Bullying is Japanese schools has been causing an uproar as of late, and finding solutions to such a sticky issue seems to be anything but an easy endeavor. The Education Rebuilding Council, a government panel that was appointed to deal with the problems facing education in Japan, has decided to take emergency measures to tackle the increasing bullying-induced suicide cases. Measures includes suspending the delinquent students who bully their schoolmates, and order their parents to not send them to school. These punitive measures will not only concern those involved in physical bullying as it used to be the case, but to those who verbally bully their comrades as well. Teachers who connive in bullying will have to assume their part of punishment too.
Some prefectures have taken the initiative, and started various programs to fight bullying.
The Osaka Prefectural Board of Education has decided to introduce an “empowerment” program at about 920 public elementary and junior high schools to help children to develop skills to protect themselves from violence and bullying, board officials said. Under the “Children’s Empowerment Support Guidance” program, schoolchildren will participate in games and role-playing activities based on the idea of empowerment, which involves developing inner strength. Through these games and activities, they will learn techniques to prevent violence.[…]The program also includes methods to prevent bullying, such as encouraging students to find their own and other classmates’ good points and their differences to make them realize that each person is special.
(via Mainichi)
It seems like it’s about time for Japanese schools to rethink their policies and to hatch some effective programs and regulations to stop the rampage of bullying.
When i was in school (in the U.S.), teachers actively ignored bullying. I was once called a “tattletale” because i’d informed a teacher that other students had been hurling rocks at my head. I feared for my safety, but i was basically riducled and scolded by the teacher i went to for help, and made to feel like i was the one who had done something wrong. Often, children, myself included, were told by teachers, “If i didn’t see [the bullying], i can’t do anything about it,” though it may have happened right there in the same room with the teacher. I knew a bunch of kids in my own classes who were being bullied and the teachers were doing nothing. It wasn’t until years later that people started taking bullying in American schools seriously, and it took school shooting to make people pay attention. Really sad. Still, the victims of bullying are often the ones blamed, as if it’s their own faults.
It seems in Japan it’s taking a rash of suicides for anyone to admit there’s a problem and do something about it. Let’s hope it gets better.
“If i didn’t see [the bullying], i can’t do anything about it.”
As if kids would misbehave while grownups are watching. . .
[…] Kaishin blogs about the school bullying issue in Japundit. Oiwan Lam […]
Well, the “empowerment” program makes the victims have to do all the work which I find ridiculous.
Bulliers should simply be punished in some way.
We put criminals in jails. We don’t train every individual to become a “super-Rambo”.
What’s going on? The Hokkaido Board of Education is trying to shut up any webites or blogs that show evidence of bullying in its schools:
The articles on Digg
One threatened blog
The story at Trans-Pacific Radio