7 ms·

> The idea that lunches can be freshly made, on site, out of healthy ingredients and children are active participants in serving and cleaning up is just crazy.

> The idea that lunches can be freshly made, on site, out of healthy ingredients and children are active participants in serving and cleaning up is just crazy. > When I encountered it for the first time I felt like a big part of my childhood had been sold to the lowest bidder. ....I share the sentiment, but I also see the chasm between the requirements to get to what's desired, & what's actually given to meet those requirements (which is almost nothing). To have this program exist requires children that can be trusted to not waste the food that they're given, to behave, & to learn about preparing their own meals. It's a bootstrapping problem, trust problem, & expectations problem, all at once. Japan was able to do this by pressuring its citizens & youth to pay the cultural toll needed to get there, and it was a toll that *everyone* had to pay into. No exceptions. Whilst there can be pockets of local communities that can do this, the probability that the same thing can happen *everywhere* in the US is close to zero, given the cultural emphasis placed on individualism. It is also from this emphasis of individual exceptionalism where there can be no guarantees that *everyone* will pay the cultural toll. It must be *everyone*, or this proposal won't work: It'll just be another form of subsidization by another name. ------ Note: This doesn't mean that it can't happen, just that the amount of effort needed to get there is monumental, and that certain axioms have to be relaxed significantly to do so.

