I saw my first instance of teacher abuse yesterday

[AssKissinger]

Nobody got hurt. No big deal.

Word-up, Sammy

Why are we turning into a world of pussies?

That's a good question.

[Oradea]

Here's an alternate approach.

If you know who the kid is, see if you can meet with his parents. Explain what happened, as you did here, pointing out the kid didn't do anything wrong, Apologize for the other teachers actions (very nihonjin), and leave the ball in their court. Let them decide what course of action to take. If they complain, would hold more weight, and might actually get something done. If they decide to do nothing, chances are that that teacher isn't the only thing that's gonna f*ck up the kid.

Faded seems to be on the ball here, I'm against any kind of physical punishment but there are other methods that should be alowed such as detention and school suspension, gotta agree with BB that suspension is just a day off. Faded has come up with a fairly decent compromise that should ease BB's conscience a little and also let action be taken if the parents decide to. If the parents decide to let it go, then whats the point trying further when even the kids own guardians arent interested, which would suggest it is a cultural more here.

[Big Booger]

He smacked the kid. Nobody got hurt. No big deal. Why are we turning into a world of pussies? I saw worse. The baseball coach at the high school I taught at gabbed the crotch of some kids pants. I don't think he really sqeezed his balls, just the pants. But it's the thought that counts. And this was in the teachers room in front of everyone. That was after cracking him over ther head with a thick rolled up magazine. All the kid did was try to hold back a laugh. He seemed to think it was fucking funny. BTW, this kid was a little shit that probably needed to be slapped around. The crotch grabbing was fucking weird though. And comparing a smack to the head with sexual assault is a red herring.

How do you know what kind of kid it was? So if I hate the clerk at the register because she takes too long, I should just smack the shit out her.. and demand her to hurry up.. as long as I don't hurt her, it should be fine.

Or if a cop doesn't fill out my ticket as fast and as good as I'd like him to, I should just wail back and knock out some of his fucking teeth...

You are a mistaken person to think that violence stops violence... What that coach did was violent and out of anger. There was no lesson to be learned from that.. other than he's an idiot who can pick on little boys in junior high school.

And you all assume that all boys are bad... that they deserve it?? WTF? I don't know what your reasoning is. You act like because the teacher picked on the kid, it was the kids fault? Too much buddha smoking

Maybe your old man smacked the piss out of you as a kid and you know recollect that it taught you a lesson, but I believe there has to be another way.. at least a prescribed form of punishment like a paddling is indeed more civilized than an attack on a student.

YOu think pussy, until you actually hurt the kid.. then it's too damn late.

[AssKissinger]

Or if a cop doesn't fill out my ticket as fast and as good as I'd like him to, I should just wail back and knock out some of his fucking teeth...

I'd say you had a sac, that's for sure

[Samurai_Jerk]

BB,

I'm not saying it's the right thing to do I'm just saying it's no big deal. I never once said the kid deserved it. I think you are mixing my comments up with AK. No you shouldn't smack a clerk in a store but there are times when violence is called for. The problem is modern society has basically tried to turn men into a bunch of women with ball sacks.

[Samurai_Jerk]

Ah, I just realized you were referring to the kid at my school. Yeah, I know from first hand experience he was a little turd. BTW, I got pissed off when I witnessed it too, but it really was not a big deal and I certainly didn't sit around obsessing about it. My parents generation grew up in a time where corporal punishment was the norm at schools. I don't they're all violent headcases at a result.

[japslapper]

Well when I was on JET in a SHS a few years ago(Wakayama), Kocho Sensei invited myself and a young Japanese physics teacher(presumably because we were both early 20s and very junior ) back to his house for a whale meat supper (maybe he was trying to offend my British sensabilities ) anyway he went on to give us a 3 hour preview of his personal porn collection. And yes the porn collection was old men and JHS/SHS girls and at regular intervals he would say - in his pidgin Engrish "youngu garlu student like dis - very goodo"

No Shit

Ofcourse me and the other teacher could say nowt, and ofcourse Kocho is so popular in the Wakayama munbushou hierarchy that is now been promoted to kocho one of one of the "Top" schools

3 years on I am still very angry that I couldn't do anything about this......In Japan if the pot stinks they put a lid on it -but I wanted to complain about this but I couldn't........

