Something interesting about schools in this region of the world is the concept of students cleaning their school. I will primarily be talking about Japan here, but other countries such as Malaysia, India, South Korea, and Philippines do this as well to varying degrees.
Only a stock photo this time. Again, it is difficult to get pictures from Yuri High School due to privacy restrictions.
Although there will sometimes be a groundskeeper who may do some light cleaning, the students themselves are largely responsible for cleaning up at the end of each day. This includes going through the teacher's office to collect trash and sweep. Janitors are uncommon in Japanese schools for this reasons, unlike in many Western countries where they are a fixture.
As I mentioned in the last post on uniform changeover, Japan has a collectivist culture. As such, students doing daily cleaning is meant to teach them responsibility for public spaces. Since they all use the facilities, they should all be doing their part to maintain them. Although it does not happen at Yuri High School, there are schools where school lunch is served by the students as well. These things are actually part of the official educational curriculum.
An example of a day at Elementary School from an English-language guide produced by Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). The included sections show times set aside for students to clean their classrooms and the process for them serving lunches.
Generally, older students tend to bring their own lunches, so you don't see that part play out much once kids hit High Schools, which is why I have not seen it myself.
Now, this may seem amazing for parents and teachers back home. I'm sure many of you are probably wishing that kids today were forced to do this as part of their education. After all, it does teach good values like cooperation and social responsibility, while also developing useful life skills like food handling and basic sanitation. It has helped to foster the idea of cleanliness in Japan that many foreigners like to comment on when visiting.
Here's the part where I burst the bubble a little bit.
While there are certainly benefits to this approach, there are also drawbacks. For one thing, the lack of janitors and cleaners means fewer entry-level job opportunities. At the moment, this is not a concern for Japan specifically because of the ongoing demographic crisis. It is, however, something to consider for other countries who have implemented it or wish to try.
There can also be a big difference in the quality of what you are getting. Keep in mind that these are kids we are talking about. Kids that are typically between the ages of 8-17. Kids between the ages of 8-17 who are being forced to do something. You are just asking for trouble. Kids don't want to be cleaning things. They want to be out of school and doing club activities, hanging out with friends, sleeping, checking social media, playing video games, and yes, even studying. Even 15 minutes out of their day is too much to ask for some of them. You get what you pay for, essentially. If you pay nothing, then expect nothing.
From what I have observed, the students here at Yuri High School do a good job with these duties, but that isn't the case everywhere. There are horror stories online from other teachers that talk about students at schools who get "cleaning" done with as little effort and time as possible. This can involve such genius ideas as simply blasting toilets and urinals with a hose or even lobbing buckets of water at them and letting all the water just dry where it lands, then considering that a job well done.
Here at Yuri High School, there is a mix between the two. Yuri HS has a groundskeeper/maintenance person who does certain spot cleaning while time permits. As I type this, he is actually just outside the teacher's office squeegeeing the windows that look out into the courtyard. This provides an important additional layer of sanitation in the event of student slacking or goofing off. The students getting involved in cleaning is good, but you should still be supplementing that with more professional cleaning by people who know what they are doing and have some kind of incentive to do a competent job.
Finally, there is a slight danger of hyper-focusing on the group dynamic. When you push society to do everything as a group, or with the collective as the primary focus, then you risk stifling individuality. It's kind of like the opposite of hyper-focusing on individualism, where you risk creating people who cannot work as part of a group, as well as fomenting a "screw you, got mine" mentality.
So, "all things in moderation" is probably the best approach here.
