Okinawan Kids' View of America Today

Hello all,

I've been keeping a rather low profile lately, as I have been busy with family, teaching, and writing -- I just published book #23 since the first book in 2021. There just no end to writing...!

In the school where I teach English to middle-school Okinawan youth, the Japanese English teachers often give me a stack of essays to correct -- grammar, spelling, overall coherence, etc. I just finished correcting 42 short essays from one class of 14-y/o students. The exercise is to write about what they would like to do, see, eat, and where to go if they visited the USA this summer vacation.

Here are a few stats from those essays. Most expressed interest or concern about what to eat in the USA. All named specific places they would like to visit (Disneyland, national parks, museums, baseball games, New York, etc.), and most wondered whether they would be able to speak English well enough, or be able to sleep well.

However, out of 42 essays corrected this morning, these are a bit concerning:

1 worried about encountering racism.
1 worried about gangs.
3 worry about being robbed or kidnapped.
5 worry about other personal safety concerns.
7 worry about firearms and being shot.

The wording is quite specific (I corrected the spelling below):

"I worry that I might get shot / killed / there are guns and people get shot / there are so many guns, they are practically free / I might be caught in the middle of gangs and killed in a shootout"", etc.

One youngster wrote, "I worry that I can get kidnapped, shot, and murdered, and no one would care because I am an illegal alien".

In 24 years of doing this job at elementary and mostly middle school (JHS) level, this is the first time ever that I have encountered such things written in essays by youth students living in one of the most peaceful places in the world...