Spick and Span

In Korean high schools there are no janitors. This has made me appreciate the role that the janitorial staff at my American high school played and long for those "good old days" when the bathrooms smelled of ammonia. Instead of janitors, the girls clean the school themselves. In principle this is a great idea, because it seems like it would teach them that they must clean up after themselves, not to litter, and that the state of their school environment is up to them, not someone else. When I first arrived at my school I felt good about this policy. As the weeks go on and the amount of bacteria that I imagine lingering in every crevass and corner of this school increases, I realize that like socialism, such a system makes more sense in theory as opposed to practice. It is almost comical to watch my students "clean" the school. First of all, the only materials that they use are water, dirty hand towels and short 3 foot long brooms that resemble props from a midget Halloween play. The girls hunch over (due to the short handle of the broom) swishing the broom back and forth across the stairs or the ground, not even bothering to use a dust pan, either because they are not provided or because it just didn't occur to them. Another girl takes her wet hand towel and wipes down the counters, etc. I don't think these towels ever get washed, because there seems to be no system in place for cleaning the rags, only for cleaning with them. (There is a whole rack of filthy towels in my office.) The girls also wash the dishes from the teacher's lounge and clean the bathrooms. Cleaning the bathroom involves little more than literally hosing down (with a hose) the entire facility including the toilet. I have never seen any sort of disinfectant or bleach used in the bathrooms or anywhere else. When the girls wash the dishes, they take an old sponge (probably as old as the school itself) and wipe down the dishes as they run them under lukewarm water. My own reaction has been to change personal behaviors in order to safeguard myself at least slightly from the battlefield of bacteria that is my school. I have hand sanitizer on my desk which I use periodically, and I no longer accept tea or coffee that is not served in a paper cup. I thought that the cleaning policy at my school would encourage the girls to take care of their school more, but in fact the girls still trash things, because they know that "Someone Else" will clean it up, it doesn't matter if that someone is a janitor or another student.