[minebreaker]

Just a rant.

I hated this as a Japanese kid. Why the hell should I clean up the mess created by my classmates? Because kids are supposed to obey their elders. This is the continual tradition to nurture soldiers (literally) from before the war, and even the traumatic defeat hasn't changed that. Embodiment of submissiveness...

[calamari4065]

>Why the hell should I clean up the mess created by my classmates?

Isn't that the entire point? To teach you that the "someone else" who cleans up your mess is actually one of your peers, a person just like you.

Asked another way, why the hell should one of your classmates clean up your mess? The answer to both is you shouldn't leave messes for others to clean. Making kids clean up messes from their classmates teaches everyone to clean their own mess.

Whereas in the US, all schools have a janitorial staff. In general, janitors are looked down on as the absolute lowest of social class. It creates this mentality of not giving a single fuck about the mess you create because "someone else" will clean it up. And because they're a lower social class they somehow deserve the mess you make.

[minebreaker]

Yours and chii's comment make me think that this is a more subtle and cultural thing. I'm a bit surprised that you believe peer pressure works like as expected. (Don't take this as an offense, I'm genuinely surprised).

This is a classic example of 連帯責任(approx. same as collective punishment), which is very common is Japan (and in other countries too, I suppose). This doesn't work, because the mess you make is not the same amount as the others make, and the mess you clean up too. Thus, the system effectively incentivizes you to make more messes and let others clean them up. 正直者が馬鹿を見る(The honest man loses his money).

What actually happens is, some jerk shits, forces others to take care of it, and the jerk never cleans up. In short, your "janitors" are just replaced by poor bullied kids. (I'd rather say, it is a system to bully these kids. I believe you can find some examples from the Imperial Japanese Navy).

If I put my 2 yen, the only system that works is that those who made a mess clean up the mess. A system that can be abused will be abused.

[ethbr1]

> And because they're a lower social class they somehow deserve the mess you make.

At my high school, we graduated with quite a bit of money left in our "class account."

There'd just been a tiny statue to the school chairman, who almost none of us knew, built.

We decided we wanted to spend our remaining funds on getting a larger statue built for the groundskeeper, Otis.

Teachers and student government were pressured to "change our mind."

I remember there was a pretty acrimonious and humorous meeting where the class argued for a few hours with their elected leaders about it.

I also remember being a pretty big dick about it, because we were in the right (and I was a HS senior with a chip on his shoulder).

In the end, we settled on "donating it to the faculty endowment in the name of Otis."

If I was me now, I would have fought harder then. Fuck not recognizing the people who get shit done.

[justinclift]

> we were in the right

It's not clear which side that was?

[ethbr1]

Statue for the groundskeeper!

[cat_plus_plus]

I didn't hate this as a Soviet kid, despite hating a great many other things as a Soviet kid. The idea has never been that another kid spit on the floor and I should clean up his spit, that would have been handled differently. More like that it's our place and in the course of normal use it gets messy, so we should all also participate in cleaning it up. So we all got wet cloth and wiped our assigned floor squares about once a month.

[minebreaker]

> The idea has never been that another kid spit on the floor and I should clean up his spit, that would have been handled differently

OK, that's the difference between USSR and Japan.

[chii]

> Why the hell should I clean up the mess created by my classmates?

you would be learning to apply peer pressure on those who creates a mess to not do so, making clean up easier.