ethbr1 1y ago
Kids don't go to all schools: they go to their school. So by fixing things in one school, any school, you're really fixing things for all the kids that go there.
- pnutjam 1y ago
  This is why the wealthy should be required to use public schools.
  - Aurornis 1y ago
    People who send kids to private schools pay taxes (which fund schools) but don’t take resources from public schools. Forcing them to use the public schools would further divide the tax funding across more kids, reducing the funds available per kid. This suggestion is reminiscent of California trying to reduce educational inequality by eliminating advanced math classes and putting everyone together. It was a terrible idea, but it made sense to someone looking for what they thought was an easy solution.
    - amanaplanacanal 1y ago
      The idea is around the wealthy having the incentive to financially support public schools.
      - Aurornis 1y ago
        Public schools are funded by taxes. Wealthy people already pay those taxes. If you force everyone to use the public schools, you’re just dividing the tax money across more students. In the context of school lunch, they would just send their kids to school with a packed lunch. The whole concept of forbidding people from taking advantage of other educational opportunities is half-baked class warfare fodder. It doesn’t make sense if you think about the numbers, but it appeals to people who are more interested in punishing wealthy people than fixing the situation.
        dagw 1y ago
        Full disclosure, am a parent who sends their kid to a charter school and strong advocate for parents to be allowed to choose where to send their schools. That being said, the strong version of the argument being made is that if all schools are funded nationally (so that schools in more affluent areas don't automatically get more money) and rich people and people of influence were forced to send their kids to the same public schools as every body else, then those people would be more inclined to use their influence to try to make public schools better and would be less inclined to fight against raising taxes to improve public education. Of course this would go against those peoples narrow self interest (since many of their kids would probably end up getting a worse education) so it is unlikely to happen
        Aurornis 1y ago
        I understand the argument, but I’m trying to point out that similar claims were made about eliminating advanced math classes in California and it did not work at all. I think the claim appeals to some people because they’re bought in to the idea that a small fraction of wealthy people control everything from school budgets to taxes, and therefore if you force them into your space and restrict their rights to other options they will use that extreme influence to improve the situation for everyone. Yet in practice it doesn’t work, and we’ve seen it play out. In California the parents who cared about their kids’ math scores just gave up on school math classes and hired tutors or did their own at-home tutoring (at great sacrifice, especially for the non-wealthy). With school lunches you would just see parents with means sending their kids to school with good prepared lunches. I suppose the next logical extension is to ban wealthy parents from sending their kids in with lunches and hope that it will set off the chain of events that’s supposed to make them fix the problem for everyone. Where I live our school budgets and funding are partially up for vote on the ballot every election cycle. It’s not for the wealthy to decide, it’s just a public vote. And things still aren’t passing easily. I think people reach for the wealthy as an easy excuse for who to blame, but whenever I look at the ballot results it’s impossible to ignore the fact that the general public is averse to increasing school budgets right now.
  - idrios 1y ago
    The wealthy do use public schools. They pay huge amounts to live in upper class neighborhoods with wealthy peers, where a lot of tax money goes into the schooling system so the kids can take all sorts of extracurriculars and AP classes. It gets the same results as private school but the cost comes from living in that neighborhood rather than paying the school directly
    - mystraline 1y ago
      The underlying issue too is "Sorry Timmy, cause we're not rich and live in a poorer district, your schooling is worse and you have access to less choice." And that goes back to how taxes for public schools are driven. The problem seems too engrained and too massive to fix. And since schools are state controlled, you'd need 50 solutions, not 1.
    - BobaFloutist 1y ago
      California actually has a pretty solid school tax-redistribition system that more or less solves this problem (of course districts still can and do fundraise for direct donations to the PTA/music fund and bond measures to upgrade facilities, but it's still vastly more fair). In a completely unrelated phenomenon, private schools are incredibly popular among Californians of means.
      - nothercastle 1y ago
        I assume you forgot /s on the unrelated part
      - gamblor956 1y ago
        Most wealthy people in CA don't send their kid to private school. That's a rarity even among the wealthy. There are plenty of good public schools in CA. There are only a handful of good private ones.
        talldatethrow 1y ago
        I am dating someone that has a child in private school. First grade costs $4k+ a month, maybe even 6k I forget. Nothing in the parking lot or talking even screams wealthy. Every person I've met in the social circle, also send their kids to private school in the SF bay area. I haven't even met another adult that sends their kids to public school. These are people that make $250k-$600k probably. But that's not "wealthy" in the SF bay area.
  - splitstud 1y ago
    This right here. This is the problem. Faulty logic like this is why we are stuck with underperforming schools. No, no, no. If you want better schools then vote for school choice.
