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The story
On a BS TV Tokyo program aired on the 15th, Asuka Wada raised questions about schools scrapping the summer picture-diary assignment, citing the reason given: “because it creates inequality in memories.” Following on from the trend of not ranking kids in school sports day races, the story was picked up on 5ch, where the thread split between plain reactions like “I don’t even remember what I wrote in my picture diary” and clashing personal accounts ranging from “kids don’t really care that much about differences between households” to “no, there really are kids who get hurt by it.” The discussion also spread to the scrapping of graduation albums and the truth behind urban legends about school footraces.
Asuka Wada: “I was shocked to hear this” — questioning the reason behind schools scrapping picture diaries
“It’s strange to view it through a lens of pity”
Cooking expert and TV personality Asuka Wada (39) appeared on BS TV Tokyo’s “Asuka Wada to Yuru Takunomi” (Tuesdays, 10:00 PM) on the 15th and raised questions about recent trends in school education.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
That's how forgettable it was.
Wouldn't bother me a bit if they scrapped it.
It's gotten so hot now that morning glories bloom and wither before summer break even starts.
The world of kids is a surprisingly cruel community too.
Didn't you notice that when you're a kid, like elementary school age, you don't really care about rich-vs-poor that much?
I knew that kid's house was big and had tasty snacks, but it wasn't so much envy as "lucky, I get a snack."
I don't think elementary schoolers really feel jealousy or self-pity like that yet.
Sitting height and chest measurements got dropped because they were pointless.
Height and weight will probably go too, since that's a medical checkup thing, not something to do with education.
They used "personal information" as an excuse, but that's just insane.
Good news for us, though.
I heard mechanical pencils used to be banned because they were a luxury item some kids couldn't afford.
Raised on platitudes like "everyone's equal" and "hold hands and cross the finish line together," then thrown straight into the brutally competitive world of entrance exams, job hunting, and work — where reality is nothing like what school preached — and straight into depression they go…
It's incredibly narrow-minded to assume everyone should feel the way you did just because you did.
Some kids really do develop complexes, and some get bullied for being poor.
There was also a kid in my class who suddenly became untouchable after their surname changed.
Sorry, I grew up in an ordinary family, so I wouldn't have known.
Same with media compliance stuff lately — is it really okay for the majority's fun to keep getting suppressed just to cater to an overwhelmingly small number of "poor kids"?
No kid actually looks forward to writing a picture diary.
Don't invent some fictional child that doesn't exist and make claims based on it.
Can't you read context properly?
The "fun" part isn't writing the diary itself — it broadly means things like the family outing you'd plan around it, or other school events.
Try talking to people more.
Being made to say what your dad did for work was rough.
My elementary school was in a new residential development full of returnee kids, so when someone said "Mitsubishi Corporation" or "pilot," the teacher would go "wow, amazing~."
My dad worked at a small factory, so it was seriously humiliating.
That "dad's job presentation" thing, seriously, what was that even for…
The classmate whose surname suddenly changed and became untouchable obviously got skipped over by the teacher and never had to present,
but that just made them even more isolated.
I was embarrassed too, having to say stuff like "my dad drives his own taxi and works hard every day."
Probably true.
And the experience gap really does become a huge complex.
Guess banning "talking about your summer memories" can't be far off either.
No, normally they'd set up a folding table at the back of the classroom, line up everyone's diaries, and let anyone in the class flip through them freely.
This was a long, long time ago…
A strange kind of twisted equality that's long existed in education.
Actually there's no source for that "everyone holds hands and crosses together" story.
A kid with that kind of drive is nothing but your fantasy.
In reality it's mostly kids getting smacked down by inequality, feeling miserable, developing complexes, or getting bullied.
Well, from a kid's perspective, scrapping the tedious picture diary is a relief either way.
You shouldn't underestimate the perspective and experience you gain from traveling abroad.
Sounds like a lot of places don't do it anymore.
Probably because there aren't adults around to run it.
– Academic ability
– Physical fitness
I guess jokes like "oh, so-and-so's family is rich"
just don't land as jokes anymore.
Plus basically only people with money get married these days.
It's a completely different situation from the Showa through early Heisei era, when people kept having kids even if they were poor.
Background and Key Points of This Topic
The “inequality” criticism surrounding summer picture diaries and unranked sports day races is closely tied to the recently prominent concept of the “experience gap” (taiken kakusa). The idea that a household’s financial situation creates differences in opportunities like travel or dining out, which in turn affects children’s self-esteem, has long been discussed in education and welfare circles, and scrapping picture diaries appears to be an extension of that response. Meanwhile, the thread brought up the anecdote of runners “holding hands and crossing the finish line together” at sports day — a story often cited in the 1990s–2000s as a “symbol of yutori (relaxed) education,” but one for which almost no confirmed real-world cases exist, making it more of an urban legend, as some commenters in the thread pointed out. A point readers can easily get wrong is that this picture-diary ban isn’t a uniform nationwide policy, but a response reported at some individual schools. Whether someone “minds” inequality varies hugely by personal experience, and the split between supportive and critical comments in the thread reflects exactly that difference.
*This article is compiled as excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Geinou/Sports News+) thread “[Entertainment] Following unranked sports day races, schools now scrapping picture diaries too… Asuka Wada: “The reason is that memories create inequality,” “I was shocked to hear it”.”
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