School Cleaning

If you are at all familiar with the Japanese school system, you will know that the above illustration is a daily sight at every school in Japan. The students do all the cleaning, at least for the most part. It works for them, but I have always thought that the inside of most schools are not kept up. I guess you might say that it goes to show.

Well recently at my school there has been a big push from the recruitment commitee to really make sure that the school is clean before they have special school explanation meetings to parents or cram school teachers. Something that seems like it is happening everyweek recently. This means that after the kids have left school they are wanting us to stick around and make sure the school is clean. So the teachers go out in the areas that have already supposedly been cleaned my the students, and clean again.

Now the other day the head of that comittee anounced that most parents now find that the schoos are pretty well clean. This cleanliness is a reflection supposedly on how well you are disciplining your students. So you must be doing a good job if your school is clean. But now that it is a norm they are wanting us to make sure that the school is pristine. So we have well behaved students because are school is clean. But the problem it is the teachers that are making it really clean. Isn't this really saying that we aren't doing our job because even though we work with the students and teach them to clean, we still have to do it all over to make the school presentable. In a sense aren't we really lying to the parents?

I really think that they just need to hire a janitorial staff to do the work, this way the students could have more study time, and there wouldn't be extra work piled on to the already busy teachers schedules.