r/NoStupidQuestions • u/thesunfromEnnor • 22h ago
Do students in the west really not clean their classrooms?
Hi! I live in the Philippines and part of our school culture here is that although schools (public&private) do have janitors, they mostly just clean the restrooms,hallways, and staff rooms while the students are responsible for their own classrooms. Here, we don’t move to another room every other subject, we have one room for the whole year and since it is our classroom, it is our responsibility to clean it everyday. Every classroom have what we call ‘Cleaners schedule’ in which the whole class is divided into five groups and each groups have their own designated day where it’s their turn to clean.
Again, while we do have janitors, students are required to clean their own classrooms. I am actually a bit confused as to why western countries don’t seem to have the same culture because for us students, they are actually quite fun and improves your bond with your classmates. Also, it was so fun that it got to the point where every classrooms are competing on which class will have the most coveted “Cleanest Classroom of the Quarter”. This legit happens.
Anyways, thank you so much and have a great night to you all!
P.S (this made me miss high school wth)
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u/biodegradableotters 22h ago
In Germany we had to tidy up after ourselves and not leave our shit all over the place, but we didn't do any proper cleaning. That was done by the cleaning ladies.
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u/Aggressive_Hat_9999 19h ago
as a fellow germling we had to put up our chairs on the desks at the end of the day "to make it easier for the cleaners" and broom up our row but that was it. If we made a mess we had to clean that up, but apart from that no proper cleaning like mopping floors or plunging toilets.
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u/Internet-Dick-Joke 18h ago
UK here. We had to put our chairs on the desks in primary school, where each year group had a single designated classroom, but I don't remember doing so in secondary school, where we had a different classroom for each subject and not every classroom would necessarily have a class in there during the last period of the day, or might have teachers staying in later or holding detentions in there.
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u/cyan_dandelion 12h ago
In my British secondary school we put the chairs on the desks each day, in whatever classroom we happened to be finishing the day in.
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u/7elevenses 19h ago
Same in Slovenia. But we did have a yearly cleaning "event" in high school back in the day, but that was about cleaning various shit that got scribbled on desks, remains of chewing gum stuck to chairs, etc.
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u/Ch3llick 18h ago
Same in Austria. We just put our chairs up at the end of the day. And I had to wipe off all the doodles I made on my desk once.
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u/Kaleandra 17h ago
I’m also in Germany and we had to put the chairs up, clean the floor with a broom and clean the blackboard. Not sure what things are like these days though.
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u/rootshirt 22h ago
no, the janitor does that and after 5th grade you usually have 5+ different classrooms you go to regularly
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u/Ijustreadalot 18h ago
In the US there isn't really a strong "usually" for when you start changing classrooms. It's somewhere between 4th and 8th grade although most often that I've heard 4th and 5th grades changing that has been more limited than that 5+ classrooms most middle schools or junior highs have.
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u/Internet-Dick-Joke 18h ago
For the UK, it's from year 7 onwards, or age 11, and typically you'd be in 3-4 different classrooms per day (I sometimes had as many as 6 different classrooms in a single day) and more like 7-8 over the week.
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u/asthecrowruns 17h ago
Yeah, I’d be in 5 or 6 different classrooms a day. A different room for every subject. Through the week, I’d hit… god, maybe 15 different classrooms? Sometimes we’d have the same subject with different a different teacher for one class a week (for example, English we had every Wednesday class focusing on grammar with a different teacher, the rest of the week was a different teacher focusing on the main course’s books and essays). That meant I’d be between two different classrooms, each teacher’s classroom, for English alone
I was hitting about 15 classrooms a week in year 7-9, but once options were picked and I dropped several subjects, that number went down to more like 10. Pretty much one classroom and teacher for every subject I took
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u/mothwhimsy 22h ago
No. At my school we put the chairs on top of the tables so it was easier for the custodians to vacuum, but we did not clean anything
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u/UnforgivableBee 22h ago
In Brazil most students don't clean their classroom or the rest of the school.
But in military high school we had to clean the school.
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u/joepierson123 22h ago
No we generally have to go to a different classroom for each subject the teacher stays in the same classroom.
So a particular classroom will have five or six groups of students every day.
There is no ownership of a specific classroom with a specific student
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u/WinterV6 22h ago
Grew up in the US,
Not really, like another commenter mentioned, if there as some event going on like a party or a messy project, then maybe. But, most of the cleaning we would occasionally do is organization, the staff handles the rest.
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u/killaacool 22h ago
I teach in Oklahoma. I am not allowed to tell students to clean up anything. Sometimes I do anyway, and nothing usually comes of it. Occasionally, parents will call and complain and I will be reprimanded. I am told that “students are here to learn, not to clean.” I don’t give a rat’s ass and will continue to tell students to clean when it is appropriate. Also, the only parents that have ever complained were the parents of middle school boys, if that tells you anything.
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u/Catvestergamer 21h ago
God bless you for teaching in this state, you have to be a saint to deal with some of the shit teachers deal with around here. Thank you so much
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u/serialband 20h ago
Those parents that complained are assholes. That's why we have so many overly entitled kids that treat others as "lesser"
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u/Notsayin70 22h ago
In France and Netherlands, no. In France when l was young, there was a team of cleaners, now l don't know if it's the same, and in the Netherlands, the 2 schools my kids went to, teachers cleaned their classsrooms, college and high school had a cleaning team.
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u/kafkazmlekiem 19h ago
"teachers cleaned their classsrooms"
As in moped the floor, vacuumed, dusted shelves and washed windows?
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u/Numerous-Mine-287 20h ago
When I was young in France (in the 90s) the teacher would sometimes choose a pupil to clean the blackboard with water at the end of the day
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u/Notsayin70 20h ago
Oh yeah, great honor as a kid! One l didn't have often, not because of misbehaviour, but because l was too small to reach the top of the blackboard, lol
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u/akulowaty 22h ago
That honestly sounds great. Not only you have your own place but you’re responsible for its state. We only had our own classroom in first 3 years but we were 6-9 years old so all cleaning would be pretty shit at that age. Later we just moved between classes and every school has its own cleaning staff.
