Japanese teachers surprised by quiet serious students

[Taro Toporific]

Visiting Japanese teachers surprised at what they see
Daily Herald (Chicago) Saturday, September 04, 2004
A delegation of teachers from Japan found students at Longfellow School in Buffalo Grove to be quiet and serious, which they said was much different than what they expected....
..."Before coming here, I pictured American children to be very active and noisy," said Fumio Fukushima, a middle school principal in Osaka. "But I'm finding the environment to be very quiet, the students and their teachers are very serious."
"That's the first thing we noticed," added Morimoto Takako, an Osaka travel agent traveling with the group and serving as an interpreter, "that the students are very quiet."...
"We are observing how American teachers teach their students," said Hiroshi Nishida, a high school English teacher in Japan. "We're interested in their information technology and also about the accommodations they make for students with disabilities.".....
...rest-of-the-story on that whitebread school...

[amdg]

DA da da daaaaaa! Japan discovers....discipline in classrooms!

Next question - how do they enforce this strange placidity?

Also...
Average teacher salary: $55,104
Average administration staff salary: $111,536

WTF???? That's a fairly wide gap in salary. Oh I see, it includes money earned in unnofficial capacity (i.e., Admin staff selling medication to kids at recess). Everything becomes clear with Lorezapam.