“Your mother doesn’t work here: clean up what you messed up”

The “class commissioner” who keeps the room in order, whether or not on a rotating basis. And a curious warning next to the traditional picture.

Other countries, other cultures, other education.

The context had little to do with education: in one about the fear of Narva being Vladimir Putin’s next target, we mentioned that, in schools in that city of Estonia, only the local language is being taught – in a city where almost everyone speaks Russian.

In between, we analyzed one in particular, captured by the AFP agency. The photograph, taken on January 16th, shows a teacher teaching the official Estonian language to children or teenagers who, most likely, grew up speaking Russian.

However, now, and because of the war in Ukraine and the severing of relations with Moscow, one of the measures taken was to ban the teaching of Russian in schools in Narva.

“Clean”

Geopolitics and international tensions aside, we noticed that, in that image, there was a Notice peculiar in the upper left corner of the quadro traditional, where it is written in chalk.

The notice, curiously written in English, states: “Your mother doesn’t work here. Clean up after yourself.”

Not surprising. In Estonia, there are schools with the figure of “class commissioner”. This student, as seen in the internal regulations of , is a type of class delegate in Portugal, “responsible for order in the class”.

But the order is not to shut up. This class commissioner “ventilate the room during breaks and clean the board”. After classes end, “clean the room and hand over the key” to the operational assistant.

Very close by, in the Latvia, Classroom “monitors” have similar tasks. Among others: clean the board, turn off lights, pick up papers/trash, organize tables and chairs, sweep the room and take out the trashas happens in secondary school; In some schools, this person also has the role of disinfect surfaces.

To close this trilogy of the Baltic countries, in Lithuania, There are also internal school regulations with “budėtojas”, or service students: they are responsible for order, cleanliness and discipline. Also clean the board and ensure there is no missing chalkin a usually rotating system.

In most schools, “real” cleaning is done by adults: washing floors, bathrooms, deep cleaning. Students are limited (and this is no small feat) to ensuring tidiness and basic hygiene in the classroom.