High school flooded with phone calls after 2-channel posting reveals bullying
While very often surving as a cesspool of baseless personal attacks and character smearing, the Japanese mega-forum 2-channel occassionally directs the efforts of its users towards more noble pursuits. For example:
SAPPORO — A high school in Sapporo’s Shiroishi-ku was flooded with phone calls after a video clip of a first-year student being bullied was posted on the Internet, and an online message encouraged people to contact the school, it has been learned.
Hokkaido Sapporo Prefectural Hakuryo High School reportedly began receiving complaints on Thursday morning, after an anonymous message was posted on the major Internet bulletin board Ni-Channel and other sites.
School officials said the bullying occurred in a classroom and at a bus stop near the school in October last year. About a dozen students, including at least one female student, were pictured jabbing the student and fooling around with the student’s uniform. A student participating in the bullying captured the incident on a cell phone camera, and the video was posted on the Internet in March this year.
The school learned about the bullying between June and July after it was pointed out that the images were circulating on the Internet, but adopted a wait-and-see attitude after judging that the bullying had died down.
The message posted on Ni-Channel said, “Let’s phone the school from 8 a.m. on Oct. 9 and ask them about it.” Three phones at the school rang continuously after the message was posted.
School officials said several dozen telephone complaints were received from people asking why the school permitted bullying, amongst other questions.
“We thought that the bullying had died down and we were observing the course of things, but we regret that things turned out like this and that our response was delayed,” the school’s vice-principal, Toshiyuki Wakabayashi, said.
For those of you who are intesterested, here are a few of the Sapporo bullying video clips from YouTube (When they clips were broadcast on the morning news today, they were completely blurred out. Give me a f’ing break.):
While the media might like to focus on bullying-related news these days, I have yet to hear about serious reforms taking place. How many student suicides and/or internet video clips is it going to take until somebody actually takes the initiative and deals out brutal punishments to bullies?
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I’m not really sure how Japanese school officials need to “deal” with this problem. Obviously there is some amount of negligence on their part, but it’s also clear that there are some deep-rooted cultural reasons for the bullying.
Officials at schools in the US don’t “do” much about bullying. As long as the abuse isn’t physical, there isn’t much that they CAN do either — officials really have no control over what is said on the school bus, what is said in hallways between classes, what is said while in the restroom, at football games, and so on. The American public could have pinned events like Columbine on school officials, stating that they should have noticed how the two kids were always made fun of for wearing trench coats and such, but instead the blame fell mostly on the parents of the children. Yes, schools do play a “third parent” type role in a child’s life in Japan (certainly a far greater part than a school does in the US), but the responsibility for solving the problem shouldn’t be placed on the school alone.
I’m not saying the problem should be completely ignored, but let’s realize that the scope of responsibility here extends far beyond the school officials. The parents, students themselves, and even Japanese society itself (which may be part of the reason the bullied students just accept the reality of their situation, rather than lashing out) are just as responsible.
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The other problem is that all kids in Japan have the “right” to attend class so you can’t kick them out for being disruptive. I’ve never heard of things like detention, suspension and expulsion, which are how the U.S. schools deal with the bad seeds.
Japanese parents also “makase” their kids entirely to the shcool. SOme of those kids are downright rotten and it should not be the sole responsibility of the school to punish them.
If I got caught doing someting bad/stupid at school, I got in trouble at home, too. That is how it goes.
Japan is trying to enter the 21st century with 1950s era systems. Shit is gonna get worse before it gets better
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Someone:
They might be able to bully after school, in between class, or in the bathrooms, but they are also able to blatantly bully kids, both physically and verbally, in the middle of classes.(At least they are at the 4 schools I’ve worked at)
There have been dozens of class I have witnessed kids shout insults at other students in the middle of classes, shout out that a girl is ugly, make fun of other students, and even punch or kick them. Do the Japanese teachers who are in charge of the class actually do anything? Rarely. The most I’ve seen one do is shout a bit, but in the end there is no actual punishments dealt out to unruly students. Joel has it right: there is no system in place for punishing unruly asshole/bully students.
I’ve been assistant-teaching in classes 3 or 4 times where bullies have reduced students to tears, yet all the teacher does is tell the bully to stop and continue along with the lesson as the bullied kid cries his/her eyes out on their desk. It often seems that the teachers simply don’t give a shit, since they are already overworked with bullshit work and countless meetings that make their working hours far longer than teachers in America.
Is the American system perfect and bullying-free? No. But at least it actually punishes bullies when they are discovered. Hell, my middle/high schools in America even punished/suspended students if it was found out they had bullied other students outside of school. Sure, there are huge cultural issues that lead to bullying in Japan, but they could at least reduce the problem by actually punishing bullies.
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That is so mean! I hate it when people bully eachother. When I was in six grade, a bunch of people bully me and I was really terrified; but guess what? I’m here and still alive today. I havn’t commit sucide yet. But hopefully I won’t. Thanks for reading.
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Does your child get bullied in school? Do you wish there was something you could do to make your child feel more confident? Well, we can help!
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Humans have fists and legs for a reason, people should make good use of them in these tense situations.
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