Control

In the Winter Vacation, hoardes of High School students staff the post offices. New Year's is a major holiday here, and the custom is to send out New Year cards to friends, business contacts, family, and even the ramen truck man, to concrete friendly relations. And since the cards simply flood the post office, the post offices make use of the temporarily-free students.

Now, in order to work as a student, the school has to give permission. I presumed this had to do with maintaining good grades, but when I finally asked about it, I learned I was waaaay off.

The only factor the school considers is money. As in, how much does the family have. Does the family really need the income from the student?

Since grades aren't considered, I asked why it was up to the schools to make the decision. Said question did not compute with my teacher. In theory, teachers and school have a lot of control over students inside/outside the classroom. Teachers often patrol civic events, to prevent bullying or smoking. Teachers often visit students' homes to talk with parents.

But this can lead to some trouble, as many parents are leaving behavioral instruction to the schools. There have been a lot of student bullying cases recently, and many parents are coming out to say that the teacher should be regulating students behavior, while the teachers are saying that parents should be teaching their children moral guidelines.