  - theonething 1y ago
    The wealthy should not be required to go to public schools. They should be able to choose whatever schools they think is the best fit for their children. Same for everyone else.
    - DrillShopper 1y ago
      Sounds good to me, so long as they pay for it.
      - devilbunny 1y ago
        Not only do they pay for it, they pay for public schools too. I am, by any measure, at least upper-middle-class (though I do have to work for money; it's not free in my mailbox). I don't have kids, so I wouldn't be taking advantage of the public schools I pay for, but I also grew up in a very median-income household and went to private schools (which were much less expensive at the time, though still not cheap). So my parents paid for public schools that neither of their children ever attended.
atoav 1y ago
> To have this program exist requires children that can be trusted to not waste the food that they're given, to behave, & to learn about preparing their own meals. > > It's a bootstrapping problem, trust problem, & expectations problem, all at once. In Austrian civil service I worked with kids who had special needs and were predominantly from poor social backgrounds. I made homework with them, drove them to school and back from day care in a bus, and I prepared food with them, had them deal with the dirty dishes, etc. Most of the kids totally crazy behavior immidiately made sense once you met the parents. In fact there were only two kids where this wasn't the case and the first had PTSD of a life-changing magnitude (fled the Syrian war) and the other had good parents but a mental condition (I suspect severe ADHD). Most of those kids would have been classified by the general public as hopeless cases. I cooked with them, did the dishes, baked, regularily. Even kids that get beaten at home or were riddled with war trauma are surprisingly reliable if you just give them a task they understand. And turns out tasks they do every day are easy to understand after a week. If those kids could make it, I am not the least worried about kids in better circumstances. Will it always be 100% perfect when kids do it? Will every kid be at it with full effort every day? Will a new kid grok it instantly? No. But that is okay. What is the worst that can happen? They go without food as a consequence? Other Kids show them how? You're making it sound as if preparing food together is some unnatural herculian challenge while preparing food together was probably the most common act humanity has ever shared doing throughout its history. No it must not be everyone. Prepare food? Get food. Pretty simple. Waste food? That was yours. And the other kids also don't like to see that. The rason for having a society is to deal with those kind of differences. If you teach kids how to get structure into their lives and how to eat healthy the wasted food will easily be saved in future costs in the health and social systems. Also: my kids could do this, US kids can't. What does thst mean for the US economy 4 decades down the line in comparison? You really think the US can afford to "educate" kids that way?
gosub100 1y ago
> the cultural emphasis placed on individualism. That's just a roundabout way to spell diversity, isn't it?
- tomsmeding 1y ago
  It's not, they are different things. Diversity refers to people of various biological backgrounds, mental makeups and opinions, financial powers, etc. Individualism refers to the idea that everyone lives for their own benefit primarily, and for "the group" (town, country, club, etc.) secondarily. (In Japan, one lives for the group primarily — barring exceptions, of course. Just like you have exceptions to individualism in the West.) You could have a society that's diverse but not individual, or a non-diverse one that's individual. Though there is a correlation.
- lurking_swe 1y ago
  Individualism is a concept that emphasizes prioritizing oneself above all else, including family, friends, and your local community. What does that have to do with race or country of birth, or your gender?
  - godshatter 1y ago
    People who follow individualism, from what I've seen and experienced, are simply the ones who are not joining the tribe that has managed to get them hating the other tribes the most. They actually have at least one belief they could agree on with each tribe, but also have one or more beliefs that would get them attacked or banished by each tribe. The latter always wins, so all tribes hate the individualist for not hating the other tribes enough. Tribes that talk about individualism as being a great strength and then punishing you for not conforming are not really that individualistic, in my opinion. It's not the individualists who are the problem. They are the ones getting ostracized by all for daring to have a set of beliefs that don't conform precisely with any of the tribes warring with each other. They would prefer that the tribes disbanded and everyone was free to believe what they wanted without fear of pissing off people they have never met. Most people, as far as I've seen, just want to live their lives believing what they like without getting attacked out of the blue one day. I remember when you didn't know what others believed and could spend a lot of time with your favorite drink in hand finding out, arguing, agreeing, and leaving in peace. Well, at least most of the time.
throwawayqqq11 1y ago
Imagine paying the kids a small amount for their work. Outliers will be everywhere, you only have to select the right ones, and not fix an entire suburbs culture, and ofc the obligatory: tax the rich.
- presentation 1y ago
  Part of the point of the Japanese way is to communicate that keeping public spaces clean is everyone’s responsibility. Paying kids for it communicates the opposite.
  - throwawayqqq11 1y ago
    You have pushing (social pressure) and pulling (payment) motivators and there are small didactive tasks to teach children the worthyness of effort up to large societal goals, taught with them. Your comparison is weird. Expecting payment does not make you a self centeted capitalist. Children could become one if they seen the normalization of exploitation all around, when payment is more then just fair compensation but someone elses dire expense and you cant have nice things otherwise.
