Something in the Air --or-- The Kids Are Not Alright

(This post may contain language that is inappropriate for minors. Viewer discretion is advised.)

It's fair to say at this point that things have gone beyond "boys will be boys" around these parts and the discipline situation at Kusu and Mori JHS, the two largest schools in town, has gone straight to hell. For the past couple weeks teachers and parents have been in meetings at school concerning the issue lasting from early evening to near midnight, with Sunday--yes, SUNDAY!--and Monday breaking the midnight barrier. Mercifully I'm excluded from these meetings, but I still have to deal with the little shits at school that sparked this BS. Besides, if I were at those meetings I'd bring a 2x4, pliers and a cinder block or two...and I'd use them.

Oh lawdy...where to begin.

I may have mentioned it in a previous entry (or not) that Kusu has somewhat-recently had to open a special school just for students from elementary to junior high that don't come to regular school. It's called Wakakusa Gakuen and is based out of a small vacant elementary school that closed some years back. Its roll sheet is growing steadily week by week.

Who are the students of Wakakusa? They were originally the students with mild social disorders that prevented them from functioning normally at a regular school. For example, the first student I met from Wakakusa was an agoraphobic shogi savant fascinated by the Rube Goldberg machines from the Japanese educational show "Pythagoras Switch". But recently the school's seats have been increasingly filled by the bullied, the picked-on, the class scapegoats. Nobody seems to be doing a goddamn thing about it and it's pissing me off like you wouldn't believe.

It would be prudent to list some of the situations in recent memory that have got my blood boiling:

--Ate lunch in 3rd year, class 1 at Mori and noticed seven students absent. "Is everyone sick?" I asked Ms. Inoue. "No," she responded, "it's like this every day. Those are the students who don't come to school anymore." Seven student in ONE CLASS?! Un-fucking-believable. Seven students deprived of their education and a normal school life. Seven students that can never go back and get it again. Seven victims.

--Kusu JHS, 1st year, all classes, the students don't answer questions and just stare blankly at me or their desks when asked the simplest things. They're basically under orders. Three ringleaders are the only ones who talk and usually with flippant answers. Those ringleaders, and friends of them, move about the classroom with impunity and sometimes leave the room to wander the hallways too, always giving some shallow excuse seconds before walking out of the door.

--In the hallways at both schools kids are getting physically harassed by bullies in front of the eyes of watchful teachers. Yes, we're watching them do it, but here's the catch: the bullied kid never accepts help and is actually smiling while the other kids pick on him. Why? He would get harassed even more severely were he to say anything to the teachers. Sick and twisted.

--On Saturday and Sunday at the Marukyo supermarket parking lot two brothers from Mori, 1st and 3rd-year students, jumped a 2nd-year classmate that they'd been picking on for the semester and wrecked his bike. They broke his wrist or finger or something. Naturally he told his parents who told the school who told the other kids' parents. I don't think those boys' parents did a damn thing to punish them though because they were strutting around the same supermarket today after school. Well, to further degrade the 2nd-year boy the two brothers ordered all the students in school not to talk to that kid yesterday. Imagine you're at school at that age and everyone treats you like a ghost, like you've just never existed. Imagine that. The boy was bawling. His parents are contemplating a lawsuit against the other boys.

--3rd year, class 2 at Mori, acting on orders from the ringleader students that class wouldn't answer questions or address Ms. Inoue or I during class. Everyone in class had their heads down looking at their desks while we try to do warm-up exercises and generally talk to brick walls like asses, cowed by the two jackasses smiling and staring straight at me. I lost it and chewed out everyone for this pathetic display. This more than any other event made me realize I'm not of the right mindset for teaching little cretins like this. My hands were shaking in rage and I almost acted on the urge to overturn the teacher's pedestal just to vent. If I ever meet these boys in a dark alley...

