Lunchtime in a Japanese School: Optimum Lessons in Character Education?

In the quest for equity and creating the best human capital the workforce of the 21st century requires, character education classes to align to Common Core standards/assessments requiring new/additional teacher professional development are occurring in school districts around the country.  For your reading pleasure, peruse this 2500 page School Counseling Lessons by Grade (2014) curriculum from the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education promoting good behavior and character.  Numerous administrator and teacher professional development courses and conferences are offered to learn how to implement the curriculum. Many STL area school districts outsource to a non-government organization (NGO) educational consortium, EducationPlus, for professional development classes in character education.  Membership and courses are an additional expense to districts to learn how to teach to a centralized curriculum and you can determine if your district is a consortium member here.

Think of EducationPlus as a layer between the districts and DESE.  It assists districts (for membership/course fees) to align its curriculum with the common standards adopted by DESE.  Expanding the layer of ‘assistance’, DESE belongs to a regional consortium (funded by Federal (taxpayer) funding), a ‘Comprehensive Center’, that advises DESE on how to align with Federal USDOEd directives.  Read how the state education bureaucrats learn to follow federal directives in Distant, Unaccountable Bureaucrats: What Brexit & Dissatisfaction with American Education Reform Have in Common.  American education policy is centralization and unless local districts start truly determining their own curriculum, these are most likely the character education lessons used in the majority of Missouri public schools if they want to attain DESE accreditation in order to keep receiving federal/state funding.

Teaching character education is not a faulty goal in and of itself.  However, it should be questioned who is crafting the curriculum, why it is being implemented and what is the intended outcome.  If (which it is) the data is tracked cradle to grave to determine if a student is aligning his/her character traits (attitudes, behaviors and beliefs) to what centralized bureaucrats and NGOs determine what is acceptable, it could be a real issue for a child who doesn’t fulfill the pre-determined governmental/NGO goals.

Maybe there is a superior, less invasive, less expensive, and locally control curricula to teach character education.  Anne sent a video  illustrating how character traits are taught during Japances lunchtime rituals.  She writes:

What a thought provoking video from Japan about continuing a child’s education through meal time. No, they are not doing digital lessons while they eat they are serving each other, they are thanking the cooks and cleaning up after themselves. What lessons are these children learning about their responsibility to each other? What are they learning about respect for others property? Would this be a group project that you would support your child’s participation in? Meanwhile American schools are focused on getting a higher score on a standardized math test. Hmmmm. Food for thought.

And as an aside, wouldn’t you love to see these type of lunches on trays?  Freshly grown food prepared by real cooks?  Unlike what is happening in American schools, Japanese students compete to determine who is the lucky one to eat the leftovers.  Japanese children might be quite surprised at how lunch is viewed in American schools:

Lyrics:
Give me some seconds
I, I need to get some food today
My friends are at the corner store
Getting junk so they don’t waste away
My lover ate her 2 grams of meat
Just about to starve
My bread was taken by some school bully
Askin’ bout s’more
And i know i gave up on food months ago
I know i’m trying to forget it
But between the milk and feta cheese
The pains in my tummy sing
You know I’m trying hard to find
nourishment

So by the time you go to practice
And you feel like falling down
I’ll carry you home

Tonight
We are hungry.
Set the policy on fire
It can burn brighter
Than the sun

Tonight
We are hungry
Set the policy on fire
It can burn brighter
Than the sun

Now i know that this is not
All that you got.
I guess that I,
I just thought maybe we could find a
way not to starve today
But our friends are back
They are filled right up
Cause they found somewhere to find lots of food

Tonight
We are hungry
Set the policy on fire
It can burn brighter
Than the sun

Tonight
We are hungry
Set the policy on fire
It can burn brighter
Than the sun

Crawling home tonight
Just crawling home tonight
Crawling home tonight
Just crawling home tonight;

The cooks are on my side
But I have no energy to run
So will someone come and carry me home tonight
No nourishment arrived
But i can taste mom’s meal
So will someone come and carry me home

Tonight
We are hungry
Set the policy on fire
It can burn brighter
Than the sun

Tonight
We are hungry
Set the policy on fire
It can burn brighter
Than the sun

So if by the time that it’s all over
And you feel like falling down
I’ll carry you home tonight

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