    - presentation 1y ago
      Nobody is talking about being a self centered capitalist except you. The relevant aspect of Japan that is special here is that beyond the classroom, in all aspects of society, people take care of the commons, without compensation. Paying kids for cleaning means that they’re off the hook when you don’t pay them; Japanese society has everyone taking care of public spaces because it’s a common social expectation, not because they’re compensated or rewarded in any way for it.
  - nothercastle 1y ago
    Yeah the op doesn’t get that. If you pay the kids then kids from wealthy families will think it’s not worth doing
    - 1y ago
PaulRobinson 1y ago
This "cultural toll" you talk of, is just another form of conformist behaviour that all societies have in different forms. Some countries have class/caste strata, others have a laissez-faire attitude to expectations in general, others have a rigid societal code, others appear to be less so but the moment you go near guns, abortion or taxation the societal codes and hierarchy spring into action and snap shut around the ankle of the idiot who went near them. Japan may look different to the society you are used to or grew up in, but it's no less or more conformist, it's just different. As a very simple example, in the US, people work for tips and often struggle to make ends meet in minimum wage jobs: that's a form of cultural toll. In Japan, nobody needs to work for tips (you may be followed out of the restaurant to have your tip returned to you), most people can make ends meet more easily, but there are other expectations around work and family: that's cultural toll too. What's interesting to me is that you seem to think that the status quo in the US is rightly defensible. Looking in from afar with limited skin in the game I'd argue it looks really, really dumb. This "individualism" (but where the courts get to tell people who they are and what they can believe when it comes to certain issues that have religious or historical undertones), seems to be leading to a fractured partisan nation where everyone hates anyone who even slightly disagrees with them. Not a great way to bring kids up... perhaps y'all could try something else for a while, hmm?
- erikerikson 1y ago
  I upvoted this but it could really do without the last paragraph. Courts aren't telling us who we are or what we can believe. Trying to summarize our mess in so few words isn't something I'd attempt. Finally: many of us live differently and are doing our best to shift things more broadly.
  - PaulRobinson 1y ago
    Courts are not meant to tell us who you are what you can believe, but they are - by the SCOTUS' own admission - swayed by public opinion, and often support a narrative they perceive within wider society. The back/forth on abortion rights is a reasonable example.
- 1y ago
em-bee 1y ago
To have this program exist requires children that can be trusted you got that completely wrong. it requires adults that teach children how to behave. Japan was able to do this by pressuring its citizens & youth to pay the cultural toll needed to get there, and it was a toll that *everyone* had to pay into now that is just offensive. this is how japanese culture developed. there was no toll to achieve it. (there are some downsides, but they are mostly in the behavior of men towards women, which is a global problem). this is how most asian cultures work. and african too. children learn to do these things, and they learn how to behave properly.
- Aeolun 1y ago
  The idea that there are no negatives to this social pressure to behave is hopelessly optimistic. Just in my direct environment are two elementary schoolers that despair of going to school (and one stopped entirely). It really kills me that kids come out of school looking like that.
  - em-bee 1y ago
    compared to going to school in the US? lack of social pressure doesn't eliminate bullying for example. actually, bullying is a form of social pressure too. i do agree that social pressure is bad. pressure to conform is bad. conforming itself isn't. but the point really is that the social pressure in japan is actually just of a different form compared to the pressure that exists in the US. it is an illusion to think that there is no social pressure in the US. and i understand that in japan this is extreme. but learning to prepare food or clean is not the problem here. the big downside in japan is that it is more difficult for victims to speak up. but it wasn't much better in the west until recently. that child you mention has no one to talk to to get help. social pressure to conform is only part of the problem here. it's also lack of awareness and understanding. but i have the impression that this is changing, so i am hopeful.
    - Aeolun 1y ago
      Of course there’s social pressure in the US too. But it’s different. I’d argue that the US has a lot of issues, but social pressure to conform isn’t anywhere close to the worst. My son here gets stressed out if he’s not brought a hairnet in the proper color for swimming lessons. Never mind that there’s no requirement to wear a hairnet in my home country, the idea of requiring a specific color, or the teacher getting upset if it’s forgotten is bizarre. Nonetheless, everyone thinks this is a major problem here, and so kids internalize that and perpetuate it. In regards to the speaking up thing, I think a major component there is that it’s often considered a you problem. All these other kids go to school just fine, so the problem must be you.
liveoneggs 1y ago
Every other part of the school operates on the assumption that kids can behave, learn things, and do stuff. There is no need to paint it as some kind of cultural/racial narrative. American children could, in fact, have more civilized lunch behavior if it was desired by the adults in charge.

