木村教授：ビデオを使って、一年生全員に同じ時刻、同じ授業を受けさせるというのは、どうですか。
加藤教授：3，600人同時にですか。そういう授業は、前例がありませんね。うまくいくものでしょうか。
Zenrei ga nai
Kimura kyooju: Bideo wo tsukatte, ichinensei zenin ni onaji
jikoku, onajijugyoo wo ukesaseru to iu no wa do
desuka.
Katoo kyooju: San-zen-roppyaku-nin dooji ni desu ka. Soo iu jugyoo wa,
zenreiga arimasen ne. Umaku iku mono deshoo ka.
Prof. Kimura: What do you think of the idea of using
video to give the same lesson to all the
freshmen at the same time?
Prof. Kato: You mean all 3,600 of them? That's an un-
precedented attempt. I wonder how it would
work.
Zenreiga nai means unprecedented, unexampled, unique or original. A friend of mine who teaches at the University ofTokyo told me recently that the school had introduced what he called a revolutionary new type of English class, so I went along to see what it was all about.
When he explained they were using video in their classes, I said to him, "Soo iu zenrei nara, takusan arimasu yo."
(There are many precedents along those lines.) "Ah, but we're not just using video," he replied. "Freshmen-all 3,600 of them-are using the same text, taking the same exams and watching the same video based on lessons, all at the same time, so it's fair to everyone. Pretty neat, huh?" he said. Tashika ni sonna zenrei wa kiita koto ga nakatta. (He was right. I'd never heard of anything like that before.)
When I went to observe the classes I was amazed at what I saw. With anything from 80 to 300 students per class in 24 separate classrooms, they were all simultaneously watching the same video.
The text they were using, The Universe of English, was written especially for the class by the university teaching staff and covered a wide range of intriguing topics, from cosmology by Stephen Hawking to family computers. Seeing this, I felt a certain relief. I had feared at first that with such a uniform style of teaching the establishment was coming dangerously close to exercising a form of thought control over the students. But with a curriculum based on this kind of material I felt there was less cause for concern.
At any rate, Toodai no suru koto wa, hoka no daigaku no zenrei to nariyasui. (What the University of Tokyo has started is often likely to be the precedent for other universities.) It will be interesting to see what influence it has now on university classes elsewhere in the country.