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I thought this was old af since I remember reading it a decade ago. Nope; 2019.
In America, this often works for little kids. There's something about our exceptionalism that happens here about not respecting space or other people. Like, it’s a source of pride to disrespect other people's time and effort.
This shit always comes up. Japanese schools also have janitors and ppl that clean the schools. The kids also have to clean regularly, but it's not as if the entire school is only cleaned by kids. They just have to wipe floors after lunch and once a semester do a big cleanup. Toilet cleaning is phasing out entirely. That used to be a thing, but less and less so nowadays. They are ofcourse teaching respect etc, but that doesn't mean that kids don't just throw their shit on the ground or clean up stuff better. They do it because they have to and they don't give a fuck about the why. Most of them absolutely hate it.
Let's not mention all the other fucked up things in the japanese school system that makes it far from an example to strive for tbh. They're only now starting to tackle social issues that were tackled in the 80/90s in the west, not to mention the parrot 100% rather than understand even of a sliver of why or think critically or for yourself way of teaching that is only now veeeeeeeery slowly starting to phase out.
But Japan is this perfect utopia according to the internet... So I guess they'll keep regurgitating this cleaning tidbit until eternity.
I think there is value to exposing children to this (eg. an annual event), but regular cleaning is probably wasting time. Leaving rooms and the schoolyard tidy after use, OTOH, should be a constant.
Similarly, annual keep-your-town-tidy events (picking up garbage) are good.
Learning to appreciate the effort that goes into keeping your own environment clean & tidy, and taking pride in the result, is a valuable life skill.
Note: it sounds more like communal tidying in Japan... not terrible, just different.
No, they should not. I’m not paying taxes for children to scrub floors every day. If you want a mandatory home-ec class where they learn about cleaning from time to time, that would be great But spending more than that is a waste of time that could be spent learning something else.