Japanese schools

I had tried writing out a post about the differences between American and Japanese schools not long after I got here, but it was hard to do without some kind of narrative to organize it around. Well, I still don't have a very good way to organize it, but I wrote out a post about the graduations recently and realized it would help if I had some background about how the schools are actually organized, so I revisited this draft to finish it up.

So my first day of school was the Monday after arriving here, and it started with a school-wide assembly for the sole purpose of introducing me. They had me sit up on the stage alone in front of the entire student body, the principal came up and said a few things, and they had me give my self-introduction. The whole thing was only ten minutes, but the fact that they'd get the entire school together like that just to introduce me says something about the importance of such formalities here.

So the way the grades are split between the three levels of schools is that elementary school is six grades, middle school is three, and high school is three. They're not all numbered consecutively from 1-12, but as elementary 1-6, middle 1-3, and high 1-3. Elementary and middle are compulsory, but high schools are not only not compulsory, but not even free or with guaranteed admission, even for the public high schools (which make up only about half of all high schools). So the last semester of the third year of middle school is heavily concentrated on studying for the high school entrance exams. Kindergartens are mostly all private and are basically the same as US preschools.

So within each school the students in each grade are split up into classes (there's three classes, A, B, and C, for each grade at my middle school), and each class has a room, and the kids basically are in that same room the entire time they're at school (except for special classes like art, shop, music, science, etc., which have their own special rooms), and it's the teachers that rotate around the classrooms, rather than each room belonging to a teacher and the students rotating around them. So that leads to a few differences, like how in the US the history teacher's room would basically be a history room, and have history posters all over the walls and things like that. So here the teachers have to bring any such things to class with them, so there's a little teacher's room and supply room in each grade's wing to store things like that. Also because of the fact that the teachers don't have classrooms to themselves to use as their office, there's a main teachers' room that the teachers are based in and have their desk and computer and all that, just like any other office.

Another thing is that in Japan students clean the schools rather than having janitors do it, so cleaning the classrooms and most of the halls and bathrooms is done by them. Because they each have their own classroom, it then makes sense for them not to make a mess of it, since their the very ones that'll be cleaning up any such mess later. There is a woman who cleans the teacher's room and the nearby hallways and bathrooms, among other things, and there's a guy who does the maintenance work, which also involves some cleaning, but the majority of the cleaning is done by the students.

Along with doing the cleaning, the students also serve the lunches. The kitchen staff makes it and hands off the bulk containers to the students, who then set each place at the tables and portion out the food and set it out at each place. No one brings a lunch, everyone eats the school lunch, and then afterwards the students sort out the dishes and they get taken back to the kitchen. And there's almost no wasted food that gets thrown out. If a student doesn't like something or can't eat everything, there's someone else who'll be more than happy to take it, so there can be a lot of swapping food. Also there's sometimes extra after all the food is portioned out, so a lot of the time a few of them can go back for seconds to use it all up. The lunches are super healthy too. Usually there'll be rice and miso soup with some vegetables, then a vegetable mix, some piece of meat, and a carton of milk. Occasionally the rice is swapped out for noodles, or a big roll, or even naan.

I don't know if it's related to the fact that the students 'own' their classrooms rather than the teachers, but the teachers usually just ignore it when kids aren't paying attention, or are talking a little, or whatever. Learning seems to be more left up to the kids rather than forced on them. There's also a lot of cooperation between the students when doing worksheets, or even answering questions from the teacher. They'll talk to the person next to them to check their answers, or the kids around them will whisper the answer if the kid doesn't seem to know.

Although I think there are some elementary schools that have uniforms, I think most don't, and mine doesn't, but all the middle schools and high schools do. Despite that enforced uniformity, they find other ways to individualize themselves, mainly through their backpacks and pencil cases. But similar to the uniformity enforced among the students, since the whole school system is heavilt centralized, exactly the opposite of the US, even the school buildings and classrooms are very much standardized between schools. Like, I've seen plenty of anime that take place in schools, and everything looks exactly the same as in real life, down to the style of flooring in the classrooms.

So that wraps up my observations. This is what I meant about this post being hard to organize, there's no good thing to conclude it with, it's basically just an elaborated-upon list, and that's the last item.