Staff of a private organization pack emergency food for single-parent households in March 2020, when the government introduced school closures in the COVID-19 pandemic and children of low-income households could not receive school-provided lunches. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)
When historian Masakatsu Okado was studying old documents kept at an elementary school, he kept seeing this phrase over and over: “Child’s presence required due to dire poverty.”
According to Okado’s book “Minshu no Kyoiku Keiken” (Education experience of the masses), the phrase was used in petitions from desperately poor parents seeking the school’s permission to pull their children out so the youngsters could be put to work.