The article opens up with a startling statistic: students
from elementary to high school reported 543,933 bullying cases in 2018, an all-time
high. The number of “grave situations,” where bullied students experience
extreme physical and psychological harm, is also at a record high, at 602
cases. A few students have also committed suicide, and after one notable case
in 2011, a law was passed in 2013 to ensure that teachers would not turn a
blind eye on bullying. However, many people have complained that the law is
ineffective, as a 15-year boy fell to his death in a probable suicide in September
2019. The boy had attempted suicide three times before his death, and only
after the third attempt did his teachers and school board make a feeble attempt
to stop the bullying. Obviously, it did not work, as the boy ended up dead
anyways.
I was most surprised to learn from this article that
teachers also reported that they felt bullied by other teachers, and even when
teachers were being bullied, the principal ignored the problems.
At first, while reading the article, I thought that maybe so
many students were getting bullied because of apathetic teachers. But after
hearing that teachers were also being bullied, I think that maybe there is a
part of Japanese culture that dissuades people from getting involved in other
people’s business. Perhaps Japanese people are a little repressed and are reluctant
to share their emotions or help others in emotional turmoil?
In my American high school, every year we had a week called “Speak
Up for Change Week,” which was a week focusing on mental health and
anti-bullying, etc. We also had designated school counselors/therapists with
whom students could make an appointment to talk about mental health. I think it
was quite similar to Stanford’s CAPS (although I never went). The national bullying
average in 2016 was 20.8% of students, which meant that around 1 out of 5
students reported to being bullied. It’s already 7.2% lower than the average in
2005, when bullying statistics were first collected. I think the average at my
high school was probably even less. Pacer’s National Bullying Prevention Center
says, “School-based bullying prevention programs
decrease bullying by up to 25%.” While I was in high school, I thought that “Speak
Up for Change” was useless since bullying was pretty much obsolete at my school already, but
maybe “Speak Up for Change” was the reason why bullying was obsolete. If Japan starts
placing importance on mental health and anti-bullying campaigns, I think Japan
can reduce its bullying problem.
Sources:
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