Pain of heartbreakingly clueless ethics lesson continues years later.
In recent years, the Japanese mass media has been increasingly discussing the painful topic of children being bullied by classmates. While the value Japanese society places on formalized education, and also group activity, means that the mainstream image of schools remains overwhelmingly positive, the growing dialogue about students being mistreated by their peers is a necessary step in the process of dealing with such problems.
One person who seems to think such changes can’t come soon enough is Japanese Twitter user @mayumayuchim. While @mayumayuchim is now 19, she recently recalled a disturbing episode from her elementary school days in which her teacher heartlessly turned a blind eye to what was going on in @mayumayuchim’s very classroom.
“When I was in the fifth grade, we were having an ethics lesson. After we watched a video about how bullying is wrong, the teacher told us to close our eyes and put our heads down on our desks, then told us, ‘If anyone thinks someone in our class is being bullied, please raise your hand.’
Then he said, ‘OK, I’m glad to see there’s no bullying in our class,’…even though I’d raised my hand.”
That’s when I stopped trusting my school.”
Shocked online responses included
“So why did the teacher even bother telling people to raise their hands?”
“There’re three professions you can’t trust: teachers, police officers, and politicians.”
“What a garbage teacher.”
Some of you may remember @mayumayuchim from last month, when she sent out another sobering tweet which dealt with the difficulties of hanging on to your sense of individualism while going through secondary education and young adulthood. Here’s hoping that after so many years of unhappy situations, things start looking up for her soon.
Source: Jin, Twitter/@mayumayuchim