While those arguments may not have much merit (after all, 45 minutes of English a week isn't going to do anything to prevent the students from attaining proficiency in their native language, and while people certainly can become fluent in a second language as adults, it requires motivation), the bigger problem might be the lack of trained elementary school English teachers. Many elementary school homeroom teachers said they don't feel comfortable teaching English (something Eigo Note tried to correct, but the program seems to have already been scrapped), most elementary school ALTs aren't trained to teach English to younger kids in a progressive fashion, and the end result may be similar to what many schools have in place now- lessons that rehash a lot of vocabulary kids already know in katakana through games, without much communicative English and without motivation for the kids to retain what they learn. 

Read more about it here: http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20100629i1.html

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