[cstaylor]

And yes the porn collection was old men and JHS/SHS girls and at regular intervals he would say - in his pidgin Engrish "youngu garlu student like dis - very goodo"

You know, I've always wondered why anyone would want to become a teacher. I wonder if those lolita fantasies are the biggest motivator for male teachers?

[djgizmoe]

Here's my two cents, BB.

1. Smacking kids is against the law. Period. This is not a cultural difference issue. Dude, if some teacher hit my kid because he couldn't perform in judo asshole's flying pyramid-building circus, I'd sue the shit out of him and ruin his fucking career.

2. Ask someone at the BOE a "theoretical" question about who you should report abuses to and what the penalties are. Try to feel out whether or not the BOE will be more supportive of the teachers' or students' rights, then spill the beans if it seems the BOE will aggressively pursue the complaint.

3. Again, fuck the teacher. I don't care if he's spinning straw into gold at home or at work, you slap a kid around, and you've broken your contract with civilization. Look, if I can't fucking smack students around when they actually deserve it, sure as shit I'm not going let some asshole beat on my kids when they DON'T warrant it...

4. I helped get a kocho sensei canned because he let his students turn his school into a zoo, but I'd do the same if he ignored student abuse. Just find a way to rock the boat gently (express your "puzzlement" and "disappointment" at the school to the BOE, and that should be enough to get some wheels turning).

5. Yes, it's a no-win situation for you, already; if you complain, there may be implications to your career, if you don't, you are implicitly supporting the judo schmuck. So make sure you don't go down without sticking it to the deserving parties, so at least their misery may bring you a little spark of joy.


Oh Mr. Judo Coach, come out and play-ay...

[carbonfibre3]

There is no need to get physical to protect a student in this day and age. Just bring a camera to school and carry it around. When you see abuse like this, well, a picture is worth a thousand words. Just make sure that the abuser sees you taking the picture. Ideally, this would be video, but you probably dont want to carry around a video camera. But you probably have your handy mobile phone with a camera with you all the time. Just use that. If hitting a student is really against the law, not only will you stop the abuse you see, but now that you have evidence, they may think twice in the future also.

And I suggest just walking away and saying nothing after taking the picture. (Direct threats are never good things, in Japan or elsewhere.) If asked what you will do with it, say you dont know. If asked why, say "why not". Leave the other teachers in suspense and keep your options open.

[mr. sparkle]

My 5th grade teacher (a hard ass from NYC with a short man's complex) threw me half way across the room one day. I tumbled over a bunch of desks and other students that were in the way. All because I wouldn't stop chattering with young Carol Suzuki after a warning or two.

I got a huge bruise on my ass. I mean HUGE.

I showed my dad.
The next day:
He threatened my teacher with an ass kicking if
anything like that ever happened again.
He also said that he wouldn't report the incident
if he left me alone for the rest of the year.

I deserved some kind of punishment for acting up, but nothing quite as physically and mentally damaging as that incident. Sometimes I still think about that incident and wondered, "what the hell was wrong with that guy?"

Japan or not, I don't think banging a kid up is the best line of punishment. Forced physical labor or restriction from class activities (field trips, special assemblies, free time at recess) is more than enough to deter unruly behavior, especially in group oriented Japan.

[AssKissinger]

I helped get a kocho sensei canned because he let his students turn his school into a zoo,

Was the next guy able to fix the place?

[djgizmoe]

I helped get a kocho sensei canned because he let his students turn his school into a zoo,

Was the next guy able to fix the place?

From what I hear, it took about 2 full years for that school to turn around after the principal switch. About 2/3rds of the teachers were also shuffled out of that school (some teachers, especially women, were having serious psychological breakdowns).

