Harsh. I guess that would explain why students have time to spend 3 hours a day, 7 days a week at their club activities.
In other education news around Japan... the Minister of Education in Tokyo has recently been receiving letters from anonymous students threatening to commit suicide because they have been bullied. Bullying in Japan has been a major problem in schools for years. The Ministry of Education reports there have been no reports of bullying for the last seven years, but apparently this is not the case. School officials and parents turn a blind eye to it and tell the students to 'endure, endure.'
This was the advice given to one poor student who wrote such a letter to the Ministry of Education last week. Ministry officials were able to trace this letter to one of 21 or so prefectures from around Japan because, although the kanji on the postmark was unreadable, they were able to deduce it partially. It may have come from Oita and so in one of our meetings last week, the principal alerted the staff and asked them to be on guard and try to figure out if it was one of our students. As far as we know, it wasn't any of our students...but it makes me wonder if any of this goes on in my classes? I often miss a lot of the side chatter because it's in Japanese, and I don't spend much time in the classrooms. It makes me sick to think someone could be treated so horribly in school.
Here are some links to newspaper articles in the last few days about this subject. It looks as though that one letter may have been from Kyushu after all, the girl that jumped to her death was just in the neighboring prefecture.
Suicide threats boosts school patrols and Girl jumps to death
Five more kids threaten suicide; minister says don't write
Classmates shake down girl for 100,000 yen
Perhaps the most quoted metaphor when describing Japanese culture is "The nail that sticks up gets pounded down." Bullying is the perfect example of this. I intend to do more research on this.
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Today I went to the soccer game and Tsurusaki High School won in overtime! They will now travel to Tokyo to Nationals. I'm really proud of them. It was a beautiful day for soccer and they got to play in the World Cup Stadium. I took some photos.
Another week begins. じゃあ、またね。
4 comments:
WOW. That is harsh. I probably could have developed an anti gravity machine before I guessed that one. The Bully thing is scary. Not even a highly civilized country like Japan is completely free of stupidity. I have no idea if Shawn and his sisters were ever bullied. I was bullied in middle school because we were so poor. I know how it felt to me.
Dad
Your dad was bullied in school in Hawaii. A big factor in why they moved to Idaho.So yes, it is an age old problem and not particularly segregated to nationality.
Tyler was bullied for a year during his middle school years. I called the bully's parents...no reaction (denial), I personally talked to the bully. Didn't stop him. So finally I called a meeting with the police, school principal, the parents, Ty, and the bully. It stopped there.
The soccer game looked fun! Thanks for sharing the pictures.
Love you!
congratualtion on your soccer team!
they must have been so happy to play at that place!! i am happy for them!!
yeah, it's been on news always about students' suicides and school bulling stuff.. it's just so sad and got me upset why thoes had to happen!? you know.. uhmm.. the materphor you mentioned does explain how our society is like, which i do not like. :b
dont catch a cold!! be warm!!
miss you~
That's too bad about the bullying. It sounds a lot like Korea, where girls meet in chat rooms to decide to meet and kill themselves together because of it. We had a case at my school. A really frustrating aspect of it in Korea is that you are bullied for being anything different, even if it's something positive (like, the one how knows the answer, for example).
The sumo looks cool. As are the bathrobes...
Eric
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