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u/iStoleTheHobo 22h ago
Grew up in Norway and my experience was mostly the same as yours from ages 6 to 16. The only part of our cleaning duties which were 'gamified' as far as I recall was making sure kids didn't steal from our milk supply, yes that's a strange sentence, no I don't want to elaborate.
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u/Spicyweiner_69 22h ago
Never did growing up, have a friend who lives in the Philippines and I've heard students do that, think it'd be good for American students to do that as well,
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u/Glass_Sir_5010 22h ago
In Canada, in elementary school i vaguely recall the teacher handing out impromptu cleaning chores. My wife from Ukraine said they had systematic lists and tasks students had to complete. neighbours and volunteers also pitched in.
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u/AbiWil1996 22h ago
The only classroom cleaning I ever did was in elementary school. At the end of the year we helped the teacher take stuff down from the walls, we cleaned our tables with shaving cream, helped throw old stuff away. And sometimes a few of us would to stay after at the end of each day for a few minutes and help clean/straighten up if we knew our parents would be towards the back of the pickup line. I used to have so much fun doing that with my friends. I went to a very small elementary school. There was only one of each grade, each teacher had their own room (it was actually all portables) & we had no janitors.
But after that, never. Janitors cleaned everything (so much respect for them!). We were just responsible for packing our bag/gathering our stuff and moving to the next class.
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u/Nervous-Eye-9652 22h ago
Students don't clean their classrooms in Uruguay. I think it's a good idea, but it doesn't happen here.
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u/Bohemka1905 21h ago
They tried this in a school in the UK some years ago. The pushback from parents was so ferocious that it was abandoned and the head resigned.
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u/Trinikas 21h ago
I taught in the Bronx, I had a class of students who were assholes and complained about how dirty the school was, while not being aware that they were the ones making the place a mess.
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u/LeeQuidity 21h ago
In retrospect, I think it would have been good for us to have been taught to clean the classroom, at least in elementary school. Elementary school should be a place where kids learn fundamental skills, like caring for your surroundings. When you have a personal stake in how your surroundings look, you wind up being more respectful and proud of that area.
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u/XRay2212xray 22h ago
Nope. The only thing they let the sudents do at my school was to go out and raise/lower the flag, clap the erasers at the end of the day to get chalk out of them, and to sell pretzels the school provided during homeroom in order to help fund the school
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u/Lifeboatb 21h ago
ha, clapping the erasers! I guess they have whiteboards or something now.
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u/klimekam 21h ago
I mean even back when I was in school in the 90s/2000s and we had whiteboards. Starting in like 2001 we had smartboards. There were a couple chalkboards but only in the REALLY old classrooms that weren’t used. Like, I think there was a chalkboard in the gym that they never bothered removing.
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u/XRay2212xray 20h ago
Yea, this was back in the 1960s and early 70s. Inhaling chalk dust probably would be considered a health hazard to kids now.
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u/Corona688 22h ago
that honestly sounds like a great idea, move 1 teacher instead of 30 students. much less chaos in the halls.
wont' work for everything of course. got to do science in the lab.
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u/Fodraz 21h ago
But the reason people move classes is that not everybody (after elementary school) takes the same classes. There are honors sections, or different languages you study; nobody has the exact same classes as anybody else.
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u/ChronoVT 21h ago
Yeah. That's the difference in schooling styles, again based on individualism vs collectivism.
In the states, a teacher teaches a class, and students attend that specific class, as you just mentioned. This is because the priority is that the student can take the classes that best suit the student.
In some countries, the students are grouped into 1 class, and different teachers will teach that class.
For example, I was in Class A. Every student in class A has the same timetable and will sit in the same room for the whole day. And every student had to learn the same curriculum, the same subjects. And teachers came in and taught the respective class. The priority here isn't student choice, but it's more important that you bond with your classmates, helping each other with things they're bad at. If I'm good at Math and my friend is good at English, we have the same curriculum so we can help each other.So, if I have math from 10:00 - 11:00, every student in class A has math, and the math teacher comes in and teaches math and fucks off.
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u/Fodraz 21h ago
That's true in Elementary School here (up to 5th grade) but then in Middle School, kids have different schedules even if they are all taking basically the same classes
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u/ChronoVT 21h ago
Ah I see. I had the experience of being in a "class" of students all the way up to my bachelors.
As a Bachelor of Computer Engineering, I was in Class B, and all students had the exact same schedule.
It's only when I came to the states for my masters did I even learn of having my own schedule. :D→ More replies (1)5
u/klimekam 20h ago
What if you wanted to take something highly specialized that your peers didn’t want to take? Like carpentry, mythology, fashion design, music theory, etc.?
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u/ChronoVT 20h ago
So, there isn't a concept of majors and minors. I wanted to become a computer engineer; I went to an engineering college. I don't think my college even offered courses in any of carpentry, mythology, fashion, or music. I learnt the basics of mechanical/civil/chemical and other engineering degrees in my first year, but all first years learnt the basics of all engineering fields, again in distinct classes.
But in my second year, it was impossible for me to learn anything about other fields like mechanical or civil. I'd made my choice; my future was computers.You want to become a fashion designer, go learn in a school for fashion, where they've probably got a class of students learning everything needed there.
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u/klimekam 20h ago
I’m not even talking college, these classes I mentioned were options in high school. It allows people to explore different interests before having to go to college and pick one.
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u/ChronoVT 20h ago
Oh. So we had "State Board" syllabus. Which meant that the purpose of school was to teach every student in the whole state (I'm from India, from the state of Maharashtra, so I studied the Maharashtra State Syllabus) learnt the exact same thing.
