional bond is what makes you better at language learning, in my view,” says Trenkic.
Adults can of course also create that emotional bond, and not just through love or friendship with a native speaker. A 2013 study of British adults in an Italian beginners’ course found that those who stuck with it were helped by bonding with the other students and the teacher.
“If you find like-minded people, that makes it more likely that you’ll push on with a language, and that you’ll persevere,” Trenkic says. “And that really is the key. You need to spend years learning it. Unless there’s a social motivation for it, it’s really difficult to sustain.”
Earlier this year, a study at MIT based on an online quiz of nearly 670,000 people found that to achieve native-like knowledge of English grammar, it is best to start by about 10 years old, after which that ability declines. However, the study also showed that we can keep getting better at languages, including our own, over time. For example, we only fully master the grammar of our own language by about 30. This adds to a previous, separate online study that shows even native speakers learn almost one new word a day in their own language until middle age.
Trenkic points out that the MIT study analysed something extremely specific – the ability to pass for a native speaker in terms of grammatical accuracy. To the average language student, that may not be all that relevant.
“People sometimes ask, what is the biggest advantage of foreign languages? Will I earn more money? Will I be cleverer? Will I stay healthier? But actually, the biggest advantage of knowing foreign languages is being able to communicate with more people,” she says.
Trenkic herself is originally from Serbia. She only became fluent in English in her twenties, after she moved to the UK. She says she still makes grammatical mistakes, especially when she is tired or stressed. “Yet, despite all that – and this is crucial – I can do amazing things in English,” she later writes in an email. “I can enjoy the greatest literary works, I can produce meaningful and coherent texts of publishable quality.”
In fact, the MIT quiz classified her as a native English speaker.
At the Spanish Nursery, where the teachers are singing ‘Cumpleanos feliz’ and the book corner stocks The Gruffalo in Hebrew, the director herself turns out to be a late starter. Carmen Rampersad grew up in Romania and only really mastered English when she moved abroad in her twenties. Her children absorbed Spanish at nursery.
But perhaps the most adventurous linguist is her husband. Originally from Trinidad, he learned Romanian from her family, who live close to the border with Moldova.
“His Romanian is excellent,” she says. “He speaks it with a Moldavian accent. It’s hilarious.”
https://www.bbc.com/future/story/20181024-the-best-age-to-learn-a-foreign-language
Ikumen: How Japan’s ‘hunky dads’ are changing parenting
A government programme has tried to make fatherhood cool and sexy. Has it succeeded?
Cast your eyes over a Japanese newspaper, fashion magazine or manga story and you may find a new kind of ‘superhero’.
They are smiling and handsome as they play swordfight over breakfast or take a bike ride together in the park. The father and child may even be dressed in stylish matching outfits. They are sympathetic and understanding, and they will happily do the cooking and housework.
These are the ikumen: a combination of the word ikuji (childcare) and ikemen (hunk) – a stark contrast to the older stereotypes of the remote, workaholic father. The term was first devised by an ad salesman in the 2000s, and in 2010 the Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare launched the national Ikumen Project to promulgate the idea as a way of encouraging greater paternal involvement in family life.
The idea soon caught on, and today ikumen can be seen throughout Japanese popular culture. But does this trend really represent significant progress in gender equality? Or do the glossy photoshoots simply add a sparkle and sheen to a superficial change in attitudes, while women still shoulder most of the family responsibilities?
In years gone by, the Japanese father’s primary role was considered to be that of the bread winner. These ‘salarymen’ were devoted to their company, working long hours to climb the corporate ladder and provide financial security to the family. “Utter commitment to one’s work represented the apotheosis of manliness”, writes Hannah Vassallo, who recently published an anthropological study of Japanese fathers for a book, Cool Japanese Men.
apan, of course, was not alone in these views. But even in the 1980s the average man spent fewer than 40 minutes interacting with their children on the average workday – and that was often during a family meal. According to one observational study, some men could not even make tea or locate their own clothes without their wife’s assistance. When the father did interact with his children, he was often remote and commanded respect, even fear – a fact reflected in the common saying “jishin, kaminari, kaji, oyaji” – “earthquake, thunder, fire and father”.
Needless to say, these attitudes had some serious repercussions. They made it much harder for women to maintain a career after childbirth, for instance, leading many to become increasingly disenchanted with the concept of marriage. The result was that they started marrying later, or not at all – contributing to the now infamous dip in Japan’s birth rate. The 1980s also saw a rise in child suicides, which some linked to the lack of paternal support.
