A student walks into the teachers’ office.
“Hello. Can I have the key?”
A teacher replies:
“Not ‘hello.’ You should say, ‘Excuse me.’”
The student repeats it.
“Excuse me. Can I have the key?”
Then comes another mini-interview:
“Which key?” “The classroom key.” “Which classroom?”
Some of that is perfectly reasonable. If the teacher does not know the class, they cannot hand over the right key.
But the interesting question is elsewhere:
Was “hello” really rude? And if a school is strict enough to correct a greeting immediately, does it show the same urgency when the problem is bullying?
Correct “Excuse me” in ten seconds. Handle bullying with “Let’s watch the situation for a while.”
If that happens, the priority system has become very strange.
1. “Hello. Can I have the key?” is not inherently disrespectful
It may not be the standard school script.
But the student:
- greeted the adult,
- stated the request,
- did not insult or order anyone around.
The real practical problem is missing information.
“What grade and class?” “Grade 8, Class 2.” “Here you go.”
Done.
Japan’s Ministry of Education even provides an example of a school-office entry routine for students that includes “Excuse me,” class, name and purpose.[1]
So yes, “Excuse me” is a common school convention.
But a common convention is not the same thing as universal human decency.
2. “Excuse me” is a useful script, not the essence of manners
Manners have a purpose.
You acknowledge that you are entering someone else’s space. You make your request understandable. You avoid creating unnecessary discomfort.
“Excuse me” is a useful shortcut for that.
Teaching it is fine.
But turning “hello” into a wrong answer that must be corrected on the spot is a different matter.
A normal exchange could be:
“Hello.” “Hi. What grade and class?” “Grade 8, Class 2.” “Here’s the key. By the way, in this school we usually say ‘Excuse me’ when entering the office.”
Everything gets taught without turning the conversation into a ceremonial restart.
When the script becomes the goal, schools can end up interrupting a polite interaction in the name of politeness.
That is a wonderfully school-like bug.
3. Why do teachers sometimes correct things they may not personally care about?
Blaming individual teachers is too simple.
Teachers are not only expected to teach academic subjects.
They are also expected to model adulthood, enforce routines, teach behavior, appear professional to parents and stay consistent with colleagues.
So a teacher may privately think:
“Honestly, ‘hello’ is fine.”
Then another thought appears:
“But I’m the teacher. I should correct this.”
And the familiar line comes out:
“In the teachers’ office, say ‘Excuse me.’”
Established routines are convenient because they remove the need for judgment.
“We’ve always done it.” “That’s the school rule.” “It’s manners.”
Decision complete.
4. Constantly performing “the teacher role” is tiring
Research on teaching describes a large amount of emotional labor.
In plain language, that means displaying the emotion and attitude your job expects even when it does not match what you actually feel.
You look stern even when you are not angry. You sound upbeat even when exhausted. You give a serious correction even when you personally think the issue barely matters.
A 2021 systematic review covering 21 studies found a consistent relationship between teachers’ burnout and “surface acting,” where outward emotions are performed without genuinely feeling them.[2]
So “acting like a proper teacher” is not free.
It consumes energy.
If teachers repeatedly have to manufacture seriousness about tiny rituals, students get unnecessary corrections and teachers get unnecessary emotional work.
Everybody attends the ceremony.
Nobody requested tickets.
5. The irony: serious problems are much harder to handle
Correcting a greeting is easy.
It takes ten seconds. The expected answer is obvious. There is almost no investigation. The teacher can act immediately.
Bullying is the opposite.
Is it bullying or a one-off conflict? How long has it been happening? What does the targeted student want? What do witnesses know? How should parents be contacted? Who needs to be informed inside the school? What should be recorded? Could intervention make retaliation worse?
The workload explodes.
A 2026 study of 638 homeroom teachers in Taiwan found that willingness to intervene in bullying was associated with factors including bullying knowledge, trauma-informed knowledge and confidence in classroom management.[3]
A 2024 study likewise found that teachers’ perception of seriousness and perceived ability to act were related to their likelihood of intervening.[4]
A systematic review covering 33 studies also found fairly consistent evidence that teachers who feel more capable of handling bullying intervene more often.[5]
This does not mean teachers simply ignore bullying because it is annoying.
It means there is a structural asymmetry:
small etiquette corrections are cheap to make; serious interventions require judgment, coordination, time and responsibility.