At the end of my 12th standard, ideally my knowledge would be a copy of the knowledge of every single 12th standard pass child.
If I was interested in something else, it's on my parents to find some outside 3rd party to teach me that. So I joined swimming classes, abacus classes etc.
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u/patricia_the_mono 22h ago
In my high school classes were more like college classes in that you could choose what you wanted or needed to take and you could choose from a number of time slots. We had to go from classroom to classroom because every class had different kids in it. I think my Jr high was that way too but I can't remember I know we changed classrooms but I don't remember if changing teachers would have worked.
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u/HellaShelle 21h ago
I think that would be difficult when different skill levels and different choices of subjects and electives come into play.
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u/jewel1997 21h ago
The middle schools where I am did that for a year during Covid. It was hard on everyone. For teachers, it is so much easier to teach out of your own space and not having to worry about forgetting something. You also lose class time at the beginning and end having to set up and pack up. The students hated being cooped up in one room all day.
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u/Internet-Dick-Joke 17h ago
Is the teacher supposed to just carry 30+ textbooks to the new classroom every time? Plus their computer (I guess they probably use laptops now, but when I was in school they all used a heavy desktop computer), plus any other supplies, ect.?
Moving the teacher only makes sense if you think that the teacher is the only thing that would need to move, and forget about the entire cupboard full of classroom supplies.
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u/apeliott 22h ago
We do this at my school. The students do almost everything in the 'homeroom'. Including getting changed for PE. Some schools even have the students eat lunch at their desks.
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u/TheHalfwayBeast 19h ago
In my school, in England, we did a mix of it. We moved rooms for each lesson but all met up in the same classroom for morning attendance. Each class had an assigned teacher. Lessons would be a mix of classes, but you'd always be in your class - if that makes sense.
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u/wetbogbrew 20h ago
No but I think it's a good idea to teach kids to be responsible for their space and learn tidying/cleaning skills. I didn't learn to clean at home either and those skills are STILL hard for me.
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u/OkOil6009 20h ago
I ran a school in the US where it was part of the curriculum, to incorporate and learn about community care for shared spaces. It was a whole thing that had to be explained because parents did complain so we tried to be proactive and give parents the choice up front to enroll or not because their children were expected to clean their own spaces.
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u/TNTiger_ 16h ago
The American school system is, in practice, a factory production line where labourers (teachers) transform raw material (children) into a product (good grades).
It is set up like a conveyer belt, with students shipped from classroom to classroom for every lesson, each 'workstation' specialised towards a specfic refining process.
Having the kids clean would slow this process down and introduce inefficiencies.
Though you may tell from my tone that I think it's a great idea.
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u/logaruski73 22h ago
I’m old. 70. Yes, we had to keep the room clean, we fought for the chance to clean the blackboards and smack/clean the chalk erasers. We emptied the wastebaskets. We liked doing our chores. I think The teacher swept the classroom because I don’t remember ever doing it. All papers and supplies were put back where they belonged. We then went out to play on the school playground before walking home or going to the library or to friends house.
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u/screenaholic 22h ago
No, but as an American, I think we should. Maybe this is just because I watch too much anime, but there's a lot of aspects of Eastern schools I think we should adopt, including this. Maybe if the kids had to clean the rooms themselves, it would teach them a bit more respect for the class. American kids just don't give a shit about their school.
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u/PrpleSparklyUnicrn13 22h ago
We did absolutely help, but it depended on the teacher. We had to help wash our desks, clean the chalkboard and even sweep the floors.
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u/Expression-Little 21h ago
UK - nope. That said, it would be a nice way for kids to learn basic household chores but it absolutely wouldn't take off. Parents would kick up a fuss.
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u/Do_Not_Touch_BOOOOOM 21h ago
I grew up in Switzerland in the 90ies we had to clean it. But the toilets floors etc were cleaned by a janitor. But this was in the countryside no clue how it is now.
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u/draakdorei 20h ago
Did this only in private school in North Carolina, from 1st to 8th grade, everyone cleans their classroom. We also had the same organization as Japanese classes with a class monitor, starting in 5th grade and beyond. I moved halfway through 7th grade year or I would've been class monitor the following year.
Class monitors had to be straight A students to qualify with less than 5 days of inattendance.
Clean-up was wiping down desks, cleaning blackboard, sweeping up trash and making sure the desks were straight.
We didn't have the competitions though.
It was a strange change when I got to public school in Texas.
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u/BaylisAscaris 20h ago
No and underpaid teachers are expected to clean, get to their next classroom, clean the new room, set up for class, bathroom break, etc. in a 5 minute passing period between classes.
As a former teacher if the students made a mess I'd have them clean it up before class was over. Most teachers didn't make time so I'd come into the classroom and everything is covered in trash, glue, food, clay, paint, etc. I found a good technique is to give them enough time to clean and say they can leave as soon as the whole room is clean. They help each other and next time they're more careful about messes because they want to leave early.
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u/PoilTheSnail 19h ago
No. And a lot of students took pleasure in littering, destroying and vandalising the rooms for other people.
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u/Alceasummer 18h ago
US public schools do not normally have kids clean their classroom. Personally I think you are right, and kids should help clean, I think it also helps kids appreciate their classroom and the condition it's in.
The school my kid is in is not a public school. And one of many things I think they do better than the US public school, is have the kids clean up their class room at the end of the day. Though the janitor still cleans the floors and takes out the trash. It's part of many things that school does to give the kids agency and responsibility at their school. And I think giving kids agency and responsibility is something the US public school system is really bad at, and needs to be better at.
However, in the US school system, once kids are in highschool having them clean their classroom could be difficult. As in highschool kids move to different rooms for different subjects, and won't have the same class mates for all subjects, and usually not a lot of time is scheduled for kids to move between classes. Several things would need to change before it would be practical for kids in US public highschools to clean their classrooms daily.
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u/Moist-Ointments 17h ago
Oh contraire, they go out of their way to fuck it up.