ethbr1 1y ago

Kids don't go to all schools: they go to their school. So by fixing things in one school, any school, you're really fixing things for all the kids that go there.

pnutjam 1y ago
This is why the wealthy should be required to use public schools.
- Aurornis 1y ago
  People who send kids to private schools pay taxes (which fund schools) but don’t take resources from public schools. Forcing them to use the public schools would further divide the tax funding across more kids, reducing the funds available per kid. This suggestion is reminiscent of California trying to reduce educational inequality by eliminating advanced math classes and putting everyone together. It was a terrible idea, but it made sense to someone looking for what they thought was an easy solution.
  - amanaplanacanal 1y ago
    The idea is around the wealthy having the incentive to financially support public schools.
    - Aurornis 1y ago
      Public schools are funded by taxes. Wealthy people already pay those taxes. If you force everyone to use the public schools, you’re just dividing the tax money across more students. In the context of school lunch, they would just send their kids to school with a packed lunch. The whole concept of forbidding people from taking advantage of other educational opportunities is half-baked class warfare fodder. It doesn’t make sense if you think about the numbers, but it appeals to people who are more interested in punishing wealthy people than fixing the situation.
      - dagw 1y ago
        Full disclosure, am a parent who sends their kid to a charter school and strong advocate for parents to be allowed to choose where to send their schools. That being said, the strong version of the argument being made is that if all schools are funded nationally (so that schools in more affluent areas don't automatically get more money) and rich people and people of influence were forced to send their kids to the same public schools as every body else, then those people would be more inclined to use their influence to try to make public schools better and would be less inclined to fight against raising taxes to improve public education. Of course this would go against those peoples narrow self interest (since many of their kids would probably end up getting a worse education) so it is unlikely to happen
        Aurornis 1y ago
        I understand the argument, but I’m trying to point out that similar claims were made about eliminating advanced math classes in California and it did not work at all. I think the claim appeals to some people because they’re bought in to the idea that a small fraction of wealthy people control everything from school budgets to taxes, and therefore if you force them into your space and restrict their rights to other options they will use that extreme influence to improve the situation for everyone. Yet in practice it doesn’t work, and we’ve seen it play out. In California the parents who cared about their kids’ math scores just gave up on school math classes and hired tutors or did their own at-home tutoring (at great sacrifice, especially for the non-wealthy). With school lunches you would just see parents with means sending their kids to school with good prepared lunches. I suppose the next logical extension is to ban wealthy parents from sending their kids in with lunches and hope that it will set off the chain of events that’s supposed to make them fix the problem for everyone. Where I live our school budgets and funding are partially up for vote on the ballot every election cycle. It’s not for the wealthy to decide, it’s just a public vote. And things still aren’t passing easily. I think people reach for the wealthy as an easy excuse for who to blame, but whenever I look at the ballot results it’s impossible to ignore the fact that the general public is averse to increasing school budgets right now.
- idrios 1y ago
  The wealthy do use public schools. They pay huge amounts to live in upper class neighborhoods with wealthy peers, where a lot of tax money goes into the schooling system so the kids can take all sorts of extracurriculars and AP classes. It gets the same results as private school but the cost comes from living in that neighborhood rather than paying the school directly
  - mystraline 1y ago
    The underlying issue too is "Sorry Timmy, cause we're not rich and live in a poorer district, your schooling is worse and you have access to less choice." And that goes back to how taxes for public schools are driven. The problem seems too engrained and too massive to fix. And since schools are state controlled, you'd need 50 solutions, not 1.
  - BobaFloutist 1y ago
    California actually has a pretty solid school tax-redistribition system that more or less solves this problem (of course districts still can and do fundraise for direct donations to the PTA/music fund and bond measures to upgrade facilities, but it's still vastly more fair). In a completely unrelated phenomenon, private schools are incredibly popular among Californians of means.
    - nothercastle 1y ago
      I assume you forgot /s on the unrelated part
    - gamblor956 1y ago
      Most wealthy people in CA don't send their kid to private school. That's a rarity even among the wealthy. There are plenty of good public schools in CA. There are only a handful of good private ones.
      - talldatethrow 1y ago
        I am dating someone that has a child in private school. First grade costs $4k+ a month, maybe even 6k I forget. Nothing in the parking lot or talking even screams wealthy. Every person I've met in the social circle, also send their kids to private school in the SF bay area. I haven't even met another adult that sends their kids to public school. These are people that make $250k-$600k probably. But that's not "wealthy" in the SF bay area.
- splitstud 1y ago
  This right here. This is the problem. Faulty logic like this is why we are stuck with underperforming schools. No, no, no. If you want better schools then vote for school choice.
- theonething 1y ago
  The wealthy should not be required to go to public schools. They should be able to choose whatever schools they think is the best fit for their children. Same for everyone else.
  - DrillShopper 1y ago
    Sounds good to me, so long as they pay for it.
    - devilbunny 1y ago
      Not only do they pay for it, they pay for public schools too. I am, by any measure, at least upper-middle-class (though I do have to work for money; it's not free in my mailbox). I don't have kids, so I wouldn't be taking advantage of the public schools I pay for, but I also grew up in a very median-income household and went to private schools (which were much less expensive at the time, though still not cheap). So my parents paid for public schools that neither of their children ever attended.

