In Japan, no one hires a child to clean. And yet, every day, millions of elementary and secondary school students pick up a broom, a mop, and a bucket before going home.
It’s called o-soji, and it isn’t a punishment: it’s routine. Students organize themselves into groups that rotate week by week, coordinated by their own teachers, and clean the classroom, the hallways, the stairs, and even the bathrooms. Teacher Toshinori Saito explained it this way to BBC Brasil: the idea isn’t that there are no cleaning staff, but that children understand that taking care of a shared space is part of living in a community.
Maiko Awane, from the Hiroshima Prefectural Government office, confirmed it to BBC Mundo: cleaning is part of the daily schedule, from elementary through secondary school, just like any other class. No one supervises them with a test. They simply learn, broom in hand, that public spaces belong to them too.
