I know that bullying is universal worldwide, but the subculture around it differs, as in Japan it seems to be more psychological rather than physical, even if you stand out from the norm or customs, for instance even you’re not Japanese or mixed race, is a factor that can trigger bullying, you’ll become bait for the tormentors. Seeking actual support is something they’re afraid of as the bullies threaten the victim.
Psychological or cyberbullying are more common in both countries than physical, as social media is their prime source, such as:
* Doxxing
* Leaking private photos
* Spreading gossip or false rumors
Also it does not help to how teachers or adults deal with it, they literally say amongst the lines of “Ignore them and everything will be fine.” Well… that will be useless when it’s escalated to the breaking point. Teachers do not use the right approach, even in front of the entire class indirectly teasing or chastising him or her, there are cases that they are the bullies themselves or an accesssory. Even if the victim reports it to both parents or the school body itself, most of the time it’s brushed off as they don’t give a f\*ck about it, even at the most severe cases.
A common outcome is that the victim ends up thinking about 自殺 (>!Suicide!<) rather than actually dealing with it, the whole idea about it has been part of the culture for centuries due to 切腹. In most cases, media only discusses it if the victim is deceased, when the school is questioned about it, they often say “We’re not aware of it.” When they were but decide to put it under the rug. Also, the mindset most people have is “Well… we’re used to it. There’s no point in reporting it when nothing is going to happen.”
I’ve noticed that in both countries most of the tormentors are teenage girls rather than boys, they surround the victim trying to sway them away from anyone who can intervene. The subject matter of bullying in countries like Japan (or South Korea) is overlooked and brushed aside as they don’t really address it sincerely, the stigma of mental health is dire as emotional weakness is frowned upon.
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Most uk schools have an anti bullying procedure but not always effective, teachers are busy and sometime bullying is out of class, in my day (late 70s, 80s) teachers would take turns patrolling the outdoor areas during breaks/lunch, now it seems to be ‘mid-day supervisors’ ie lowly paid, usually women, often hard as nails… The teachers might not hear what is going on outside…
I haven’t been in school for a long time and I would say it’s pretty bad though there are probably other places which are worse. I don’t think UK schools are as cliquey as the US, no one really cares about school sports so the concept of jocks can’t really develop. Whilst the UK hasn’t solved racism I think it’s less common and blatant than in some other countries.
Compared to Japan I think the issues are different as they fetishise the school experience far more due to the work culture being so bad and they have a real culture of conformity “The nail that sticks out gets hammered down”. However they also tend to have far more engaged parents and there’s more acceptance that there are things to be expected of parents. In the UK if the kid is being a dick there is a reasonable chance the parents don’t care or encourage the behaviour.
Haven’t worked in schools for 5 years, but the biggest problem then was it had switched over to social media.
It was happening more outside schools and there was fuck or we could or Facebook would do.
Boys were also easier to deal with. They’d fight, get physical, get separated and detention, job done. Biggest issue was videos being uploaded to Facebook and YouTube.
But the girls, Jesus Christ it was like they were practising psychological warfare. Once they started that was it, we were powerless to stop it. Kids would get ostracised by entire schools. Sometimes several schools if the girls had large enough networks.
Unfortunately the only real people with the power to stop bullying is the parents.
Good luck getting them to ever admit little Timmy and their darling little Britney could ever do anything wrong.
Bullying is a decriminalised way to harass or physically assault children by permitting or encouraging other children to do it.
Workplaces have anti-bullying policies, but these would be useless if there were no laws protecting workers from harassment and assault. In school there are effectively no laws protecting children from other children.
I was bullied for pretty much the entire time I was at school, from age 4 to 16, by both boys and girls. It was mostly psychological, although there was one incident when a girl deliberately through a volleyball at my head. The school did absolutely nothing about it.
I know that in most cases when a kid is bullied, it’s either just one kid or one group of kids doing the bullying, but for me I was bullied by multiple kids from multiple different year groups.
You will likely get a skewed answer asking this on Reddit.
What’s your angle here tho? Just curious or what?
If you’re asking for a kid — get them put into boxing class learning how to move their head & feet to slip a punch.
The confidence gained from this is invaluable (imho) growing up in Glasgow 😏
I’m a boy. I was never bullied by girls at all but bullied by boys a lot..
So I’m not sure girls bully more..
I work at a secondary school and I would say it’s bad but not horrendous, like a lot of people try to make it out to be.
Most of the bullying happens on social media so the school is only really made aware a day or a few days after it’s happened, or are just simply not told.
There doesn’t seem to be a lot of physical bullying, however, if there is it’s normally just a punch up between students you know have beef with each other. There is also A LOT of silly drama and he said she said and the schools can’t really do much about that if they can’t get to what actually happened. The students involved will normally just all be sanctioned.
I was in school in the 80s and 90s and got into a few fights and had the piss taken for “being English” (I’m not) and “a sheep shagger” (born in aberdeen) but I wouldn’t say I was bullied.
Tbh there wasn’t much bullying in the schools I went to.
This was however, before social media so if someone had a disagreement and got a good kicking it usually ended there.
Bullying in schools is absolutely rampant. Literally every other parent at our school had had their kids bullied at some stage.
The school, the teachers, everyone knows their anti bullying policies just do not work. They only take the matter seriously when it’s a teacher that’s the victim. Otherwise they just go through the motions hoping for a quiet life.
My kids are all trained in a couple of martial arts and after a year of working with the school who totally failed them when being bullied, were sent to school with strict instructions to simply beat the living shit out of the bully. Problem solved in 5 minutes flat. Never reoccurred. School is now back to being a pleasant place of learning for them rather than lord of the flies.
The teachers weren’t happy but it’s not like we’d not given them plenty of time. What you can’t fix in a year, you can’t fix or you aren’t trying.
Works for cyber bullying too, since most of that is by kids they know at school. Can’t hide behind a keyboard when you’ve got to go to school.
One big difference with Japan and South Korea is that in those countries students are assigned their homeroom class and they are in that class with those people all day every day. The teachers come to them to teach their classes not the other way round. I think that heavily contributes to the pressure-cooker atmosphere that means there can be really bad bullying there, as there is nowhere for the victim to run and plenty of time for tensions to increase. It’s suppose to teach everyone to get along and build community spirit but when it goes wrong it does the exact opposite.
I think it’s common for only horror-story experiences from other countries to filter through from abroad so I wouldn’t like to offer definitive comment on whether it is worse there or here, but at least hear the victim is unlikely to have class with all of the bullies all of the time as there will be different classes for different subject. I think schools in the UK also (as a generalisation, bad stories exist everywhere) are more likely to take it seriously than in Japan as there’s generally a wider dialogue and awareness of mental heath adjacent stuff here in the UK.
Also agree that in general girls seem to be worse, with the big exception of sexual harassment which there has been a lot of articles in the news about recently. As far as other bullying goes, from what I’ve heard boys are much more likely to end up in a physical fight but girls are more likely to engage in nasty and protracted social and psychological warfare.