Dear colleagues,APU has realized that, after it loses its last experienced Japanese-language non-tenured lecturer, APU will, for copyright reasons, no longer be able to use the unique course packs that these lecturers have put together. As a result, APU has now started work on putting together APU textbooks (see below). What on earth can APU - or, to be more precise, the Ritsumeikan Board of Trustees - have been thinking when they determined to rid themselves of those skilled faculty who have passionately devoted themselves to APU's Japanese language education and who have thereby played an essential role in APU's success?
It is obvious that there can be no financial reason for placing a time limit on employment in an occupational category [such as that of the language lecturers] for which continuing employment does not lead to an increase in salary. Why are the Ritsumeikan managers so obsessed with introducing a time limit in employment that has a large negative impact in terms of education, and that not only is not a positive in terms of finances but is if anything a negative? The only reason I can think of is that if a large number of talented and enthusiastic faculty and administration staff work at Ritsumeikan for a long time, their voices will inevitably come to carry weight and authority, which in turn will expose the Ritsumeikan "democracy" as the sham it truly is, and which then will make managing Ritsumeikan more difficult, and thus is viewed as a threat.
Introducing a letter from APU: The Current Situation of the APU Japanese Language Teaching SectionDate Monday, 24 July 2006
"This semester, the Japanese Language Teaching Section of APU has been in an uproar over the issue of course packs. APU attempted to claim for itself the copyright to the course packs that were put together in the past, mainly by APU non-tenured lecturers, who did the work voluntarily and without extra pay. APU stated that, from the autumn semester, copyright would belong to APU. There was a huge backlash of opposition. If copyright is denied to those who will be fired in six months or a year, then, once they move to other universities, they would have to pay APU in order to use the materials they themselves had put together. This, it was thought, was too unreasonable. I believe that APU looked to a future after it had ridden itself of the last of the non-tenured lecturers, and decided that it wanted to keep the course packs for itself.
Because of this strong opposition, APU, it seems, has now introduced new internal regulations about copyright - but its lawyers must have told APU that they could not claim legal copyright to materials such as the course packs that were authored before the new regulations were introduced. APU therefore has no choice but to give up hope of claiming copyright over the course packs that already exist. Instead, APU has stated that it will not use the current course packs after the autumn semester; that it wants faculty to participate in teams that will put together a new set of textbooks; and that until these textbooks are completed, commercial textbooks will be used. Copyright to the new textbooks to be put together at APU will belong to APU. APU is now soliciting help to help put together the new textbooks from the non-tenured lecturers who will all be fired over the next six months to a year, from the senior tutors and tutors who at the most will be fired in two and a half years, and from part-time teachers.
Moreover, APU will not merely put together new course packs from scratch, but rather new textbooks, which it hopes to publish. APU claims it will publish original APU textbooks over the next two years or so for beginners-level Japanese, for intermediate Japanese, and for advanced-level Japanese. Needless to say, it is normal for language textbooks to be put together as course packs first, revised and re-revised time and time again, polished up, and then and only then published as textbooks.
From April this year, a large number of [language] teachers without much experience have started to work at APU. This alone has caused much confusion. But APU has decided to make things worse by deciding to move, in the autumn semester, almost all teachers to subjects they have not taught in the past.
If one was to work at APU for a long time, one might be happy to start teaching a subject one had never taught before. However, to ask faculty who are about to be fired to take charge of subjects they have never taught before just creates unnecessary confusion and has no merits. Indeed, protests were made on these very grounds. However, those in charge of the dramatic changes in who was teaching what have said that "this will improve motivation".
There are still a few members of faculty left who have experience in teaching at APU, which is why we have managed, despite all the difficulties, in coping with the large influx of new teachers. But APU seems intent on destroying everything that has been created in the past. It is impossible to believe that the decisions are sane".
Japanese version archived in http://ac-net.org/rtm/No/104