Here’s another flyer. I picked this one up in Kerrisdale.
Juku Flyer Vancouver V
Note that the time table shows some emphasis on (provincial) exam preparation, but also some emphasis on English. In that context, it seems surprising that some of the English text is a bit awkward suggesting a non-native writer (i.e. someone like me).
Juku Vancouver V Timetable
Posted in Advertising, Vancouver
I’m branching out in my collection of juku flyers, this time to Berlin, Germany [thanks, Mom!].
Cover of a German juku flyer
I suspect that some people will recognize the design of this flyer as it is advertising the local branch of the juku that is probably THE most active internationally. There is not much information on the front of the flyer, except for a generically happy-looking, perhaps stereotypically German looking girl. The back of the flyer does contain a little more information. From the information it is clear that this particular juku is targeting primarily remedial purposes. This seems to be (still) generally the case in Germany and in most of Northern and Western Europe.
“Lernfreude” and “Konzentrationsvermögen” look like they are right up there with “Fahrvergnügen” in the canon of compound German words that have a chance at English adoption. In this case, they are referring to a “joy to learn” and “ability to concentrate” respectively. Departing a bit from the generically remedial script the second bullet point promises not only a “focus on weaknesses in learning”, but also a “targeted expansion of strengths in learning”.
An emphasis on the emotional aspects of learning (weaknesses) is also in clear evidence with such terms as “joy”, “confidence”, “relaxed approach to challenges”.
Finally, the flyer offers a no-cost two week trial period for newly enrolled students.
Back Side of a German juku flyer
Posted in Advertising, Germany
A Guest Post by Steve Entrich, University of Potsdam, Germany:
What we are all well aware of is the fact, that shadow education institutions are established all over the world and seem to gain greater importance from year to year. The presented flyers show a typical side of these institutions: juku are also season oriented organizations, which aim to get more students especially while summer break.
I found another flyer in China, which represents a part of the private tutoring sector, that seems pretty dubious to me and shows that also just earning money is one of the reasons to run such a business:
The article related to this flyer is posted in the German online magazine concerned with themes all around Asia, the “Asienspiegel”:
http://asienspiegel.ch/2011/07/trugerische-nachhilfekurse/
The german article you will find when following the link posted above shows you a Chinese juku flyer that was especially printed for a English language course which is held during the summer holidays and addressed to primary and middle school students that aim to upgrade their English knowledge. At second thought you might think, maybe not the students themselves are meant but their parents, on whose worries the juku owners are taking advantage in order to earn some money.
The problems you will find here are the same ones we find in a lot of other countries too: there are no quality standards that define the teachers educational level. And if that isn’t enough, in this special case the juku owner seems to lie about the qualifications of their tutors and the outcomes of the received learning sessions. The price is also quite delicate: about 40000 Yuan (ca. 6272 US $) were paid by a chinese mother after visiting a trial lesson that in the end wasn’t comparable to the later received lessons.
Meanwhile the Peking administration for trade and industry – that has already created a bunch of hotlines for such cases – advises parents to report all malpractice of those institutions. But in the end parents can’t be protected of falling into numerous traps unscrupulous juku-owners had set for them. Like in many other states the education at juku-like institutions will remain in the shadow if the state itself doesn’t install legal regulations.
Another flyer contributed by a participant in my Continuing Studies course earlier this summer.
First I find this flyer appealing, but not over-the-top in its design and professionalism.
I would note the cost for a 5-week course here. At five days a week for a nearly full day, this works out to $60/day which certainly is not terribly expensive compared to other camps/daycare options.
What was entirely new to me on this flyer was the “earn course credits” opportunity.
Perhaps because of home schooling, but also because of the existence of remote, small secondary schools with limited course offerings, I imagine, BC offers extensive options for long-distance learning. Typically, these are based on some kind of exam-for-credit system.
It is this possibility that this particular tutoring service is relying on. In their 5-week course, one of the grades 10, 11, 12 math course’s subject matter is covered and a student can thus apply to receive the credit for that course via an exam. Potentially, this offers the opportunity to a student to jump a grade of math in their secondary school or to substitute other electives instead.
This exam-for-credit is not an option in Japan and other Asian education systems. In part the absence of such a system, produces the double-schooling that I have lamented.
The “enrichment tutoring” also seems to offer possibilities beyond course credit, though “remedial tutoring” is also mentioned on this page.
The “top ten reasons” seem to be aiming at students more than parents which may be appropriate given the older age groups targeted (16-18-year olds).
Here’s the back page of this flyer:
Posted in Advertising, Vancouver
Here is one of the Vancouver juku flyers that a participant in the Continuing Studies course I taught contributed.
Single-side, basic flyer from Vancouver Juku
This is a very basic flyer that’s black and white and doesn’t really include any information for parents to base a decision on.
Note some of the key terms in the English text: “professional”, “system”, “tailor-made”.
