Parents in Japan show the right way to approach problems at school

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Just to contrast against all the book-banning, CRT-fearing crazies out there showing up at school boards with nonexistent problems:

I live in Japan, where I am raising two children with my wife. She feels self-conscious about how I sometimes get frustrated with the Japanese reticence to rock the boat when it seems called for. However, there are times when the measured approach is exactly appropriate, and everybody else should take notes and do better.

We are trying to deal with some allegations made by a parent against our preschool. If true, they could be pretty serious. The school denies any wrongdoing, while also saying that if any wrong was done, they’d be happy to fire people. Also, they don’t think the hypothetical thing the people did was wrong in the first place. Very comforting.

So the parents got together and held a three-hour long meeting on Zoom to develop a plan to gather testimony from other parents who might have more information, covering four years of students.
If the evidence supports the allegations, they will petition the city to bear witness to a final meeting with the school to resolve the issue. If they discover, however, that there isn’t enough data to prove their case, then they will apologize to the school and everyone will go about their business.

Shocking, I know. It’s like adults can take the time to do their homework and find out if there really is a problem or not before they go on the warpath.

Just thought it was worth sharing.

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Last I saw through a friend who taught English in Japan, another who attended classes there for an exchange program, and repeated in “Life Where I’m From” on YouTube, the Japanese have a pretty good school lunch (kyūshoku) program we helped them pay for after WWII.

The hard part: When you get school lunches (free or otherwise) in America, they’re junk food. Don’t you dare try to change that at all.

Try to get healthy universal school lunch in America and you’ll get squeals of “Soshulizms!” because the astroturf from school lunch companies / corporatists will froth up the gullible. Unfortunately I do not believe we’ll see that in most areas.

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Compared to school lunches in America, Japanese school lunches are infinitely better, hands down. Also in Germany, where I was an exchange student.

That being said, the school lunches at Japanese private schools are pretty mediocre, as well as at all high schools. The best meals are at the elementary level.

(I wonder if the meal quality at the high school level has anything to do with high school being non-mandatory?)