Janitors (fragment)
January 26th, 2009
There aren’t really any janitors at my schools. There are custodians, or groundskeepers, or what have you, but it is not their job to mop the floor, clean the toilets, or empty the trash cans. You know who mops the floors? The students. You know who cleans the student bathrooms? The students. You know who cleans the faculty bathroom? The faculty. You know who collects and washes the lunch trays, who takes out the garbage, who serves the food? The kids. It’s on a rotating, egalitarian, and partial-volunteer basis. They do the loudspeaker announcements. They serve the food. They sweep. They tidy up.
What does it resemble in the U.S.? Not schools. No, this is nothing like any American school I ever attended, or have even heard of. What it reminds me of in America is prisons. And what does it say about a country when the only time institutional groups of people are made to clean up after themselves and learn the value of that automating labor that keeps society running is when they have been convicted a heinous crime? Self- and societal-responsibility, life skills, as a punishment and not a given?
