bringmethathorizon:

think4yourself:

notentirely:

i think we’d do well to adopt #4 here in the US. i wonder if anyone has looked at all the industrialized nations’ education systems and figured out the best-of-breed for each. i’d like to see what works - and then i’d sit back in wonder as we don’t employ any of what we learn about what works…

via ledenes who is teaching in japan

Japanese school lunch fun facts:

1. School lunches are the same for every school in the city, so every student (be they elementary, junior high, or high school) eats the same food no matter what school they’re at.
2. In fact, (most) schools don’t even have kitchens.  The school lunches are actually made daily at the school lunch center (no clue where it is) and then delivered to each school from there.  Unfortunately, they don’t have the nice Domino’s “Heat Wave” technology to keep the food warm in transit, so by the time you eat it, the school lunch is always anywhere between lukewarm and cold (soup and everything).
3. Most schools also don’t have lunch rooms, so the students eat at their desks in the classrooms.  And while I’m on that subject, I’ll mention that students stay at the same desk all day long.  In the US, students usually move from classroom to classroom and the teachers stay in the same room the whole day, but it’s just the opposite here.  Students stay in the same classroom all day and the teachers go from room to room.
4. After lunch every day is “cleaning period,” during which the students not only clean up their lunch stuff, but they clean the WHOLE school.  Schools in Japan don’t have janitors and so the students do all the cleaning.  Every day for about 20 minutes, the students work together to dust, sweep, and scrup the classrooms, hallways, bathrooms, etc, etc, etc.  It’s pretty impressive.  American students have it SO good.

#1 & #2 sounds similar the small school district I grew up in where lunch for the entire district was prepared at the high school and shipped to all the other schools. (this procedure may have changed since a new consolidated elementary/middle school was built since I graduated)

#4 sounds like a greatly expanded policy at a parochial school district I subbed at last year where the students were responsible for cleaning the lunchroom area before they returned to class.

I like the sound of #3, especially in a time of tight school budgets, but unfortunately for obvious reasons (at least to anyone who follows education and society in the U.S.), it’ll never happen in the States.

schooling in india is similar - same as #3, but no cleaning. it depends on the school - but most schools make children pack lunches to school, there’s not really an option of a cafeteria.