And carbon is right, I took pictures of the students acting up (standing on the vice-principal's desk in the teachers' room, wearing bosozoku clothes instead of uniforms, shaving each other's heads behind the buildings, etc.) and related a few stories of student assaults on teachers to the head of the BOA at an enkai, real casual-like, and then all-heck started breaking loose. A few days later, a female teacher had to go to the hospital after being brutalized by one of the head paint sniffers (the leaders of the bad kids were chimpira spawn, so even the police were a little reluctant to get involved), and then the school got totally restructured. The sad thing was, some of the teachers that got shifted to that school were good teachers from other schools who ended up with hellish classes to reward them for all their hard work, and others were brand-new fresh-faces who got a nice trial-by-fire for their first teaching post. But once the worst students graduated, I think the new principal was able to pull things together...

[AssKissinger]

But once the worst students graduated, I think the new principal was able to pull things together

Yeah but the new principal wouldn't have been able to do shit about those old students and the old principal would have been fine with the new good kids. Moral of the story you helped get a man canned for something that was beyond anyman's control. Unless that man cracks a head or two which you said you would have reported him and sued him for. So what the fuck?

[Samurai_Jerk]

AK, you're all wrong. They just needed to put those kids in time-out and then have a good heart-to-heart and find out why they felt they had to act out.

[djgizmoe]

But once the worst students graduated, I think the new principal was able to pull things together

Yeah but the new principal wouldn't have been able to do shit about those old students and the old principal would have been fine with the new good kids. Moral of the story you helped get a man canned for something that was beyond anyman's control. Unless that man cracks a head or two which you said you would have reported him and sued him for. So what the fuck?

Um, wrong. The principal at that school was an old, weak bastard. All the teachers complained to me about him, said he was not seriously trying to do anything to protect them (and the good students). Remember this is freaking junior high, not high school, yet:

1. This guy let the 'big' 14 year olds come into the teachers room and 'hang out'. The students inevitably harassed the teachers verbally or phsically (my ALT friend Lola refused to go to that school after being assaulted...). I might have mentioned this before, but kids were making out on cabinets, standing on the teachers desks, fooling with the overhead TVs, all during and in-between class. Many schools I know of don't even allow students in the teachers room; all the principal could've said was "From now on, no students in the teachers room", and at least the teachers would have had one safe harbor from the students.

2. The bad second year students were taking an apprenticeship of juvenile delinquency from the third years. And the first years were catching on quick too. It wasn't just a matter of waiting until the 'bad' third years left; the cycle of violence (to use a terrible cliche) had to be stopped, not just waited out. And with the relatively few bad kids running the school, disrupting almost every class - what abuse the teachers faced was probably nothing compared to the hardcore ijime that some of the students probably faced.

3. The guy was hardly ever in his office. While the teachers were told just to "ganbaru", principal man always seemed to find an excuse to leave his office. He was only in the place about 2-3 full days a week it seemed, and even when the police were called one time, he didn't show and let kyoto-sensei deal with it.

4. AK, if you were in the teachers room and you saw female teachers getting violently kicked until they were bruised and crying by boys who had just been sniffing paint in plastic bags out behind the gym, if you saw bathrooms vandalized daily, kids riding motorcycles in the halls, furniture set on fire and thrown out of second story windows, and NONE of the other 13 schools in the same city you'd visited had anything HALF as bad going on, and the 60-something year old principal just shakes his head and smiles and says "sho ga nai" what would you do? The old guy got an early retirement (paid), so don't feel too sorry for him...
The point is, the principal had some very simple options at his disposal (making a few new rules, sending some kids to juvie for their offenses, keeping the kids out of the teachers room), but he was just a big-ass pussy, and everyone suffered TERRIBLY. Smacking the kids sure as hell wouldn't have worked either, though.

[AssKissinger]

AK, if you were in the teachers room and you saw female teachers getting violently kicked until they were bruised and crying by boys who had just been sniffing paint in plastic bags out behind the gym...

I'd stop it by any and all means neccessary including use of violence against the students. In fact, I'd have whacked 'em strait long before it got to such a point. If a kid touches me or one of the female staff I fucking hit them back a lot harder.

[Samurai_Jerk]

I'd stop it by any and all means neccessary including use of violence against the students. In fact, I'd have whacked 'em strait long before it got to such a point. If a kid touches me or one of the female staff I fucking hit them back a lot harder.

Amen to that.

[Taro Toporific]

If a kid touches me or one of the female staff I fucking hit them back a lot harder.

