Is School Cleaning a Custodial Responsibility—or an Educational One?

In the United States, school cleaning is usually treated as a custodial responsibility. That makes sense: clean, safe facilities matter for student health and learning, and custodians do important work to maintain them. The National Education Association describes custodial and maintenance staff as the people who “keep schools clean and safe,” “prevent the spread of illness,” and “maintain a comfortable, healthy environment for teaching and learning.”

But that is not the only way to think about cleaning. In Japan, cleaning school is also an educational responsibility.

Cleaning as Formation

When I taught in Japan in the early 2000s in Yashio City (northeast of Tokyo in Saitama prefecture), gakkou souji, or school cleaning, was part of the everyday rhythm of school life. All students worked for 20 minutes in small groups (called han) to thoroughly clean their schools, usually to a cheerful song over the PA. Responsibilities were divvied up among these groups and included tasks like sweeping, wiping down desks and other furniture, as well as cleaning classroom floors, hallways, and the gym. Groups rotated responsibilities on a regular basis. Teachers and staff typically pitched in and worked alongside the students. At the end of the school year, all students participated in “Ō-souji” (or big cleaning, a much more thorough version of everyday souji).

Watching this for the first time was a treat for me—I experienced nothing close to this in any of the schools I attended. (Here’s a sample in case you’re interested). Observing the coordination, cooperation, and student-centeredness of the whole enterprise was a striking experience. And perhaps unexpectedly, the students enjoyed themselves.

Clearly, the Japanese do not see cleaning as a form of punishment (as was the case in many other Catholic and Jesuit schools like mine—demerits and JUGS, anyone?). It is a core part of a student’s education and development.

Japan is the best-known example, but it is not alone. Singapore’s Ministry of Education says students take on daily cleaning duties in classrooms and common areas through “everyday responsibilities” in Character and Citizenship Education, meant to teach civic-mindedness, responsibility, the dignity of labor, and service to the community. Singapore’s National Environment Agency also notes that student classroom cleaning has been routine since 2017. In Taiwan, observers have described students arriving early to do chores and clean classrooms, offices, hallways, and other school spaces.

So why does it work in Japan?

Part of the answer is culture. Japanese schools often emphasize group responsibility, routine, humility, and care for shared spaces.

Why It Feels Foreign Here

In the U.S., there are practical reasons many public schools might struggle to adopt anything like gakkou souji. In some places, labor contracts and workplace norms may define cleaning as the job of custodial employees, not teachers or students. For example, the Chicago Teachers Union describes contract provisions stating that teachers should not have to clean their own rooms and that staff have a right to a clean and safe workplace. School leaders would also have to think about liability, supervision, safety, cleaning chemicals, student age, special needs, and whether cleaning time would be seen as taking away from academic time.

But Japan shows that these concerns do not have to be conversation-stoppers. When cleaning is built into the rhythm and culture of the school, it becomes less of an operational burden and more of an educational practice.

The research on school cleaning itself is limited, but the related research on household chores points in a similar direction. A longitudinal study in the Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics found that children who performed chores in early elementary school later showed stronger self-competence, prosocial behavior, and self-efficacy. Furthermore, doing chores with any frequency in kindergarten was also associated with better third-grade math scores. Another study found that children’s engagement in household chores was associated with executive-function skills such as working memory, inhibition, and planning.

These studies are observational, so they should not be read as proving causation. But they are consistent with the idea that age-appropriate responsibility can help children practice habits that matter: noticing what needs to be done, contributing to a group, finishing a task, respecting shared property, and understanding that manual work has dignity. These habits may not show up neatly on a standardized test, but many parents recognize them as part of a good education.

That difference creates a case for educational pluralism.

Some schools might reasonably decide that student cleaning is not a good fit, or that there’s no room in the school’s schedule. Others might see it as an important part of their mission. Waldorf schools, for example, often incorporate classroom chores such as sweeping, watering plants, cleaning chalkboards, and wiping desks as purposeful work tied to responsibility and community. Montessori schools likewise treat practical-life activities—wiping tables, sweeping floors, arranging materials, polishing, washing, and caring for plants—not as distractions from learning, but as part of the child’s development.

A one-size-fits-all system will tend to choose one default. In the U.S., the default is adult custodial responsibility. But a more pluralistic system gives schools the flexibility to build around different missions, cultures, and practices. School choice allows families to seek the learning environment that fits their children’s needs, whether that is a district school, charter school, private school, microschool, homeschool, or hybrid model. It also allows educators to create new schools where stewardship habits are part of the design rather than extras.

Some families may love a school where students share responsibility for cleaning. Some may not. That is fine. My experience with gakkou souji reminded me that schools can differ not only in curriculum, but in culture. In Japan, cleaning was not just maintenance. It was a small daily practice in responsibility and care for community.

The point is not to make every American school more Japanese, or to make every school the same. It is to create conditions that allow different schools to pursue different visions of what a good education should include. Schools should have the freedom to teach students in the ways that reflect their missions.

This was originally published to our Substack.