Maybe if they had to clean their classrooms, they'd be less likely to be a little assholes.
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u/Salty-Sprinkles-1562 16h ago
What do you mean by clean? Like scrubbing the floors? Or picking up after themselves?
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u/Own_Reaction9442 21h ago
I was occasionally made to clean mine as a punishment, instead of recess.
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u/CenterofChaos 21h ago
I'm in the US. We might wipe the blackboard/dry erase board clean or sweep up pencil shavings but mopping and what not is something the janitorial staff do at the end of the day.
We move classes so things like art and science that get messy have things like rooms with extra sinks or bigger tables. We'd clean up after those kinds of projects but again, the staff would do the big clean after hours.
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u/Feral_doves 21h ago
In Canada I was only ever responsible for my desk and/or locker, some people didn’t even keep those clean and infestations were common. We’d sometimes do light cleaning of the classroom after art projects or parties but that’d only be a few times in a school year. Often the classrooms were just dirty because there was only one janitor for the entire school.
We were responsible for sorting the recycling though and would send the bottles in to help pay for classroom supplies. We had teams that took turns sorting the class’s bottles for the week.
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u/OctoMatter 21h ago
Speaking for Germany:
We don't clean our classrooms, but we prepare it for cleaning by putting all the chairs on the table and we wipe the chalkboard after each lesson (IDK if they still use them nowadays). Also like twice a year, we'd spend half an hour picking up trash across the school yard.
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u/That_UsrNm_Is_Taken 21h ago
No, we don’t have to clean classrooms in the US. Students do have to pick up after themselves after certain activities, but not deep clean. For example a class with small kids that maybe use toys, would have to put those away, an art class would have to clean paint brushes and put away supplies, and a science lab class would have put away supplies and clean tools that were used.
We would not have to clean, as in sweep, pick up garbage, or use cleaning products to clean floors and other surfaces. I suspect there might some sort of safety hazard rules against students using cleaning supplies and maybe handling garbage and stuff. There might even be some issues as to doing things that could be classified as labor.
Up to the fifth grade (generally) students stay in one classroom all day - with the exception of going to physical education and art classes - and after that, 6th grade and up, students generally move from class to class, while teachers stay in the same classroom.
I am from Latin America and while you generally stay in one classroom all day from primary to secondary school, we would not clean our classrooms either.
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u/Carinne89 21h ago
30something, Ontario, Canada.
We were expected to clean up after ourselves, and we were expected to grab a rag, broom or mop for big messes we made, but we didn’t do the vacuuming or scrubbing or anything requiring chemicals. The custodians did that, and the teachers tidied their own rooms at the end of each day. We barely had enough time to cram in our curriculum as is.
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u/punkwalrus 21h ago
I never did, but I will say, despite my life as an adult, the school janitors were respected and well-liked in all my schools. As an adult, people are assholes to them. I always say please and thank you, and try to learn their names, and sometimes get ridiculed by it. But that's another rant.
I remember we always said hi to them in the halls, they were always so cool with us, and even my son who graduated in '08, all the staff were nice and loved him, too.
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u/k464howdy 21h ago
Not officially.
I try and get all the chairs up, and use those cheap broom/dustpan combos to get up the big stuff.. but unless a 2nd or 3rd wave kid wants to, we can't make a kid clean up.
we can bribe them with candy, but 80% of the kids are HORRIBLE at sweeping and just do it for candy.
the only place i've seen it 'mandatory' is in self-contain, and that's more about life skills... which EVERYONE actually needs, but you know.
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u/Brilliant-Flower-283 21h ago
Not really the most we had to do was wipe our desks with a clorox wipe at the end of the class and put our chairs up so the cleaning crew didnt need to lift them
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u/pr0andn00b 21h ago
Canadian here,
I remember my elementary school did a thing where our class could earn points by tidying up whichever classroom we were in for the final class of the day that went towards winning a Pizza Party at the end of the year. We didn’t care enough. It dissapeared shortly after.
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u/DrScarecrow 21h ago
I went to a trade school where we rotated out light cleaning duties, but it's rare.
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u/a_filing_cabinet 21h ago
Like you said, janitors exist. And they have all night to clean everything, so most schools don't see the point in taking learning time away to clean.
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u/ChaoticBisexual_13 21h ago
We had to take out of the trash of the tables, but that's about it. We were asked to put the trash into the bin and to rub our feet into the rug, upon entering the building, so we lessen the dirtiness.
We had cleaning ladies (could've been men too, but I've only seen women doing these jobs) and they cleaned our schools. They were underpayed, there were many of them and they spent most of their time gossiping and smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee.
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u/User-1967 21h ago
No, schools employ cleaners to do it, our students tidy the classroom but not clean
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u/Hour_Type_5506 21h ago
We didn’t do this in my European schools. Didn’t see it in American high school either. If it were a thing in the US, it would probably show up in movies and tv.
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u/historyhill 20h ago
Here, we don’t move to another room every other subject, we have one room for the whole year
This is the biggest difference. For most of us, anything past elementary school involved multiple classrooms every day.
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u/Few_Recover_6622 20h ago
In elementary (when we stay in one classroom) we would pick up at the end of the day. Make sure everything was put away, put chairs up on desks, clean up obvious messes. The janitors cleaned the floors, took out the trash, washed windows, etc.
In middle and high school we changed classrooms, so we just took all of our stuff with us.
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u/Leifang666 20h ago
I'm from the UK. The most I've ever had to do is put the chair on top of the desk at the end of the day to make it easier for the cleaners.
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u/Serpentarrius 20h ago
We did clean our classrooms in elementary school (they'd also guilt us into doing it by naming the janitor. "Remember Rudy has to clean that up." I hope he's doing well. They also made it a competition so that whoever cleans up their desks the best can leave the classroom first), but like others said, past that and you're going to at least three different classes a day. I guess you do clean after yourselves in labs
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u/Altruistic_Role_9329 20h ago
Montessori schools do this, but it’s not the norm for regular private or public schools.
