Civics and such

Clean your room!
Would it be entirely too presumptuous to create a classroom chore rotation for my students? I personally would love to do this. Schools in Japan and China do this. I've heard some European schools do this too. Not that their schools are superfantasically perfect, because every school has its own flaws. But from a practical and philosophical perspective, I believe it's a great idea.

These chores will of course be age appropriate. It's not like I'm going to ask a 7-year-old to get up on a 10 ft. ladder and change the lightbulb. It'll be simple stuff: cleaning the whiteboard, sweeping and mopping, dusting, etc. Basically putting the classroom back to rights. Students will be put into teams of 2-4 so they won't be doing this stuff all by themselves. And of course I will train them to do the chores properly.

Would this cut down on littering, or trashing up the school? What about the gum infestation? Because I've found gum stuck in desks and textbooks without the wrappers and it is awful. What about graffiti at school? Would this help students respect school property?

Hm, in theory yes, but there are probably more factors involved than I realize. Like student history of chore-doing. Because some kids in schools now have never, ever once lifted a finger to do chores. Some students breeze right through high school and on to college without ever experiencing how to wash a dish, or do their own laundry, or take out their own trash. Which I think is a very, very sad thing. In certain ways, it's sadder for the student than for the student's immediate environment.

American schools (and parents) maybe will look upon this idea as rather backwards. But I think one of the things I'm going to do in my classroom is send a parent permission form stating that their child will participate in classroom chores, and this participation will be part of their grade. Arrangements can be made for students to only participate in them on certain days, since families are pretty busy and there are tons of after school activities. And like all permission forms, there must be a box for religious or moral or whatever values that say why they choose to not do this (and instead will perform a substitute task, don't know what yet though). But I think parents can be on board with this if they are given the right persuasion.