atoav 1y ago

> To have this program exist requires children that can be trusted to not waste the food that they're given, to behave, & to learn about preparing their own meals. > > It's a bootstrapping problem, trust problem, & expectations problem, all at once. In Austrian civil service I worked with kids who had special needs and were predominantly from poor social backgrounds. I made homework with them, drove them to school and back from day care in a bus, and I prepared food with them, had them deal with the dirty dishes, etc. Most of the kids totally crazy behavior immidiately made sense once you met the parents. In fact there were only two kids where this wasn't the case and the first had PTSD of a life-changing magnitude (fled the Syrian war) and the other had good parents but a mental condition (I suspect severe ADHD). Most of those kids would have been classified by the general public as hopeless cases. I cooked with them, did the dishes, baked, regularily. Even kids that get beaten at home or were riddled with war trauma are surprisingly reliable if you just give them a task they understand. And turns out tasks they do every day are easy to understand after a week. If those kids could make it, I am not the least worried about kids in better circumstances. Will it always be 100% perfect when kids do it? Will every kid be at it with full effort every day? Will a new kid grok it instantly? No. But that is okay. What is the worst that can happen? They go without food as a consequence? Other Kids show them how? You're making it sound as if preparing food together is some unnatural herculian challenge while preparing food together was probably the most common act humanity has ever shared doing throughout its history. No it must not be everyone. Prepare food? Get food. Pretty simple. Waste food? That was yours. And the other kids also don't like to see that. The rason for having a society is to deal with those kind of differences. If you teach kids how to get structure into their lives and how to eat healthy the wasted food will easily be saved in future costs in the health and social systems. Also: my kids could do this, US kids can't. What does thst mean for the US economy 4 decades down the line in comparison? You really think the US can afford to "educate" kids that way?

gosub100 1y ago

> the cultural emphasis placed on individualism. That's just a roundabout way to spell diversity, isn't it?

tomsmeding 1y ago
It's not, they are different things. Diversity refers to people of various biological backgrounds, mental makeups and opinions, financial powers, etc. Individualism refers to the idea that everyone lives for their own benefit primarily, and for "the group" (town, country, club, etc.) secondarily. (In Japan, one lives for the group primarily — barring exceptions, of course. Just like you have exceptions to individualism in the West.) You could have a society that's diverse but not individual, or a non-diverse one that's individual. Though there is a correlation.
lurking_swe 1y ago
Individualism is a concept that emphasizes prioritizing oneself above all else, including family, friends, and your local community. What does that have to do with race or country of birth, or your gender?
- godshatter 1y ago
  People who follow individualism, from what I've seen and experienced, are simply the ones who are not joining the tribe that has managed to get them hating the other tribes the most. They actually have at least one belief they could agree on with each tribe, but also have one or more beliefs that would get them attacked or banished by each tribe. The latter always wins, so all tribes hate the individualist for not hating the other tribes enough. Tribes that talk about individualism as being a great strength and then punishing you for not conforming are not really that individualistic, in my opinion. It's not the individualists who are the problem. They are the ones getting ostracized by all for daring to have a set of beliefs that don't conform precisely with any of the tribes warring with each other. They would prefer that the tribes disbanded and everyone was free to believe what they wanted without fear of pissing off people they have never met. Most people, as far as I've seen, just want to live their lives believing what they like without getting attacked out of the blue one day. I remember when you didn't know what others believed and could spend a lot of time with your favorite drink in hand finding out, arguing, agreeing, and leaving in peace. Well, at least most of the time.

throwawayqqq11 1y ago

Imagine paying the kids a small amount for their work. Outliers will be everywhere, you only have to select the right ones, and not fix an entire suburbs culture, and ofc the obligatory: tax the rich.

presentation 1y ago
Part of the point of the Japanese way is to communicate that keeping public spaces clean is everyone’s responsibility. Paying kids for it communicates the opposite.
- throwawayqqq11 1y ago
  You have pushing (social pressure) and pulling (payment) motivators and there are small didactive tasks to teach children the worthyness of effort up to large societal goals, taught with them. Your comparison is weird. Expecting payment does not make you a self centeted capitalist. Children could become one if they seen the normalization of exploitation all around, when payment is more then just fair compensation but someone elses dire expense and you cant have nice things otherwise.
  - presentation 1y ago
    Nobody is talking about being a self centered capitalist except you. The relevant aspect of Japan that is special here is that beyond the classroom, in all aspects of society, people take care of the commons, without compensation. Paying kids for cleaning means that they’re off the hook when you don’t pay them; Japanese society has everyone taking care of public spaces because it’s a common social expectation, not because they’re compensated or rewarded in any way for it.
- nothercastle 1y ago
  Yeah the op doesn’t get that. If you pay the kids then kids from wealthy families will think it’s not worth doing
  - 1y ago