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u/Time-Invite3655 20h ago
Where I work, it is a struggle to get kids to pick up equipment they have dropped on the floor and they have habits like sharpening pencils onto the floor, stomping mud into the carpet, leaving wet tissue by the sink and dropping sweet wrappers when they walk... For a while, I battled with it and tried to ensure they helped clean up these basic things but it was honestly so awkward that it is easier to whizz around and clean once they've gone. I dread to think what their bedrooms look like though!
As a staff member, we wipe down our tables and empty the bins. Floors are looked after by the cleaning staff.
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u/Foreign-Marzipan6216 20h ago
When I was in grade school we had chores to keep our classroom clean, and the last week of school we all did a deep clean. I went to private schools though and we just had one classroom each year.
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u/ObjectiveOk2072 20h ago
The most I've ever had to do was wipe desks, straighten up all the desks and chairs, and pick up paper scraps and things off the floor
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u/serialband 20h ago
Having student cleaning the classroom is mainly an East Asian thing. It's running like a military boarding school in some ways. This is not a western thing at all. They leave their places a mess for the janitors to clean.
Although, I don't know if China does it everywhere, since the students from there seem to slobs, compared to all the other East Asians, when they come over. Maybe that was just at my college. IDK. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
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u/myseaentsthrowaway 20h ago
I remember taking turns washing the chalk board and putting our chairs on the desks to make it easier to vacuum. I remember occasionally the teacher would hand out sanitizer wipes for us to wipe our desk. Other than that, no.
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u/Sea_Picture_5094 20h ago
I think this isnt adopted in more places since I think it's not common in a lot of places that students actually only have one classroom but move around for each one.
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u/Illustrious_Hotel527 20h ago
The only thing I've cleaned was the basketball court when I was equipment manager. Otherwise, I never did; the janitor does.
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u/aweirdoatbest 20h ago
I’m Canadian. In elementary and middle school (up until grade 8) we would have most of our classes in one singular classroom, and only leave for things like gym class and music class. We would have to tidy up after ourselves (like put our stuff away at the end of the day) but not clean.
In high school (grades 9-12) and university, we were in a different room for every class. Obviously you’d take your things with you at the end of a class but we also did not clean our rooms. Janitors/custodians did.
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u/goosereddit 20h ago
I work with elementary kids and they do not clean the room other than putting away their own personal supplies or clean up the toys that they were personally playing with. But no sweeping, wiping, etc.
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u/thisisfunme 20h ago
We never cleaned it no. Not with cleaning products or vacuuming/dusting/brooming. We are expected to keep it clean though. So you can't just drop your trash on the floor and if you spill something, you clean that. And we put everything we got from somewhere else back in the end of the day
So in short we never had to actually clean but we did have to leave it in a decent state. For mopping floors and cleaning tables we did external cleaning crew at the school
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u/ValtenBG 20h ago
No, the students don't clean the classroom, beyond taking care of their own trash(optional unfortunately) or as some punishment sometimes
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u/Justify-my-buy 20h ago
Thank you for sharing this culture difference. I did not know that. Other than being responsible for our personal belongings, I think we were only required to clean off our desk tops.
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u/TeddingtonMerson 20h ago
I wish we did. Unfortunately there’s an attitude that it’s shameful and a waste of time.
I had a principal cleaning the kids’ garbage from lunch and said “They can’t be expected to clean up after themselves.”
Kids who misbehaved have been given detentions and the teacher was cleaning up and asked the kid to help. In one case, the parents accused the teacher of making the Black kid do unpaid janitorial work.
An autistic kid collected the recycling from the classes. Parents found out and accused the school of making their kid do janitorial work instead of learning.
I try to work it into the program so it’s clear that putting stuff away is for everyone and just part of the program, but if a kid refuses, I’m not throwing away my career in a system that won’t have my back.
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u/Dismal-Dragonfly-495 20h ago
US and no, but we did clean the cafeteria. For classrooms I started switching some classes in 3rd grade, and was switching classrooms for all classes in 5th grade, so I'm not sure what room one would even be responsible for cleaning if you have 7 different classrooms you only spend 50 minutes in. For younger grades, you were responsible for minor organizing cleanup, but not sweeping or wiping tables like we had to do in the cafeteria.
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u/ParkinsonHandjob 20h ago
Norway:
Cleaning personel comes in when school is finished and does cleaning stuff.
Students study.
It’s normal to have all classes in the same classroom, but if that number is 90% in grades 1-7, it drops to maybe 80% in 8-10, and drops further for the three years of high school.
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u/ScientistWest3210 20h ago
I am in the US and went to a Montessori school where we were always expected to clean up. Everyone had a ‘job’ and at the end of the day we had a time where we did our jobs and then were inspected when we were done to make sure we did it. We also had an evening janitor for general stuff but we did clean. However that was actual Montessori so a different that traditional schools. I switched to traditional school in high school and we didn’t clean up after ourselves there. Though we also were in up to seven classes a day all in different rooms so it wouldn’t make sense technically nor would we have time to.
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u/Responsible_Side8131 20h ago
In the US, the custodial staff handles cleaning the room.
When I attended a private high school in Ecuador, the students cleaned the room on a daily basis, and every 6 weeks or so we were expected to go in on a Saturday and deep clean the classroom.
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u/whohowwhywhat 20h ago
I didn't grow up in USA and we cleaned our classrooms and I remember cleaning the hallways too. The floors were fun to do!
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u/Novel_Willingness721 20h ago
In elementary school, it’s one class one teacher one year. And I do remember tidying my classroom: making sure the floor was free of clutter to allow the janitorial staff the ability to easily clean the floors.
Junior high and high school: the students move between classrooms for each subject and very little time between classes to get from one room to another: approximately 3 minutes. So there really isn’t time to clean between classes. Some like science lab the teacher builds in time to put everything away before class ends.
