Highschool Utopia (?)

 On May 3rd, I wriggled out of a suffocatingly packed city bus and into a throng of sign waving, neon t-shirt wearing, enthusiastically yelling high school students. This was Kobe High School’s 130th annual school festival. I had been invited by my friend Sana, who soon greeted me in bedazzled sunglasses, holding a balloon decorated as an octopus.

Sana and me!

Students advertising food stalls, music events, and club showcases lined the astonishingly steep seaside hill up to the school from the bus stop. The air itself was buzzing with enthusiasm and earnest pride, and listening to Sana lovingly tell me about her school’s history and her class role in the festival (making takosen, more on that later), it was clear that the students here were deeply involved and surprisingly excited by the prospect of sharing their school with the community. 

 

Kobe High School

I had no idea what “school festival” meant going into this. I pictured an ORHS pep rally, where about an hour is set aside in an otherwise normal school day to watch some bravely competitive souls trek across the field in three-legged races and limbo competitions. The pep rally is typically an overstimulating, underwhelming ordeal, with half the students frenziedly yelling at their classmates to go FASTER and work TOGETHER and the other half resignedly waving flags or tuning out to chat with their friends. The event is supposedly organized by student government, but as with most “student run” groups I’ve been apart of, it is really a few motivated kids dutifully carrying out an adult’s instructions while being given no real trust or responsibility. 

In contrast, during the morning I spent at Kobe High, I think I saw one teacher. Every class in the school played a specific role, typically making a special food, running a game, or helping visitors find their way. Sana’s class was in charge of making takosen, a Japanese snack consisting of a shrimpy cracker covered in takoyaki sauce, mayo and bonito. 

 

Takosen 

I followed Sana to her classroom on the top floor (with a gorgeous view of the city and port!) to try this snack and was amazed by the professional, cooperative assembly line of students making the takosen. From kids running the cashless payment to someone spreading the sauce  to another sprinkling bonito and handing it to me, there were no teachers supervising, no behind-the-counter-shoving, no sloppy or begrudging work, just a group of serious yet friendly and excited kids taking pride in their roles.

 

The view from Sana's classroom 

This mysterious absence of micromanaging adults continued outside. On the athletic field behind the school, several sports games had been set up, and patient queues of a dozen or more people waited at each. We got in line for a soccer shooting activity, where several hoops and boxes had been strung up inside a goal as targets. I waited for more than 15 minutes, an infuriatingly long time if this had been at home, but since no one else fidgeted or glared at the people in front of them in line I held it in. Japanese people are excellent at waiting patiently. It’s just the way it is and they would never bug the people in front of them to go faster!

I successfully hit one of the targets, and after jumping up and down squealing victoriously, one of the sweet girls running the game asked me to write my name on the scoreboard since I earned 300 points. 300 points! Do I get a prize or something? Some candy, maybe a ticket to buy food inside? Everyone looked at me, no, they said, you get 300 points! Congrats!

 

My epic shot: zoom in to see the ball moments before it goes through the hoop in the top right corner! 

Somehow, the simple reward of congratulations and the experience itself was enough for dozens of high-school aged kids to wait patiently in line. No candy, no prize money, no tangible incentive to encourage participation, and this was true throughout the school festival.

I am a member of the Sustainability club at my high school, and last winter we spent months planning an educational game around sorting trash at lunchtime. 
Yes, I know, not the most thrilling subject, so we knew that to get any sort of participation we needed weeks of nagging advertising and, more importantly, candy prizes. I can’t help but wonder how differently this activity would have gone at Kobe High, where it seems that eager participation and support for your classmates and school is a given, not something you need to heckle out of people with promises of bragging rights and sugar.

After the soccer game, Sana took us back inside to see a student music performance. In the entrance hall along the way, we passed a medium-sized piece of paper with an abstract design of a bird on it, the mascot of the school. Beneath it was a folding table with some small square stamps and a few different colors of ink. 

Sana casually explained to us that this was the community art piece for this year’s festival and that at some point during the day every student would pass by and add a stamp. I stared in awe at this collaborative art piece. With no supervision or forced participation, a clear, neat picture had emerged. Something that seems so simple, everyone just comes and adds a stamp, would look very different at my high school. 

I mean, really? What are you talking about, that every student at the high school stops by, and of their own cheerful volition contributes to the art? Where is the sarcastic graffiti? Where are the penis drawings? Where are the deliberate smears and stamps outside the lines for no other purpose than to ruin it?

The stamp art project

Something like this at Oyster River would take spreadsheets and pleading emails and weeks of planning to pull off. Every teacher would have to drag their class down at an allotted time during the day and stand watch as each kid added their stamp to ensure the final product would be “school-appropriate”. And if it really was just left out for people to add to as they pass, it would either be totally ignored or absolutely vandalized.