Without a good system, easy corrections can multiply while difficult cases move slowly.
6. “Fix the greeting now, monitor the bullying later” is the real failure
Japan’s official data show why this matters.
In the Ministry of Education’s FY2024 survey, published in October 2025, there were 1,405 officially classified serious bullying cases, the highest number recorded at the time.[6]
Schools had already recognized 915 of those cases as bullying before serious harm was identified.
That means 490 cases, about 35%, had not been recognized as bullying before the serious harm became apparent.
That statistic does not prove negligence.
Some bullying is hidden. Some disclosures come late. Some incidents happen online or outside school.
Still, the ministry itself noted cases in which responses did not follow the law, national policy or guidelines and called again for early recognition, early action and organized school responses.[6]
In 2025, the ministry also published lessons drawn from 32 serious-case investigation reports and organized them into 15 points for preventing escalation.[7]
So the real priority should be clear:
schools need more capacity for difficult problems, not Olympic-level precision in correcting harmless greetings.
7. “Bad teachers” is not a sufficient explanation
It is tempting to say:
“They police tiny manners and ignore bullying. Terrible teachers.”
Sometimes individual failures absolutely matter.
But the system matters too.
Handling serious cases requires:
- clear criteria,
- documentation,
- support from school leadership,
- coordination between staff,
- time,
- access to specialists,
- rules for parent communication.
If we respond by simply telling teachers to “try harder,” we create more performance.
More stern faces. More scripts. More emotional labor.
A better approach is to remove low-value rituals and save attention for high-value intervention.
8. School rules make more sense in three levels
Instead of calling everything “manners” or “rules,” separate them.
A. Harm and safety
Violence. Bullying. Dangerous behavior. Discriminatory attacks. Severe harassment.
Highest priority.
When uncertain, move toward protection and investigation.
B. Rules needed to run a group
Start times. Submission procedures. Key management. Shared equipment.
These matter, but the purpose is operational.
If another method works better, change the method.
C. Local customs and scripts
Say “Excuse me” in the teachers’ office. Introduce yourself in a fixed order. Follow school-specific etiquette.
These can be taught.
But breaking one should not instantly become a character judgment.
Sometimes “This is how we do it here” is enough.
If all three categories are thrown into one giant box called “rules,” bullying and greeting formulas end up on the same shelf.
That shelf is too big.
9. The purpose of manners is not to guess the teacher’s password
What should students actually learn?
When entering someone else’s space, acknowledge them. Identify yourself when needed. Explain what you want. Add information when the other person cannot understand.
That is real social coordination.
A student who says “Hello. Can I have the key?” already has most of it.
Teach the missing part.
If, instead, the student must repeat the line several times in front of an audience while adults find the exchange cute, the adults may start violating another part of manners:
do not embarrass someone unnecessarily.
The moment etiquette training becomes a performance, a strange bug appears:
the people teaching manners can become the least considerate people in the interaction.
10. Conclusion: free both teachers and students from unnecessary “teacher-role theater”
“Hello. Can I have the key?”
Maybe the best response is simply:
“What grade and class?”
If needed, add later:
“In this school, we usually say ‘Excuse me’ when entering the office.”
Done.
Teachers do not need to perform seriousness about every tiny custom.
Save that energy for what actually matters:
danger, harm, bullying, isolation, serious conflict.
Schools should not mainly teach students how to guess the correct ceremonial phrase.
They should teach them to distinguish:
what harms people, what a group genuinely needs, and what is merely a local custom.
Manners matter.
But first ask:
What are the manners for?
References (7)
- Japan Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, school acceptance guidance and teachers’ office entry example mext.go.jp
- Kariou A, Koutsimani P, Montgomery A, Lainidi O. Emotional Labor and Burnout among Teachers: A Systematic Review. 2021 pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- The impact of cognitive and affective variables on teachers’ willingness to intervene in school bullying. 2026 sciencedirect.com
- Understanding Teachers’ Likelihood of Intervention in Bullying Situations: Testing the Theory of Planned Behavior. 2024 link.springer.com
- Teachers’ Self-efficacy in Preventing and Intervening in School Bullying: a Systematic Review link.springer.com
- Japan MEXT, FY2024 survey on student behavior, school refusal and related guidance mext.go.jp
- Japan MEXT, guidance and training cases for preventing serious bullying escalation, November 2025 mext.go.jp
