Education & Responsibility: Who Should Pay for Campus Cleaning?
Recently, an incident about parents being asked to clean up at school but collectively silenced, which caused a strong backlash from teachers, caused an uproar on the Internet. This is not only a debate about the boundaries of responsibility, but also a profound reflection on the modern education ecology.
In this turmoil, teachers' "passionate microphones" seem to be a direct counterattack to parents' indifferent attitudes, but in fact they expose the embarrassing status quo of misalignment of responsibilities in the education system. It is true that education is a process of home-school co-education, but "joint participation" should never be alienated into parents being forced to take on the responsibilities of the school. Allowing parents to put down their work and sacrifice their personal time to clean up the campus is not only an unpaid exploitation of parents' labor, but also a direct manifestation of the lazy management of the school. When campus cleaning also depends on "crowdfunding labor", what is the dignity of education?
What's more, the fierce rhetoric of individual teachers in the group makes people wonder whether this kind of emotional expression will subtly affect daily teaching, and how to ensure peace and fairness when facing students. The warmth and rationality that educators should have seemed to be washed away by the torrent of anger at this moment.
The collective silence of parents may be a silent protest against such unreasonable demands, or it may be a helpless acceptance of the status quo of education. As the pressures of life have made it difficult, schools, as a sacred place for teaching and nurturing people, should be a help to reduce the burden on society and promote family harmony, rather than an additional burden-maker. Asking parents to clean up at school is undoubtedly a confusing equivalence between family education and social responsibility.
This incident also reflects the society's deep-seated concern about the efficiency of the allocation and management of educational resources. When faced with administrative tasks such as "welcoming inspections", why do schools first think of "recruiting" parents instead of seeking more reasonable solutions? Does it mean that there is irrationality in the allocation and use of education funds? Or is the school management too rigid in its response to emergencies?
In the final analysis, the cleaning and maintenance of the school should be part of the school management, not an additional burden passed on to parents. Schools should actively seek professional cleaning services, or reasonably arrange for students to participate in labor practices, so as to cultivate students' sense of responsibility and ensure the cleanliness of the campus environment. At the same time, the education department should also review the current system to ensure the effective allocation of school resources, avoid imposing non-educational tasks on parents, and jointly safeguard the purity and dignity of education.
In short, the key to resolving such contradictions is to return education to its essence and let the responsibilities be put in their place. Parents and teachers should be partners in the process, not rivals who pass the buck to each other. In the marathon of education, everyone should run on the track they should run, and work together to lay a solid and clean path for children's growth.