Understanding the Japanese concept of Osouji

I love Japanese games (made by Japanese devs) due to their fluid and fun gameplay. Game devs like Namco, Capcom, and others go the extra mile to ensure a bug free flawless experience unlike the buggy western games.

This made me wonder about the origin of their quality work ethics. And one of the concepts that underlies this approach is cleanliness.

The root of their quality work ethic is rooted to Osouji as described beautifully in the video below.

PS. If any Japanese viewing this post, I want to give you guys a big shout out for being so nice. Most schools in other countries are full of hoodlums.

I'm familiar with the concept from high school anime, which often show students taking turns doing clean-up duty. That's something Western high schools could learn from.

Boy, if there was ever a textbook case of brown-nosing an entire nationality or culture, I'd say this would be it.

My sister taught kids in Japan. They're terrible. All kids are terrible in the school setting. Not really, I jest; the point I'm trying to make is that kids are the same everywhere. Japan is no differerent.

Also didn't you try to get your account cancelled @danishanwar

In Japan however they "own" the classroom; in other words, the children stay and the teachers rotate from class to class as they teach subjects. They're also in school for more days and for longer hours.

This promotes a sense of "ownership" of the classroom (I believe they call it a home room).

In the US, kids go from class to class, often for as little as an hour (that's how it was for me in high school). The teachers generally stayed in one class or rotated to another one depending on the course. This means that the kids don't really feel any ownership of where they are. Additionally, they're not really in the class long enough to make a mess (though I'm sure many teachers would disagree! :P ).

Take all this with a grain of salt; iirc, the thing I read about this was years ago so maybe things have changed.

I agree Western schools could learn a thing or two from other school systems. The US K-12 system is a joke and does not prepare people for the real world. It's more of a "college mill" meant to filter and screen kids into debt-slaves (that go to college) or peasants (that work menial jobs). Yes that's a very cynical take haha.

@mrbojangles25: All I know about American high schools comes from movies and TV shows. I've worked in UK secondary schools though. They're roughly equivalent to high school and junior high in the US. In UK secondary schools, students and teachers move around from class to class, much like US high schools. US and UK schools seem similar for the most part, except for UK students having to wear school uniform (like Japan). We also didn't have lockers in UK schools back when I was a student in the '90s and early '00s, but we had to carry everything in our backpacks when moving from class to class, but that's changed now (UK schools now have lockers like US schools).

In terms of kids being kids, it does make a difference where you work. From my experience in the UK school system, kids in public schools tend to be way more badly behaved than kids in private or grammar schools. My impression of Japanese schools is that the students there are like the students in UK private/grammar schools. They're still going to behave badly to some extent, but nowhere close to the chaos of Western public schools.