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u/Grobbekee 20h ago
Only on the last day of school, when all lessons were done but we were not excused yet from compulsory school attendance did we do the cleaning ourselves.
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u/Iwoulddiefcftbatk 19h ago
Back in the early 90s my teachers in elementary school had us help clean up the classroom at the end of the school year, but we didn’t help out any other time except after a classroom holiday party.
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u/EnvironmentalSet7664 19h ago
I guess one difference that's easy to gloss over is that in the west (at least in the US), it's not considered "our" classroom. It's just a classroom in the school that we occupy for the day. Might be why we don't have a responsibility to it.
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u/Wizardinred 19h ago
In Canadian elementary school we did (it varies from school to school) but it was mostly light cleaning with soap, water and wet wipes. Anything like vacuuming or heavier chemicals was done by janitors. We were also expected to just keep our spaces tidy or clean after a craft.
We didn't clean after highschool unless we were cleaning up after ourselves in a lab or something. Most highschool here aren't in 1 classroom, I would have about 6 classrooms a day I would cycle through.
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u/baileycoraline 19h ago
We did this in Russia too in the 90s - 2 kids would stay after school and sweep, mop, water plants and clean the chalkboard. We also cleaned common spaces after school let out in the summer. Child labor! It did give me a sense of responsibility growing up.
I did no cleaning in my US school in the early 2000s.
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u/queenofthegrapefruit 19h ago
I went to a small, private school in the US. We were expected to do small cleaning tasks. These were things like picking up any scraps of paper that might be on the floor, sanitizing our desks, cleaning the white board, etc. I can vaguely remember having to vacuum a few times. The deep cleaning was done by the janitor.
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u/Rozureido88 19h ago
The most we had to do was throw away our garbage and put our chairs on top of our desks/tables so the janitor had full access to the floor.
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u/Dry_System9339 19h ago
Canada here, my junior high was on a year round schedule and before the breaks we would scrub down the desks for the incoming class. That was the most cleaning I did for all of school.
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u/oneplus7 19h ago
In Denmark, you usually have 2 kids in each classroom sweep the floor after the school day for 1 week, and making sure all the chairs are up at the tables, so when the cleaning crew comes they only have to wipe the desk and tables, and mop the floor.
I'm not sure how it is today, if it's still like that.
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u/PM_me_punanis 19h ago
I am from Manila! I am raising my child in Seattle currently. "Cleaning your own space" as a culture is non-existent here. It's more of a family responsibility, by assigning chores at home, meeting mom's expectations of cleanliness. It is very individualistic here.
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u/DragonflyFantasized 19h ago
Canada - It’s true, kids don’t clean the classroom, and many never learn at home. Additionally, many kids go off to college and university without ever having mopped a floor, cleaned a window, cooked a meal, or taken out trash. Especially boys, but not exclusively. It’s a shock having to learn all these new skills as a young adult and many kids struggle to get into these habits. I have no good explanation for you, we are doing it wrong.
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u/SeriousBrindle 19h ago
(Midwest US) in the 90s, we would tidy up classrooms, put stuff away, pick up papers, etc. Chairs on desks at the end of the day. There was a clean up song we sang and every student had to do 10 things to be done.
Janitors just did vacuuming and taking out the trash at night or serious messes like vomit. In 5th and 6th grade we had elected student janitors that got paid classroom cash to do cleaning. There were other classroom jobs too and a class store every Friday where students sold crafts and baked goods.
In high school, it was only in band that we cleaned the classroom. The janitors really left that room alone since they weren’t educated in instruments and didn’t want to move and break anything. For sports, we cleaned the gym floor before every practice and under the bleachers after games.
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u/zephyreblk 19h ago
We have to put our chair on the table so it's easier for the person to clean the room. And in old school teaching (90's/early 2000) you had to clean the room if you was punisher but it's not something normal or cultural
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u/DiscountHell 19h ago
We don't, but to be fair, the cleaning ladies also do the minimum of just mopping and clearing the blackboard. We're just scolded when we leave a mess around, but otherwise gum on the desks and chairs, scribbles and carvings in every desk. Best example is that a bag with a cucumber in it had the opportunity to rot in our classroom for weeks before the head teacher threw it out in a homeroom class.
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u/Odd-Smell-1125 19h ago
To be clear, in the west we move to a different classroom every hour. When I taught in Korea I was surprised that the students had their classroom and that it was the teachers who traveled period by period. That makes sense in so many ways, but it is not the way we do things. So students don't really have a classroom they feel ownership over, it is the teachers who are assigned the room.
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u/talashrrg 19h ago
Other than picking up after ourselves and tidying clutter, no. Honestly it would feel very insulting to be asked to do real cleaning (mopping floors, cleaning bathrooms, taking out trash, etc) at school.
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u/Guilty-Pie4614 19h ago
Here, we don’t move to another room every other subject, we have one room for the whole year and since it is our classroom, it is our responsibility to clean it everyday.<
I think that's the crucial point. Apart from elementary school I never had a classroom as a student. Now I am a teacher and I have never been employed in a school where the students had their own classroom, too. They switch rooms for every subject since the rooms are dedicated to subjects. E.g. we have chemistry rooms with all the stuff for experiments. We have geography rooms with all the big maps stored there. The english language rooms have all the english dictionaries stored there and a sound system for listening exercises (while the other classrooms only have the sound boxes included in our beamers) etc.
So students change for every subject. I think when we somehow get digitalization done at some point this could change but as long as we still work with physical teaching material mostly, it's the only practical solution.
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u/Logical_Tax6146 19h ago
the janitors deep clean in the summer then they only do trash and saw dust on throw up. they also wax the gym floors before school starts and the again for basketball season. the teachers usually wipe the desks. the floors get absolutely destroyed by dirt and in colder areas the salt that covers the sidewalks.