Also note the “Can arrange pick up if needed”. This is quite typical in buxiban (Taiwanese juku) and there was additional information at this juku that it has strong Taiwan links, though it clearly doesn’t cater to Taiwanese immigrants exclusively.
The “free special gift” if obviously enticing.
Posted in Advertising, Vancouver
This flyer is from a specialized juku (learning differences) around the corner from where we live in Kitsilano.
Inside of three-fold brochure
Some of elements that are frequently emphasized in juku advertising and also appear here:
Less typical is the reference to a specific pedagogical approach, Orton-Gillingham. While I am not familiar with this approach, the mention in this flyer certainly suggests a concern with a research-foundation for approaches adopted in tutoring.
A quick check on Google Scholar reveals close to 100 articles that refer to this approach in 2010 and 2011 (as of June 2011) suggesting that it is at least widely-cited, though I am unable to sift through these citations to note whether the citation is approving, critiquing or name-dropping.
The outside of this folder flyer mainly contains some branding, contact details and a column “About ???”:
??? is a learning center that specializes in one-to-one remedial tutoring for children who struggle in school and/or have learning differences. Tutoring is based on the highly-effective and widely-recognized Orton-Gillingham approach, which combines the proven success of phincs with a multisensory delivery method of teaching.
Not sure whether the U.S. spelling of “centre” suggests that this is an American approach or juku, though nothing suggests a chain and the website only mentions the single Vancouver location.
It is pretty unclear to me what exactly “multisensory” means here, though the inside of the flyer (see above) mentions that,
Visual, auditory, tactile and kinestehtic modalities are all used to teach and to learn.
Hm… still don’t really know what that means, though it sounds like it may be akin to some of the learning strategies that seem almost physical in their practice that I see in juku, i.e. rhythmic repetition of terms, vocabulary, etc. The website also offers a FAQ entry on “What is multisensory tutoring?” but it offers more fancy terminology rather than information.
Note that the focus on learning differences is one that is rare in Japan though I’ve discussed two examples of a focus on special needs education in the juku context.
Posted in Advertising, Special Needs, Vancouver
In 2008, I wrote an article for Education Canada, published by the Canadian Education Association, that a) reported on the current state of (research on) supplementary education in Japan, and b) speculated a bit about what an understanding of juku implies for the trajectory of Canadian education. In this discussion of the Canadian context, I relied on a quick-and-dirty survey of supplementary education institutions in the Lower Mainland that I did together with intern Sabrina Lohner in the summer of 2007.
In this survey, we found 74 tutoring centres and other supplementary education institutions in the Vancouver area.
Roughly half of these supplementary education businesses promoted themselves in more languages than just English and many of them seemed to be branding themselves specifically in a way to appeal to Asian-Canadians.
The full article is freely available on the Education Canada website or as a PDF.
Posted in Advertising, Canada, Supplementary Education, Vancouver
Tagged Juku in Japan, Julian Dierkes
I have not been making good use of any of the multimedia capabilities of a blog, so I thought I’d start scanning in some of the flyers for supplementary education from around the world that I’m collecting. If you have similar flyers, I would be delighted to add them to this series with some brief comments.
For now, I will blur out brand names/contact details, though I’m not entirely sure whether I will be able to keep that up in the long run. Note that I’m not including flyers for any of the juku where I’ve conducted research, in part to safeguard their anonymity.
A Vancouver Tutoring Service Flyer
So, what do I notice when I look st this flyer?
[Apologies for the black-and-white, will have to fiddle with the copy machine settings to make this colour for the future].
For the front side of the flyer (on the left), the quote by a satisfied parent is very common on this kind of advertising. Here it speaks to one of the two main claims by tutoring companies: better grades and better attitude. The quote acts at once as advertising the service’s main claims, but also providing evidence of their success, though obviously not in any replicable way.
Unusually for Vancouver, none of the students pictured are Asian-looking. This is contrary to what I found together with an intern some years ago when we surveyed Vancouver tutoring services.
Reverse Side of a Vancouver Tutoring Service Flyer
I should note, BTW, that this flyer showed up on our doorstep in Kitsilano.
For the back side of the flyer, the paragraph here hits on all the main points that almost all supplementary education emphasizes: “unique methodology”, “custom-tailored”, “unique needs”. Presumably that is one of the main selling points, i.e. the ability (in contrast to conventional schools) to be able to tailor tutoring to a student’s learning goals. Whether this tailoring involves anything other than a different pace of progress is unclear, of course.
As is the case for many tutoring services in North America, the one advertised here is offering at-home tutoring, i.e. the equivalent of 家庭教師in Japan.
Something that his quite rare in juku promotional materials in Japan, but much more common for supplementary education in North America, is the claim of some kind of accreditation, in this case through membership in the “National Tutor Association“.
While this association does offer certification, all that’s advertised on the flyer is membership, and that is open to anyone, so it is essentially a useless piece of information that is most likely meant to hint at some kind of professional status.
Note that this particular tutoring service is a “home-based” franchise.
Posted in Advertising, Canada, Supplementary Education, Vancouver
