Should children clean their own schools? Japan thinks so

Same thing had always been the case in USSR. Though there were a GREAT many things wrong with USSR in general and USSR schools in particular, this one is just common sense. Any well adjusted adult should learn a habit of cleaning up his or her own mess.

My high school (a private American boarding “prep school”) required that students have small unpaid jobs around campus, the most common of which was nightly classroom cleaning. You’d come by your assigned classroom in the evening and do a light vacuuming, wipe down the boards, straighten the desks, empty the wastebin etc.

At the time I hated having to do it, but I’ve come to really appreciate its purpose. It meant that if you made a mess in a classroom, you very likely knew the person who’d be cleaning it up, and in a place where a good number of the students would have run the risk of never touching a vacuum cleaner in their entire lives, it provided some degree of grounding in service to the community and a democratizing effect–everyone participated, not just the students who needed to, ala college Work-Study programs.

That was weird indeed. When I was in high school in Japan as an exchange student, I did think it was strange that I had to clean the classroom myself rather than a janitor. But now that I'm older, it makes perfect sense.

This attitude of shared responsibility, taught from childhood, help to explain the difference between the cleanliness of subways and subway platforms in Japan, and in the US.

Just a rant.

I hated this as a Japanese kid. Why the hell should I clean up the mess created by my classmates? Because kids are supposed to obey their elders. This is the continual tradition to nurture soldiers (literally) from before the war, and even the traumatic defeat hasn't changed that. Embodiment of submissiveness...

Japanese pop-psychology is funny. Japanese martial arts are all about "learning respect" and children cleaning up their messes is about learning to "respect your surroundings". But what's really happening here is people are gaining agency. In the US, most people seem to believe that they have no control over their environment, so it's fine to litter, for instance, because it's "someone else's job" to clean it up. They don't believe that they have the power to make a difference, even if they tried. It's not until you see that picking up your own trash... makes the trash go away... that people really get it.

EDIT: Also worth mentioning, an effect you see in the US and European countries is a sense that cleaning up your own messes is low-class, and if you clean up after yourself you're diminishing your own worth. Normalizing tidying up helps break this assumption.

Fantastic idea.

I used to go out for walks with my kids and pick up trash in the neighborhood. They joined me with no prompting. Then we upgraded neighborhoods and there was no trash to clean up.

I live in the US and I doubt the student cleaning tradition ever gets imported…but it reminds me…

I’ve always wondered why we don’t ask sufficiently old children to make their own lunch at school. Surely a sixth grader is capable of making their own lunch and it’s a huge opportunity to learn about nutrition and basic kitchen skills.

I obviously don’t think that a 12-year-old child should be deep-frying french fries but there’s a lot we could find for them to do.

I assist in classrooms in the US where the kids (grades 1-3) clean:care for their environment, even down to dusting the plant leaves.

I grew up in such a culture, and looking back, I have to say that it depends on how you organize it. Most of the time we just hated the job and didn't do it as well as we could. But still, the act of working together was fun. Did we learn to respect our environment or care more about littering? I'm not sure. Maybe kids just don't care about things like that because they find other things more important and exciting.

My children grew up in a much more privileged environment. And their attitude is much worse. They just assume that it is someone else's job to clean up after them. The little one had even played with his grapes in the classroom and when his teacher asked him to clean up, he insolently replied that it was the cleaners' job. Needless to say, we are concerned and are trying to change their attitudes and behavior, but it's easier said than done. So maybe some chores will help.

Absolutely yes. A bunch of rich, entitled parents will inevitably complain about it but it's so worth it.

I went to a one-room schoolhouse in the US. Every month or so, we would have a school meeting where kids were elected to do various jobs like sweeping the room, taking out and burning the trash, washing the blackboards, cleaning erasers, pumping and bringing in water, etc.

I live in the Czech republic and it's the same here. Kids clean their school and classroom. There's almost no vandalism because the kids feel ownership of their school. It's _their_ school, not just some state institution.

They do that at my kids school, KG and grade 2. They have to take out the trash, sweep the floor, dust the deks, etc. Kids are still on the younger side so it's really just ~15min at the end of the day. Still, good habit.

At my school we were punished if we left a mess. Mess outside was cleaned up by students on detention. If there was nothing to clean up they had to do work with the gardener in the sun, in a desert.

I didn't have to walk up a hill to school both ways, but I did go to school in a desert with an average temperature over summer of 33-34C with no aircon.

Also conspicuous lack of garbage cans in JP after terrorist attack in the 90s, but didn't affect much since people pickup after themselves. Meanwhile, many of cans in my metro packed, litter piling on groud and hanging out of holes precariously because some people don't want to litter but policy making it hard not to.

I used to study in a small school in a village with 30 students. we used to do the all the work there play with teachers and many other fun stuff. sometimes when i think about that time i feel really sad about how my life has changed.

Soviet school system had school cleaning too. And city cleaning even.

This is why Japan can have nice things.

Seriously, as a society we should have it ingrained in us from a young age to take personal responsibility for our space, and not pawn it off on someone else. It's depressing that we have so many people trashing our shared spaces and feeling absolutely no shame about it.

This is also why I feel like everyone should work in some kind of service job for a year or two. It makes you a better member of society when you can see the world from a variety of perspectives, from experience. It's the biggest red flag for me when a person treats service staff poorly.

When I was a student, this was the norm for all students from elementary to high school in the Philippines. We even have a rotation of who will redecorate the classroom bulletin board. At times, a section/class in the school will get assigned to clean up the entire schoolyard. I also remember replanting a long-ish plantbox for our Home Economics subject. This, by the way, is in a private school with its own janitors. Nobody complains, not even the parents, because that is just part of what your responsibilities are as a student.

I think it's bit too much, once a while neighborhood or school cleaning makes sense but it shouldn't be part of a typical school day.

Along the same lines, lack of trash cans in Japanese streets and classrooms is also a source of frustration, most people have to carry their trash in their pockets which is weird.