Even so, change was slow. In 2002, for instance, just 0.33% of eligible men took the paternity leave after the birth of a child. One survey, from 2008, reported that a third of men would have preferred to spend more time with their children – but they worried that their bosses would disapprove of the time taken off work.
The government’s Ikumen Project was meant to remedy this situation, generating “a societal movement whereby men are able to become proactively involved in childcare”. It provided symposia and workshops, and fathers were also given the ‘Work-life Balance Handbook’ to help them juggle the competing demands of the office and the home.
Unlike previous campaigns to increase paternal engagement, the Ikumen Project painted the father as a heroic figure, emphasising his masculinity and sexual allure; one of its posters depicted one man tearing off his suit and shirt, Superman-like, to reveal the project’s logo on a t-shirt underneath, with the slogan “Ikumen strength for society”. The implication was that these ‘heroes’ were not just protecting their family; by nurturing the next generation of workers, they were helping to save the country.
Thanks to its connotations with the ikemen hunks, the term was generally well received. “Everyone in Japan would be familiar with the word ikemen,” says Vassallo. “And I think that’s how ikumen was born and gained any traction – it sounds a lot better than the previous words for a caring father that existed in Japanese before that point.”
You can now find magazines like FQ (Father’s Quarterly) Japan advertising father-child matching outfits and family photoshoots alongside its celebrity interviews; it even held a Mr Ikumen pageant. Emotionally sensitive ikumen are the romantic leads in TV comedies and there is even a manga series – Ikumen! – that explores the trials and tribulations of 21-year-old Midorikawa Hiroya, a househusband raising his daughter while his wife works.
In a stark contrast to the old-fashioned salaryman, Hiroya’s sense of fulfilment and self-worth stems from his relationship with his daughter – and his ikumen status helps protect him from the typical stigma attached to unemployed men. In some strips, the women near to Hiroya and his friends blush with desire as they see the ikumen fathers playing with their children.
As a marketing campaign, the Ikumen Project has therefore been a great success, sparking some important discussions about the ways that fathers are portrayed. “The awareness is there,” says Vassallo. Yet it has also received its fair share of criticism. Many women, for example, feel resentful that men are being treated as heroes for taking a fair share of very routine jobs. So although they may repeat the phrase “ikumen over ikemen” – and express admiration for the caring fathers they encounter – they also wonder why their own efforts aren’t being recognised to the same degree.
“I think everyone jumped on the bandwagon at first,” Vassallo says. “and then [some people], especially Japanese women, thought ‘let’s slow down a bit and see how much we should be holding these fathers up on a pedestal here.’” After all, some men may claim to be ikumen despite doing a tiny portion of the household chores. Even the official Ikumen Project Handbook – for all its good intentions – still presented the mother as taking the primary responsibility for the children; for the men, childcare is still a bonus.
Some men, meanwhile, have complained about “ikumen illness” – the exhaustion of meeting high expectations at work and at home – and even if they personally hold a more progressive view, there is still the fear that a devoted father who takes time out of the office may be penalised by antiquated bosses who don’t understand the new policies.
Nor should the Ikumen Project mask the many broader structural issues that can hold back gender equality. Brigitte Steger from Cambridge University, for instance, points out that Japanese law still doesn’t recognise the equal standing of each parent in cases of divorce. She says that many fathers are not obliged to pay alimony, and, conversely, they are not guaranteed to get access to their children “even when they had a good relationship with them”. Overall, Japan still remains very low on the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development’s rankings of gender equality in the workplace.
Even so, there are some signs that tangible positive changes are afoot. The take-up of paternal leave, while still low, has significantly increased since the Ikumen Project was first introduced, for instance – rising from 1.9% in 2012 to 7% in 2017. And fewer than 45% of people now support the idea that “men should work, women should stay at home” – a drop of 15% since 1992, when 60% supported the traditional gender norms.
And anecdotally, devoted fathers are now more visible in everyday life. “You see many fathers with their children, especially during weekends and in urban areas, and many fathers have quite warm relationships with their children,” says Steger, who edited the book Cool Japanese Men.
Vassallo agrees that real behavioural change is slow, but she has found that the fathers she interviewed were beginning to carve out their own, individual path. They may not meet the heroic image of the prototypical ikumen – and some even felt embarrassed to use the term – but they were taking pleasure in the upbringing of their children, sharing tips with other parents on Facebook and regularly attending PTA meetings. “It filled me with more of a sense that they are navigating a healthy relationship with their attitudes towards work and family,” she says. “That fills me with more optimism.”
https://www.bbc.com/future/story/20181127-ikumen-how-japans-hunky-dads-are-changing-parenting
