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Should children clean their own schools? Japan thinks so
- xrd 3y agoThat 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.
- tomcam 3y agoFantastic 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.
- mensetmanusman 3y agoI assist in classrooms in the US where the kids (grades 1-3) clean:care for their environment, even down to dusting the plant leaves.
- breckenedge 3y agoMontessori?
- mensetmanusman 3y agoAn offshoot, yes.
- breckenedge 3y agoCGS?
- mensetmanusman 3y agoYes:)
- breckenedge 3y agoGood stuff
- mensetmanusman 3y agoHN is diverse! Last year found someone promoting NFP, now someone knows about CGS - ha.
- breckenedge 3y agoModern NPF is great. Now if we could just get our friends to stop recommending IVF…
- hilux 3y agoThis 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.
- ekianjo 3y agoYes and no. You have dirtyness in Japan everywhere too, but they just systematically clean a lot and very often. Public toilets can be cleaned like 10 times a day. This frequency is unseen in the US
- MichaelZuo 3y agoCan you link the source? I've never heard before that the average rate was much higher then the average rate in the US.
- defrost 3y agoThe bullet train is obviously an exception .. or is it? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kt92-ZDm-HM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kt92-ZDm-HM Cleaned end to end in seven minutes at every turn around. https://www.japanlivingguide.com/living-in-japan/culture/japanese-cleanliness/ https://www.japanlivingguide.com/living-in-japan/culture/jap... How Japanese Clean Train Stations & Public Toilets https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=BM2I1OrGAvM https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=BM2I1OrGAvM
- MichaelZuo 3y agoRate of cleanings per day is not the same as the duration of each cleaning(s)? How does this reveal information about the average rate per day?
- defrost 3y agoHow often does the bullet train turn about - the article and video both claim this is down at each end of line stop prior to turn about. What infomation does the longer general video expose about Japans cleaning corp that you can look up to obtain general schedules?
- canacrypto 3y agoAbsolutely yes. A bunch of rich, entitled parents will inevitably complain about it but it's so worth it.
- tjpnz 3y agoThe rich, entitled parents send their kids to private schools which employ janitors.
- ethbr1 3y agoGotta learn "Looking Down on Those Beneath You" 101
- bestcoder69 3y agoNewt Gingrich proposed once that we make kids do this, but it was just gonna be for the poor kids.
- maxglute 3y agoAlso 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.
- kizunajp 3y agoAbsolutely! It can be annoying till you build the habit of just putting your trash in your bag's side pockets. https://guidable.co/living/why-japanese-take-their-trash-home/ https://guidable.co/living/why-japanese-take-their-trash-hom...
- suyash 3y agoI 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.
- sriram_malhar 3y agoI disagree. Being taught to clean up after yourself and to share in the clean up is more essential than learning about igneous rocks and Magna Carta. So many women (esp.) are miserable in their marriages because their husbands have never learnt to keep their home clean.
- minebreaker 3y agoJust 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...
- cat_plus_plus 3y agoI didn't hate this as a Soviet kid, despite hating a great many other things as a Soviet kid. The idea has never been that another kid spit on the floor and I should clean up his spit, that would have been handled differently. More like that it's our place and in the course of normal use it gets messy, so we should all also participate in cleaning it up. So we all got wet cloth and wiped our assigned floor squares about once a month.
- minebreaker 3y ago> The idea has never been that another kid spit on the floor and I should clean up his spit, that would have been handled differently OK, that's the difference between USSR and Japan.
- chii 3y ago> Why the hell should I clean up the mess created by my classmates? you would be learning to apply peer pressure on those who creates a mess to not do so, making clean up easier.