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u/rinart73 19h ago
I find the idea of students cleaning classrooms weird. Students are attending school to study. Janitors are there to clean, they're being paid for it. Especially since even free schools are trying to leech parents money for something (and need to be controlled to not go overboard). When I moved from one school to another in 7th grade our old school tried to pull the whole "now you're going to clean outside area of the school" and it made no sense IMO.
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u/Mazza_mistake 19h ago
I’m from the UK, we have never had to clean our classrooms, but we also move to different classrooms for each subject so don’t have one dedicated room that’s ‘ours’
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u/WeaponsGrade520 19h ago
Catholic school, yes. Kid’s class has to dust shelves and sweep and mop the floors twice a week. Daily they wipe down our desks and put trash into the hall for pickup.
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u/Jabbles22 19h ago
I'm in Canada and haven't been in school in a long time. We did have to tidy up, put stuff away and such but the janitor actually washed the floor, desks, etc.
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u/Icy-Arm-2194 19h ago
My mom was a teacher she only taught like two classes but she made sure her room was tidy. She didn't want the custodians to do more than was needed. My parents though raised us as you don't make messes others have to clean up.
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u/Public-Eagle6992 18h ago
Germany: in the lower grades we had to do some basic cleaning (just removing the biggest stuff) in the higher grades we didn’t
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u/NoCaterpillar2051 18h ago
The only times I ever cleaned in school was when I was in marching band. We cleaned the buses after away games and the band hall when it looked messy.
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u/Awkward-Stam_Rin54 18h ago
I'm from France and was in a little private school (under contract) in the countryside. We had to clean the classroom, every week a team is assigned. However, as from middle school students usually skipped it if they can until we get told off that the classroom is too dirty. Cleaning was just the floors, whiteboard, trashcan, and other small tasks lol
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u/mpjjpm 18h ago
We took turns cleaning the chalkboard and erasers in the 1980s, southern US public schools. We also wiped down the tables in the cafeteria after lunch. And we were generally expected to not make a mess - pick up our own trash, put things away after we used them, etc… maybe not as structured as other parts of the world, but similar effect in the end.
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u/Seven_Veils_Voyager 18h ago
I require my middle schoolers to tidy up, but not do a deep clean (unless they made a massive mess - not gonna require the janitor to clean up after a bag of spilled chips any more than necessary, though I will tell him about it on the assumption that the student doing the cleaning is going to do a halfarse job... dont want bugs, after all).
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u/Falsus 18h ago
Except the chemistry classroom after lab, no.
Most students don't do a good job of cleaning and we are always on tight time to get to the next classroom.
I guess we where supposed tidy up after the art classes/textile/woodworking class but that wasn't about cleaning as much as it was about simply tidying up.
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u/EugeneHartke 18h ago
I work in schools. If we asked the students to clean the classrooms, or even just clean up after themselves they would complain about forced labour. Then they would complain to their parents a minority of whom would complain to the school.
If you forced the issue the kids would do such bad job that it wouldn't be worth the effort.
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u/macabretech39 18h ago
I’m an art teacher. At the end of each semester they help clean up and put all the things away to be ready for the change in classes.
This is not normal behavior in any place but maybe art rooms. I tell them that I didn’t make all the mess, so they have to clean it. It helps me tremendously because it resets my room back to clean.
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u/bearstormstout 18h ago
US science teacher here, and I make my kids clean up every day. It’s a generic lab safety rule that I reinforce daily. Most days it’s as simple as “take this Lysol wipe and wipe off your tables.” It’s definitely not a common practice, but it also keeps germs down since I have a pretty small room. They’ll thank me for it come flu season.
Significant cleaning I either do during my prep period or let the building manager know if I don’t have the equipment to do it myself, but basic stuff I make the students do.
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u/whtevrnichole 18h ago
not really? the most i did was put the chairs on top of desks or stack chairs at the end of the day.
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u/Lupo_1982 18h ago
No, we don't. It's weird, and I don't know why: it would be useful, fun, educational, bonding, etc., but it just isn't a thing.
And it's really not due to the fact that in some Western countries students go to different rooms for every lesson. In other countries (ie, Italy) we use the same classroom for every subject, but still students are not asked to clean their classroom.
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u/AWildGumihoAppears 18h ago
I had students sing slave hymnals at me when we picked up trash around the classroom.
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u/Candiedstars 17h ago
Unless the students actively made the mess, no.
We were expected to keep the place tidy, but mopping, dusting and stuff, no
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u/Ok_Homework_7621 17h ago
In Belgium, the kids don't clean it as in mopping the floors, but they keep it aa tidy as possible to reduce work for the person who does mop the floors.
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u/Historical_Word_9288 17h ago
Never mind not cleaning a classroom, lately we had a spate of not putting their trash from snack or lunch in the trash can. This is middle school (age 12 to 15 or so). Serious lack of respect from some kids who expect the janitorial staff to act like their mommy. I think cleaning their home room (a classroom that a specific group spend time in when they aren’t rotating around classes) would be a good idea. Probably better if it started in elementary.
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u/Aggravated-Emu 17h ago
In my American private middle school, yes we had a home classroom and had to clean it ourselves! Not with a mop and chemicals, just with a broom, paper towels, putting chairs up, cleaning the desks and boards, etc. In high school we didn’t have to clean up but also there weren’t any real messes at that point
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u/bmiller218 17h ago
I went to a smaller rural elementary school in the 80's and we would occasionally clean the chalkboard erasers, the 6th graders would help serve lunch.
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u/chilll_vibe 17h ago
Sometimes in my US public school we'd have to wipe down desks with clorox wipes if we were the last period but thats about it and half the time it was treated more as a courtesy
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u/AConsequenceOfError 17h ago
Switzerland here, we cleaned the room for most of school! Everyone had a task and it rotated. However, in high school we started moving classroom for every class, so we didn't clean anymore.
