Japanese Students Clean Their Schools!

Based on videos depicting Japanese students during お掃除 (osoji jikan), their daily school cleaning duty, many Westerners have come to the conclusion that school children here are the very model of diligence and good citizenship. Others have argued that this is wrong and tantamount to child labor. Whenever I came across these sorts of videos I always roll my eyes. Hard. As someone who works in Japanese schools, I can say that these videos are nothing but propaganda. They seem to scream, “Look, World, Japanese people are so cool and different!”

Firstly, the schools do have custodians, but they spend most of their time doing maintenance and taking care of the heavy duty cleaning around the school. Secondly, osoji jikan usually lasts about 20 minutes. No significant cleaning is going to take place in such a short amount of time. Thirdly, everyone knows that if you turn on a camera, the people it’s being pointed at, will begin to behave differently. I’d be willing to bet cash money that the day the camera crew visited, students cleaned the school like never before (or after).

The first school I taught at in Japan, osoji jikan was after the last period of the school day. Now I live and work in another district. The schools in this city do it after lunch! So they clean the classrooms, offices, hallways, stairwells, and other public areas, then have three more periods of classes and go home. That means that the next day, you start off the morning in a not-so-clean school. Makes zero sense. Who thought this was a good idea?

Let me give you a snapshot of what osoji jikan really looks like. It’s Friday at School C. I’ve just had lunch with the fifth graders. I arrive at my classroom and the nine third graders assigned to clean it are already there making a ruckus.

Some girls are sweeping dust in every direction. Some boys are having a wrestling match. One girl is doing jump-twirls as if she were a figure skater. Other boys are flinging around their wet cleaning rags. One boy crawls under a chair. I begin moving the tables and chairs to one side of the room and instruct them to help me. The boys’ rags become grimier as they wipe the barely-swept floor with them. Yuki choses one 30 x 30 centimeter tile on the floor and rubs it with his cloth for a full ten minutes.

Some girls congregate near the chalkboard discussing some highly important topic. After a few minutes, I start to move the chairs and tables to the other side. Okabe, genius that he is, pulls instead of pushes and manages to get himself stuck between tables. Hiharu dances with her broom. Two boys sword-fight with theirs. Another boy throws himself on the floor and wriggles around like a deranged salamander. A little pile of dust has formed in the middle of the room. Everyone ignores it. I grab one listless sweeper, lead her to the broom closet to grab a dust pan, and back to the dust pile. Her friend sweeps the dust into the dust pan. Now, I start setting the furniture back to where it originally was. I must work fast to do the center section so that they can use it as a guide to do the left and right sections. A boy wipes the desks with his blackened rag. Out the window, I spot Haru hiding behind a bush in the courtyard. No cleaning for him.

There are always two or three diligent ones who dutifully clean, but the rest, if not watched, will leave the room dirtier than when they started. Even in junior high school, osoji jikan is time for general goofing off and clowning around. Getting them to half-way clean the room is like wrangling ferrets.

In conclusion, I think osoji jikan is a good thing because it teaches children to be responsible (as long as they’re being properly supervised). 

March 1, 2020