What time is it, Eccles?

One of the most important differences between schools in Japan and those in Britain, is that Japanese schools do not employ cleaners.

This is because making children spend ten minutes at the end of the lunch break sweeping the classrooms and corridors with rather tiny brooms is considered character-building, or something along those lines.

Now, I am not inclined to disagree with this. A bit of a mindless menial task to be getting on with, a nice bit of music on in the background ... it's good for calming the kids down at the end of break, and getting them to focus on the coming afternoon.

I do have two objections, however, which I would like the school governors to consider the next time they meet ...

1. Well, they are children. The classrooms remain rather grubby at the end of the allotted ten minutes. How about getting a professional cleaner in, even, say, every other week or so? It's just that, between the chalk dust and the ... er ... regular ... dust, I sometimes feel that I'm asking too much of my poor lungs.
2. The choice of music. Basically, it needs to be more strictly regulated. For eighteen months I was daily subjected to ten minutes of a version of The Mickey Mouse March that could have been a ringtone for a Nokia 4210. And pan-pipe renditions of The Carpenters crop up altogether too frequently. This is not something I find easy to cope with on a daily basis.

It's not all doom and gloom, however. Recently one of the schools I teach at has put together a new playlist for cleaning-time, and first up is a tune I know rather well ... 'The Typewriter' by Leroy Anderson - or, as it's better known (by me at least), 'the theme to the News Quiz off of Radio 4'.

This perks me up rather nicely at 2 in the afternoon, I must say. If only the playlist continued with Ron Goodwin's 'Schickle Shamble' followed by 'The Liberty Bell March' by John Philip Sousa, and perhaps rounding off with 'The Ying Tong Song', I for one would be in a much better position to drag myself through the ultra-tedious final three hours of the day. Though I'm not promising to avoid hesitation, repetition, or deviation.