Schools Demean Labor, and Dangerously Privilege Academics

Oliver Hale at Unsplash

Consider for a moment the least respected human being in a school. No, it’s not the teachers or the students. It’s the janitor. This is a human being — an adult, a citizen — whose work, whose labor, is so horrible, so odious, that even the lowliest of student would not be asked to do it. And we’re not just talking about cleaning bathrooms, a task that involves some level of danger and toxicity and personal sacrifice. No, simple labors like emptying a garbage can or sweeping a floor are simply beneath the respect of a teacher or student.

But it’s not just the janitor. Almost equally as disparaged, or even more so, are the cafeteria staff. If asked in this moment to conjure up an image of a school cafeteria worker, the resulting mental picture is unlikely to be positive. (Apologies to the exceptions.) In fact, if one catalogs the many adults responsible for the functioning of a school, it’s the rare laborer who emerges with much dignity at all. Bus drivers? Landscapers? Mechanics? Front office managers? Not until you get to the administrators and academics do the instinctive stereotypes begin to sway in favorable directions.

While students are intimately married to the work of their teachers — being guided towards a mastery the teacher has already earned — they are deliberately and severely divorced from any physical job…