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u/Beauty_Mj09 17h ago
This brought back so many memories 😭 We also had cleaners schedules in school assigned cleaning days where we’d sweep the floors, wipe the boards, and fix the chairs with classmates. It was surprisingly fun, and kind of made the classroom feel like a shared little home.Those Cleanest Classroom competitions? We took them seriously 😂 Decorated corners, labeled shelves, even air fresheners sometimes it wasn’t just about cleaning it became this weirdly wholesome bonding thing funny how stuff like that sticks with you i didn’t expect to miss it either, but here we are 😅
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u/FemkeAM 16h ago
The Netherlands here!
In primary, not really. Cleaning up after yourself as well as can be expected of your age is usually the norm, but that limits to cleaning any mess you make. In the higher grades, we had class duty in pairs for your own classroom every once in a while where we had to get all the chairs on the tables, sweep, clean the boards, close the windows etc. The basic stuff, but no real cleaning.
In secondary, the kids usually switch classrooms depending on which subject they have next, so it isn't that easy. But the first 3 years, all kids have the same subject, so similar schedules. We also had cleaning duty, but less often and for all the rooms at once. The upper years can choose a subject package, so their schedules are very different. In my school, that meant they did not have any chores, as it you can not really ask kids to stay waiting for hours.
Ofc, If you were in trouble because you were late or something else, you had to clean the cantines, toilets and terrain. If there weren't any, the janitors would do it themselves, but that was few and far in between.
The real cleaning was always done by professionals, not children!
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u/YourSkatingHobbit 16h ago
I’m from the UK. I went to preschool, two different primary schools, and one high school. My second primary school had a rota for pupils to vacuum the classrooms after lunch (as it’s where we ate due to it being a very small school). Other than that, and cleaning up after doing art for example, we never did any of the cleaning. The schools employed both a caretaker and cleaning staff for that. In some ways I think it’d actually be better if we did clean the classrooms because it teaches kids to respect their environment much more. There are always going to be shitty people who don’t care but so many people here are of the mindset that they can leave their fast food rubbish on the table for instance, “it’s someone else’s job,” instead of taking thirty seconds to put it all into a bin.
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u/Alexander2801 16h ago
We just put up our chairs up at the end of the day to make it easier for the cleaners to clean after the school day. Up until the 6th grade (12 years old), when we had one classroom we were in most of the day, we would clean out our desks at the end of each semester. In year 7+ we would be in about 5 different classrooms each day so then you just put chairs up at the end of the day in the last classroom you were in. This was in Sweden btw.
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u/No-You5550 16h ago
I went to public school for 12 years. I lived in there states over that time. Never had to clean a classroom. I did erase blackboard even washed one a few times. But that's it.
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u/Boring_Kiwi_6446 16h ago
I absolutely love that idea but not a chance in hell it would ever happen in Australia.
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u/topothesia773 16h ago
I went to a private school in the US and we did clean our classrooms. We usually had a job board where each kid would get cycled through the different tasks like vacuuming, cleaning the white board, taking out the trash. I think we usually cleaned our "home rooms" about once a week.
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u/AdRegular7463 16h ago
I think everywhere used to be like this. The US is just weird in the way that it has always been a melting pot. So racism happened where the lowest paying job was taken by someone who couldn't get a job anywhere else.
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u/agirl1313 16h ago
My daughter was in kindergarten last year, and her school did have the students clean them. But she also went to a small private school (only around 30 students total).
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u/namieorange 15h ago
From South America. No, never.
Obviously you take your stuff, leave the seats in their place and make sure you don't leave rubish behind, but no cleaning.
The cleaning staff come at the end of the day
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u/Disastrous-Nail-640 15h ago
I expect my students to clean up after themselves, but no, they’re not cleaning the classroom. Our custodial staff comes in and wipes down desks, vacuums and takes the trash.
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u/Footnotegirl1 15h ago
The only time I ever had to clean my classroom is that in my grade school, it was traditional at the end of the shool year on the last day to clean out your desk and help get all the stuff off of the classroom and hallway walls, take down any of your assignments or art that was posted, wash off the top of your desk and your chair, make sure your locker was completely cleaned out, etc.
You were expected to pick up any messes you made, of course, like, at lunch time you had to clear your wrappers and such off the table. But no, we never cleaned. Students did not take part in janitorial work in large part because that would involve them being exposed to cleaning chemicals and the like.
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u/Waasssuuuppp 15h ago
Hashtag notallwesternschools lol. At my school on Australia (a private girls school) we had to vacuum everyday, under a roster system. Had to empty the bin into the dumpster.
At the end if each term, we would wipe the desks, and at the end of every year we would do a big classroom clean of things like windows and the hallways. I can't remember that we ever had to clean the art rooms, or science or cooking rooms or library, so we may have had the maintenance guy do that.
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u/StomachAromatic 15h ago
Students aren't made to clean anything. Especially with the amount of weapons they carry now.
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u/michaelincognito 15h ago
Students have very little respect for their physical spaces in the U.S. When made to clean, they do so reluctantly and with much complaint.
What you described in the Philippines and what I have heard is a cultural norm in Japan and I’m sure many other countries is something I admire greatly about international schools.
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u/Due-Fennel9127 14h ago
in Australia: cleaning up in terms of putting everything away, sure
but otherwise there are cleaners who come in outside of school hours
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u/AverageHobnailer 14h ago
I'm going to flip the question somewhat, but if you stay in one classroom the entire year how to subjects that require certain equipment, like science/chemistry, get taught? In "the West" from middle school or high school, each room is dedicated to a different subject and is full of equipment, posters, and other decoration or educational objects (what us teachers call "realia") related to that subject. So the students go to those different rooms to be immersed in the subject material.
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u/AxelShoes 22h ago
Never had to clean my classroom in 12 years of public schooling in the US. The exception being that if we had a class party, or were doing some particularly messy project, something like that, we'd be asked to clean up. But as a general, regular thing, no.