Newt Gingrich recently made some remarks that suggest American schoolchildren would do well to be made to clean their schools.
I know that in Japan, at least in the early 1990’s, schoolchildren were expected to do at least some of the cleaning in their schools (Cite: I lived in Japan at the time, and more than one student mentioned this to me).
So what would be your take on the idea if the school district your kids attended mandated that each student put in a certain amount of time per week cleaning the school?
On the one hand, I can see where some parents can understand some benefit to be derived from the kids having ownership in their schools’ cleanliness. On the other hand, the idea kind-of seems like a government mandate putting kids to work, an idea which many would find reprehensible.
What age kids and what level of cleaning? I wouldn’t be against kids having to do litter patrol around the grounds and things of that sort, not so sure about expecting them to wax the floors etc.
Most schools already do this. Kids wipe down the cafe tables or put chairs on their desks for the cleaning crew etc. I don’t want my kids was washing down the lavs! My kids have gone to both public and independent, private school and at both they were expected to do lots of jobs each day to help out around the school.
This is just some political propaganda to harken back to the “when kids were responsible” meme. My kids do way more homework and after school activities then most of my friends and I did, and we were the high achieving types.
Kids already do cleaning. My elementary-age kids empty the trash, wipe down the desks, and sweep the floors in their classrooms. They’d clean the chalkboards, too, but they don’t have one - they have smartboards. Parent volunteers are in charge of cleaning the cafeteria after lunch. They go to an open plan school, so there aren’t a lot of common interior areas to clean. Our janitors clean the bathrooms and do the heavy cleaning and maintenance.
Kids in Japan still do most of the cleaning in their schools. In the high school I taught at, there was a gardener/maintenance man who did some pruning of the school garden, etc. but as far as I know everything else was done by the kids, including a periodic “deep cleaning” which included window washing, floor waxing, and oil stove cleaning. I was in charge of the crew that was responsible for cleaning one of the women’s bathrooms. Mind you, they didn’t always do it particularly well and in fact the school was quite dirty, especially in the places that got comparatively less attention. But it was a very old school–probably dating from the '60s or '70s–and it’s the Japanese way to use things until they fall down or can be rebuilt completely.
I went to Catholic school in the 1960s. We were expected to sweep out the classrooms. On at least one occasion we scrubbed away heel streak marks.
Cleaning blackboards and clapping erasers was actually seen as a treat.
We had a janitor, a huge woman, who cleaned the common areas and mopped up, among other things. She used scary cleaners like Muriatic Acid that I wouldn’t want to let kids near, no matter what Newt says.
I can tell you, at least in my neck of the woods, Catholic school hasn’t changed that much. I know my daughter is expected to wipe the desks once per month with comet (which we donate), wash off the blackboard, and pick up the trash in the school yard. This was since 1st grade. The middle school kids do the cafeteria tables and put the chairs up for floor cleaning ten minutes before school ends on Friday. It counts towards their mandatory service hours.
In Montessori schools it’s absolutely normal. My 4.5 year-old takes a turn once per week washing the dishes after lunch or snack. When the new Principal came in, he accidentally spilled a cup of coffee on the floor. He was shocked to see three kids immediately run for the bucket and mop then work together to clean it up.
These kids take great pride in their school, and it shows. Yes, there still needs to be a janitor, because you don’t want too much class time taken up with vacuuming every inch of the carpet, but the kids are empowered to clean up their own messes, and they take pride in it.
I can recall stepping around a sticky puddle in my old high-school for three days because the janitor hadn’t gotten around to it. I woudl gladly have cleaned it but the closet with the supplies was locked. While I understand the cocnern abotu bad kids getting intot he ammonia, it’s just ridiculous. We need to allow kids to learn responsibility.
I wish our local high school would have the kids in detention pick up trash or something. I live next door to the school and walk my dog there and the parking lot is just a big trash heap. My dog loves it - kids just throw sandwiches on the ground! Anything that’s not stuck in a crevice at the school seems to blow across the street and land in my drainage ditch, too.
Seems to me that there’s just not enough time in the day to get kids to pass achievement tests, let alone train them to clean stuff and then execute the cleaning.
the biggest problem I have with this idea is that it will only be some of the kids (the poor ones) which means that their classmates would have all the more reason to mock them. Perhaps if they worked in a different school than they attended?
In my elementary school, clapping the erasers was something you had to do outside, so that added to the appeal.
As for Newt’s idea, certainly the children could clean up the classroom, but the custodians use a big machine to wax the floors, and I can’t imagine asking grade-school age children to use that machine. And as I remember, the custodians do a lot of building maintenance (changing light bulbs, changing the furnace filter, installing equipment in the rooms, etc.). Again, not the sort of thing I can imagine asking grade schoolers to do.
OK, now that I see Newt’s whole agenda - F him. What a prick. ***All ***the students should be responsible for keeping the school nice, or none of them.