Dialogue About Cleanliness

Two students discuss a dirty classroom, who is responsible and a workable rota.

A dialogue between Rehana and Shefali

Rehana: Shefali, our classroom was filthy this morning. Papers everywhere under the benches.

Shefali: It is the same every Monday. The cleaner comes once a week and we undo it in a day.

Rehana: Whose fault is that, really?

Shefali: Ours, mostly. There is one bin at the back and nobody walks to it.

Rehana: Does it matter so much? It is only paper.

Shefali: It is not only paper. Food wrappers bring insects, and a dusty room is genuinely worse for anyone with asthma.

Rehana: Sumaiya does have asthma. I had not connected the two.

Shefali: And there is the effect on us. It is harder to take a subject seriously in a room that looks abandoned.

Rehana: That is true. I sit up straighter in the laboratory.

Shefali: Because it is kept clean. Cleanliness changes how a place is treated.

Rehana: What could we do without waiting for anybody?

Shefali: Two bins instead of one, and five minutes at the end of the last period. Two people a day by rota.

Rehana: The class would agree to that if we proposed it together.

Shefali: Then let us put it to them tomorrow, with the rota already drawn up.