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The school can't do it but in plenty of communities there are community organizations where parents and kids help clean up their local neighborhood and beautify things. I grew up in such a place, in what was often a troubled neighborhood in Chicago. It doesn't have to be the school that does it.

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It depends on what your goals are. We had similar volunteer programs where I grew up. Things were clean enough, but the classrooms were still a mess, and people still threw their trash away on the street for the volunteers to pick up.

For Americans that have never spent time in Japan, Korea, or Switzerland for that matter, they are nominally clean in a way that is rare-nigh-on-extinct in the US.

In Japan, seeing trash on the ground or graffiti are both very uncommon. Moreso now than when I moved here a decade ago, especially in Tokyo, but the toilet at my local public park is cleaner than the one I last used when I visited a hospital stateside.

The problem with volunteering is that you only get volunteers. When everybody grows up learning that community care is their responsibility, and not just "somebody else's job", there are some big benefits to a society as a whole.

Japan and Korea have a homogeneous population with a self-conscious national identity which is a source of pride to each individual. That's the difference you're seeing.

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