In Russia, the choice of the most hideous school toilets is causing a stir. But a good placement is rewarded.
The cabin door is missing, the wall tiles are brown and white, the plaster is crumbling. It is unclear whether the brown-black spots on the ceramics of the Hock-Klos are excrement residues or decades-old limestone. One thing is clear: The “General Secondary School No. 1” in the provincial town of Gus-Chrustalny took first place in the Domestos competition of the Unilever Group in Russia – as the Russian school with the most hideous toilets.
The photo from Gus-Chrustalny was by no means the ugliest of the 149 participants in the competition. Elsewhere, side walls or wall tiles are missing, there is a lot more dirt staring. But Gus-Chrustalny got the most likes: 1232. Unilever will renovate the school toilets as a prize, as well as those of the educational institutions in the next five places. The remaining schools receive cleaning products for one year.
Gus-Chrustalny also won because the school management encouraged parents and students to like them. “All competitions for the good of the school are a good thing,” said director Valentina Boltunova to the “MBCh Media” portal. “We also win presidential grants.” Sometimes the funds just weren’t enough for renovations in the European style.
Other women directors decidedly distanced themselves from the atrocity contest. “This is a fake!” Wrote Tamara Polyakova, head of school no. 4 in the affluent Siberian gas production city of Gubkinski in “Vkontakte”. Someone published a photo from a Ukrainian school. “We have new buildings, clean, spacious toilets.” The city council of Volgograd denied the participation of their schools to “pravda.ru”, saying that the toilets are being repaired themselves during the summer vacation.
But even the staunchly patriotic newspaper “Komsomolskaya Pravda” does not question the national authenticity of the competition photos, but assumes that students who have provided many competition photos lack the urge to be beautiful: “The worse, the better: no one is interested in fresh toilet bowls and marble . ”On the other hand, commentators on social networks declare that they have seen much worse school toilets.
In fact, there is a lack of photos on the competition portal of the wooden outhouses that are part of everyday life in many village schools. According to the “Novaya Gazeta” there is no running water in 2500 schools in the country. Even the chairwoman of the Federation Council, Valentina Matvijenko, spoke of “a shame for the Russian state”. But the skimpy, closed 28,000 of 69,000 schools between 2001 and 2019. Almost two million students have to study in shifts, in the afternoon or in the evening.
In 2020, Vladimir Putin had children written into the constitution as “the most important priority of state policy”. Many parents, however, complain that their offspring are already being demonstrated the opposite in the school toilet. “With us,” says a mother from the Nishegorodsk region, “the hole in the ground is the national idea.”