After staring for an amazed moment at the stamp painting, we rushed inside for the music show. The jazz club was performing in the hallway, and by the time we got there quite a crowd had already gathered. At 11:05 on the dot, the girl leading the group signaled to her bandmates and they broke out into a choreographed, peppy tune right in the hallway. People clapped along, and the kids in the jazz club looked amazingly comfortable and completely full of joy. I was impressed by their skill, as well as by, once again, the absence of any adult figure organizing them. 

An hour or so later, I saw another group like this performing on the floor below. The musicians had set up and were ready to go about five minutes early, and there was another significant crowd amassed around them. But, like before, though the band and crowd were ready, everything hung in patient limbo until the appointed start time.

Hallway performance #2

Timeliness is extremely important in Japanese society. Consider, for example, the high speed trains (Shinkansens) that travel 200 miles an hour and always arrive (somehow!) within seconds of their scheduled times. Or the store in Tokyo we visited that opened at 10am. We tried to enter the building at 9:59 and were sternly rejected, but then sixty seconds later warmly welcomed inside.

While teams of students ran sports games outside, staffed food stalls in classrooms, and put on pop-up performances in the hallways, a rotating show of dance groups was happening in the music building next door. Each performance only lasted fifteen or so minutes, and afterwards the lights would turn on and people could enter or leave as they pleased. Then the curtains would open again and the next student group would enter in special costumes, dancing K-pop style to some upbeat music. 

I only stayed for two of these dance performances, but from what I understand, this rotating show of self-selected performers continued throughout the day. The dances were a bit silly, totally fun, and the kids onstage were just having the time of their lives. No self-conscious shuffling behind their friends or nervous giggling. The atmosphere wasn’t one of pressure or weighty expectations, it was just talented students having fun with their friends, being cheered on by the rest of the school. 

A pink-themed dance group

Every kid I passed at Kobe High School had a similar air of confidence, openness, and pride about them. Think of the best of student government, and somehow make that an entire high school. Boys and girls happily waved signs advertising their food stall or activity, people smiled and chatted with one another, and I saw half a dozen kids stop to bow and chat with other people’s adult relatives. 

The students were so excited, so refreshingly responsible and capable, and clearly proud of both the school and community they were a part of as well as their own ability to put together an event like this. I didn’t see a single kid sulking under the stairwell or sneering at a music or dance performance. They were truly, earnestly happy to be there, and I wish that wasn’t as much of a shock to me as it is.

Bop met with Taro, our cooking teacher from a few weeks ago, for dinner recently and asked him his thoughts on Japanese school festivals. Are the kids really as into it, as earnest, as they seem? Can it actually work that well? And according to Taro, yes, school festivals are a huge deal here, and kids take them extremely seriously. They prepare for weeks, stay after school to work on their performances and activities and cardboard decorations, and are really as proud and excited about their school as they appear to be.

But, he explained, while the event is all student run, its larger structure is set in stone, echoing years of tradition. If you are in class 10, you make takosen. If you are in class 8, you run the baseball game. New ideas or modifications are not taken well, and while there was clearly a vibrant culture of small artistic groups at Kobe High (the jazz club, the dance groups), they could very well be the same small groups that existed fifty years ago.

Japanese society places a heavy emphasis on community and collective purpose. This wouldn’t be the high functioning, richly cultural place it is without deep-seated values that put the larger society and system over individual desires. There are signs on every bus and subway reminding people to not leave their luggage lying about so that it won’t disturb others or to please leave certain seats open so that people who need them can sit down. Due to a relatively homogenous cultural background and values, I imagine it’s easier here than in the US to get people to cooperate on an event that puts the community first instead of celebrating individual achievement. 

I found the Kobe High School mission statement online the other day. Four simple sentences that outline the school’s values and vision for their students:

1. To nurture pride in academic excellence and the traditions of Kobe High School
2. To enable our students to become successful, contributing members of society
3. To provide our students with the tools to be flexible and adaptable to today’s rapidly changing society
4. To encourage our students to create a more caring and harmonious society

Notice that three of the four sentences end in the word society. These statements are mainly about giving kids the tools to best fill their role as a member of Japanese society. See, I can’t even explain the mission statement without ending in that word!

Intrigued by this, I went and found Oyster River’s mission statement. 

Oyster River High School seeks to provide a nurturing community where the uniqueness of each member is valued. In this spirit, we are committed to becoming educated, ethical, responsible citizens who are committed to contributing positively toward the betterment of our society and world.

Within the first sentence is the word “uniqueness”. Right out of the gate, individuality is a major priority. While this also ends on a similar note about vaguely making the world a better place, it’s interesting to see these immensely different cultural values reflected in the few choice sentences schools define themselves by.

I clearly don’t understand all the nuances of Japanese high school, but I do know that a community where everyone can band together to put on such an exciting, varied festival is truly a special one. The kids at Kobe High are given more than directions. They are given communal purpose, responsibility, and trust, and with that have created an inspiring school ecosystem where everyone has a meaningful place.