PaulRobinson 1y ago

This "cultural toll" you talk of, is just another form of conformist behaviour that all societies have in different forms. Some countries have class/caste strata, others have a laissez-faire attitude to expectations in general, others have a rigid societal code, others appear to be less so but the moment you go near guns, abortion or taxation the societal codes and hierarchy spring into action and snap shut around the ankle of the idiot who went near them. Japan may look different to the society you are used to or grew up in, but it's no less or more conformist, it's just different. As a very simple example, in the US, people work for tips and often struggle to make ends meet in minimum wage jobs: that's a form of cultural toll. In Japan, nobody needs to work for tips (you may be followed out of the restaurant to have your tip returned to you), most people can make ends meet more easily, but there are other expectations around work and family: that's cultural toll too. What's interesting to me is that you seem to think that the status quo in the US is rightly defensible. Looking in from afar with limited skin in the game I'd argue it looks really, really dumb. This "individualism" (but where the courts get to tell people who they are and what they can believe when it comes to certain issues that have religious or historical undertones), seems to be leading to a fractured partisan nation where everyone hates anyone who even slightly disagrees with them. Not a great way to bring kids up... perhaps y'all could try something else for a while, hmm?

erikerikson 1y ago
I upvoted this but it could really do without the last paragraph. Courts aren't telling us who we are or what we can believe. Trying to summarize our mess in so few words isn't something I'd attempt. Finally: many of us live differently and are doing our best to shift things more broadly.
- PaulRobinson 1y ago
  Courts are not meant to tell us who you are what you can believe, but they are - by the SCOTUS' own admission - swayed by public opinion, and often support a narrative they perceive within wider society. The back/forth on abortion rights is a reasonable example.
1y ago

em-bee 1y ago

To have this program exist requires children that can be trusted you got that completely wrong. it requires adults that teach children how to behave. Japan was able to do this by pressuring its citizens & youth to pay the cultural toll needed to get there, and it was a toll that *everyone* had to pay into now that is just offensive. this is how japanese culture developed. there was no toll to achieve it. (there are some downsides, but they are mostly in the behavior of men towards women, which is a global problem). this is how most asian cultures work. and african too. children learn to do these things, and they learn how to behave properly.

Aeolun 1y ago
The idea that there are no negatives to this social pressure to behave is hopelessly optimistic. Just in my direct environment are two elementary schoolers that despair of going to school (and one stopped entirely). It really kills me that kids come out of school looking like that.
- em-bee 1y ago
  compared to going to school in the US? lack of social pressure doesn't eliminate bullying for example. actually, bullying is a form of social pressure too. i do agree that social pressure is bad. pressure to conform is bad. conforming itself isn't. but the point really is that the social pressure in japan is actually just of a different form compared to the pressure that exists in the US. it is an illusion to think that there is no social pressure in the US. and i understand that in japan this is extreme. but learning to prepare food or clean is not the problem here. the big downside in japan is that it is more difficult for victims to speak up. but it wasn't much better in the west until recently. that child you mention has no one to talk to to get help. social pressure to conform is only part of the problem here. it's also lack of awareness and understanding. but i have the impression that this is changing, so i am hopeful.
  - Aeolun 1y ago
    Of course there’s social pressure in the US too. But it’s different. I’d argue that the US has a lot of issues, but social pressure to conform isn’t anywhere close to the worst. My son here gets stressed out if he’s not brought a hairnet in the proper color for swimming lessons. Never mind that there’s no requirement to wear a hairnet in my home country, the idea of requiring a specific color, or the teacher getting upset if it’s forgotten is bizarre. Nonetheless, everyone thinks this is a major problem here, and so kids internalize that and perpetuate it. In regards to the speaking up thing, I think a major component there is that it’s often considered a you problem. All these other kids go to school just fine, so the problem must be you.

liveoneggs 1y ago

Every other part of the school operates on the assumption that kids can behave, learn things, and do stuff. There is no need to paint it as some kind of cultural/racial narrative. American children could, in fact, have more civilized lunch behavior if it was desired by the adults in charge.