I'd like to say something simple like "the teachers have lost control of their classrooms" and just squarely lay the blame on them, but it's much more complicated than that. I don't know what percentage of the pie chart each would be, but the culprits for this--and many other woes in this country--are twisted Japanese educational laws, Japanese customs, parenting/the modern Japanese family unit, the teachers and, finally, the kids themselves.

Japanese educational statutes declare that all children must be given a free education from elementary through JHS. The Japanese consider this a basic "human right", which sounds all great and fuzzy, but when that term gets bandied about the way it does here, trust me, it loses all meaning. If you want to be technical, these are human rights. I am not violating a student's human rights if I want to pull their asses aside to chew them out for running down the hall to talk to their friends during class, or if I stop them bullying another kid in the halls. Or am I? In Japan I am according to my colleagues. If a kid is to be disciplined it must be in complete secrecy so that their peers never find out. No pulling out of class, no suspensions or expulsions, no conspicuous detentions or extra homework. Mostly just no punishment. At all. You see, to punish is to humiliate and rob a student of pride, which is a violation of human rights.

But we run into a bit of a paradox here when this farcical take on human rights is applied to the bullied. The victims here are being bullied in public view, their dignity is being stripped away while others look on. No secret that so-and-so is being bullied, no siree. The victims here don't even feel safe coming to school anymore and they flee to Wakakusa or just stay home. Doesn't that take away their HUMAN RIGHT to a free, normal education? So by this logic it's OK for a student to be humiliated and beaten at school, but it's not OK to conspicuously punish the wrongdoers. It's OK for students to be psychologically run out of school on a rail, but it's not OK to stop the wrongdoers from coming to school.

What insane version of "human rights" is this?!

Parents here are something else too. I see parents hitting their kids and telling them to shut up in public from time to time. Due to the declining birthrate in Japan and all the problems associated with that there's a big push from the government for "birth-giving machines" to start pumping them out. Yes, that's what the health minister called women last year. Hell, there's even a new cabinet-level minister in charge of the declining birthrate, Mrs. Yuko Obuchi. My point here is that people are having kids here without thinking what it really is to have kids, they find they're not ready and they treat the kids like crap. Either that or they overcompensate and never say 'no' to the kids, showing them no boundaries. I don't know...I'm not a parent, but these things just seem logical to me: don't have a kid until you're sure you can give them the time and attention they need and deserve to become good human beings.

With the teachers, I feel they're like the overcompensating parent spoiling the kids and never saying 'no'. There are mostly no boundaries in the classroom thanks to Japanese law, but if a kid is reading a comic in class or throwing something the teacher does have the right to confiscate it. But they don't. They want to be friends or they don't want the responsibility and hassle that comes with telling a student 'no more'. Well, tough shit teachers, you're committing a dereliction of duty if you let a tiny handful of students completely ruin the classroom education of ten times as many other kids, so you better sack the fuck up and take that comic, toss those eraser projectiles out the window and stop letting the little urchins go for, like, ten bathroom breaks.

And then there's the kids themselves. I'm a believer in nurture over nature when it comes to this kind of behavior, so I don't know how much I can blame the kids knowing what I do about their ridiculous home lives, the laws of their nation, their parents and all the other toxic things that made them what they are today. But really, at what age does one gain common sense, a moral center and the wisdom to see that failing every subject can't possibly lead to a spot on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous? And of course there's the majority of kids who stand by and watch their friends, people they've known since elementary school or even beyond, get bullied to the breaking point. Kids who sit in silence and don't respond to teachers, afraid their actions will bring hell raining on their heads. There are so few shining stars in this pitch black void anymore I'm really not caring about my job anymore at those two schools except to talk to the kids who want to learn more individually. They usually come in secret between classes or meet in the library after school. Places away from the eyes and ears of the class ringleaders.

Ugh, there's more yet to tell. Can you believe this is the condensed version? I left out some of the finer, more subtle points in the interest of space and not exploding my mind. Time for bed...

--Matt