- calamari4065 3y ago>Why the hell should I clean up the mess created by my classmates? Isn't that the entire point? To teach you that the "someone else" who cleans up your mess is actually one of your peers, a person just like you. Asked another way, why the hell should one of your classmates clean up your mess? The answer to both is you shouldn't leave messes for others to clean. Making kids clean up messes from their classmates teaches everyone to clean their own mess. Whereas in the US, all schools have a janitorial staff. In general, janitors are looked down on as the absolute lowest of social class. It creates this mentality of not giving a single fuck about the mess you create because "someone else" will clean it up. And because they're a lower social class they somehow deserve the mess you make.
- phendrenad2 3y agoJapanese 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.
- crazygringo 3y ago> an effect you see in the US and European countries is a sense that cleaning up your own messes is low-class At least in the US, I don't think that's the case at all. A lot of people from other countries are genuinely shocked, for example, that "rich Americans" pick up their own dog's poop. Or even bus their own tray in a cafeteria. There are a lot of countries where it's normal to have a maid, for example, where tidying after yourself is low-class in a sense. But the US is most definitely not one of those countries.
- obscurette 3y agoI think it speaks more about the people from other countries themselves than about the U.S. It's about naive view that if you are really rich, you don't have to do anything yourself. And in the US everyone is really rich from their point of view.
- black6 3y agoIt's the lowest of the classes in the US that is the worst about being trashy and not cleaning up after themselves.
- sottol 3y agoI don't think it's a power to make a difference thing. I think it's just individualism and self-centeredness, as in "it's not my backyard and I won't see it so whatever, someone else's problem".
- mullingitover 3y agoThis 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.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ethbr1 3y ago> This is also why I feel like everyone should work in some kind of service job for a year or two. 100% agreed. Especially front of the house food service. It's illustrative to learn that the person in front of you is probably not the person who made a mistake or has any authority to fix it... but often takes the yelling. There a difference between firmly asking that something be corrected and being an ass about it -- it's called class. I love the story I heard about an actor (or founder?) interviewing prospective agents (or VCs?) and judging them by how rude they were to wait staff. Because at some point they might not need anything from you... so how they treat the least needed people matters.
- dudul 3y agoThey 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.
- cat_plus_plus 3y agoSame 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.
- macNchz 3y agoMy 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.
- iambateman 3y agoI 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.
- macksd 3y agoI don't think a 12-year-old should be eating deep fried French fries as a regular part of a school lunch either... Nothing wrong with a sandwich.
- caslon 3y agoIn terms of raw calorie count, which is the major contributor to the American obesity crisis, french fries probably pale in comparison to a sandwich, while being dramatically more filling.
- ProxCoques 3y agoI doubt you'd eat only french fries for a meal though. A sandwich and an apple might be 700 calories, but a 300 calorie portion of fries with something less than 400 would be a challenge.
- bananatype 3y ago[dead]
- bananatype 3y agoWhen 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.
- Merrill 3y agoI 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.
- Waterluvian 3y agoBurning the trash?
- pjscott 3y agoIt’s not a great way of disposing of trash, if you don’t want to inhale nasty fumes, but it has a long and widespread history.
- meragrin_ 3y agoA little bit more detail is needed to understand the question. I find it hard to believe you are unaware that people burn trash.
- ProxCoques 3y agoI've never seen anyone burn domestic trash. Like in their back garden or something? Is that a thing?
- breckenedge 3y agoYes, though it’s generally banned in populated areas. Often where there are no city trash services.
- Merrill 3y agoThe trash was mainly wastepaper, lunch bags, waxed paper and possibly a few food scraps such as apple cores, orange rinds, etc. from lunches each student brought. There would have been minimal plastic or aluminum packaging at the time. One of the older students would bring the wastebasket to a 50-gallon drum well away from the school building and light the contents with ordinary kitchen matches. It was a rural area, and that was how farm families disposed of combustible waste.
- worthless-trash 3y agoAt 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.
- sinuhe69 3y agoI 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.
- moltar 3y agoSoviet school system had school cleaning too. And city cleaning even.
- trilbyglens 3y agoI 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.
- samyar 3y agoI 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.
- Susan77 3y ago[dead]