Photo/Illutration Junior high school students participate in extracurricular club activities. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

Zorba is a fat black cat living at Hamburg Port in Germany. One day, he is purring and luxuriating in the sun when he meets a dying seagull that lays an egg before she expires.

Zorba promises the seagull that once the chick has hatched, he will teach it to fly--never mind that cats can’t fly.

The above is from “The Story of a Seagull and the Cat Who Taught Her to Fly” by Chilean author and journalist Luis Sepulveda (1949-2020).

Zorba and his friends honor the promise. The chick grows into a young bird. The scene of her first flight is absolutely charming: Zorba lightly pats the bird’s back with his paw and says, “Now fly.” The young gull soars into the sky.

At public junior high schools around Japan, a program is being launched this spring to move extracurricular activities out of the schools on weekends and holidays.

This means such activities will no longer be supervised or coached by schoolteachers, but by a large number of local “amateurs”--parents, guardians and other volunteers.

As the main purpose of this program is to lighten the burden of overworked teachers, no prior experience or qualification will be required of applicants.

Bringing in “outsiders” is expected to make extracurricular activities more open, but some people are said to be worried about amateur coaches resorting to corporal punishment.

In fact, physical abuse still goes on in schools. Last month, a teacher coaching a volleyball club at a high school in Chiba Prefecture was arrested on suspicion of assault. The teacher reportedly grabbed the hair of a club member who made a misplay.  

Violence has no place in coaching or education. What does it mean to teach? The important thing is to motivate students and draw out their abilities.

I hope the new program will deepen discussions that involve both school “insiders” and “outsiders.”

Zorba the cat says to the effect: “Flying is possible only when the person who wished to do so from the bottom of their heart tries with all their might.”

--The Asahi Shimbun, March 23