I taught quite a bit in college before teaching in high school (in the US), and EVERYDAY before starting school I would have to repeat to myself:
STUDENTS NOT FRIENDS: TERROR IS GOOD TEACHIN'.

[djgizmoe]

AK, if you were in the teachers room and you saw female teachers getting violently kicked until they were bruised and crying by boys who had just been sniffing paint in plastic bags out behind the gym...

I'd stop it by any and all means neccessary including use of violence against the students. In fact, I'd have whacked 'em strait long before it got to such a point. If a kid touches me or one of the female staff I fucking hit them back a lot harder.

When the staff in question was getting kicked, there were immediately 2 male Japanese teachers who went over there and restrained him and eventually negotiated with the hopped-up kid, which was what should have been done on that end. However, the principal just kind of peeked his head through his office door during the action and then just went back to his office, doing nothing. Beating the kid (who was literally white-faced from paint sniffing and clearly deranged) would have done absolutely nothing except get everybody involved in trouble, if the parents would have complained (and in this case they WOULD have).

Not feeling too high and mighty though. One kid, in a macho challenge, slugged me in the shoulder, and I slammed him up against the wall, gritting my teeth while smiling and saying "Yamete..." Nobody else bothered me during my time there. That was only marginally acceptable because I was just visiting and was not a regular teacher. Still, it was hardly professional...

Anyway, there's a reason I don't teach in high schools or junior highs and Kita junior high is definitely a big part of that reason. I have a temper and I don't have the patience necessary to teach kids that don't want to be there. But you can isolate kids, you can call the police on them, but you can't hit them. End of ranting.

[Big Booger]

I've decided to just ignore it this time. In the past 2 days he hasn't done shit. So maybe this was a fluke? I dun't know. I do know if it happens again, I will report it using the theoretically, hypothetical, what if BS... We'll see what happens.

Our undokai is Saturday so hopefully after that, I won't ever see that shit again.

As for the zoo, I swear to god, I'd leave. Or I just would show up, inkan, and find an empty room to make my new office

That sounds like pure school hell...

[kotatsuneko]

when you have to deal with kids who hit each other, the Japanese teacher and on occasion, you, it can drive you crazy, I would give them harder questions or make them help others in the class or tidy up the room etc

I could never imagine hitting a kid, but saw a lot of the Japanese teachers (all female) do so, occasionally with some severity (especially those who would grab their tits or bury their face in the teachers groin)

In the end tho, I simply figured, if thats the way it is in Japan, thats the way it is and any hollering/letter writing I did would just result in losing my job and wouldn't change a thing..

I would rather see the issue of bullying in schools dealt with rather than teachers hitting kids, if teachers found out a kid was bullying others, starting up bullying groups etc then imho those kids should get a public beating and have to clean the toilets etc..

Its the culture of bullying that most sickened me about Japan in all walks of society.. If the teachers themselves hadn't grown up in constant fear of being bullied I doubt that sadistic streak would exist quite so much today..

I hope things work out for ya BB, you seem to like teaching, changing jobs is always a bitch, but I hope you find yourself a better position in the future..

personally I couldnt imagine teaching over here, on seeing faces like this all day



I'd go mad..

[AssKissinger]

when you have to deal with kids who hit each other, the Japanese teacher and on occasion, you, it can drive you crazy, I would give them harder questions or make them help others in the class or tidy up the room etc

I'm speechless. Would someone else comment on how fucking stupid that is?

[dimwit]

when you have to deal with kids who hit each other, the Japanese teacher and on occasion, you, it can drive you crazy, I would give them harder questions or make them help others in the class or tidy up the room etc

I'm speechless. Would someone else comment on how fucking stupid that is?

Fairly


I had a kid that spat at me in a class so I walk out of the class and told the staff that I would no longer teach that class if Asshole-kun was a student. For the next week Asshole-kun was not in attendance. The week after that Asshole-kun's mother showed up and publicly apologized in front of the entire class for her son misdeeds and pleaded with me to allow Asshole-kun back into class. From that point on, Asshole-kun was never even the slightest problem, undoubtedly because he knew what he faced back home if he were a problem.

Shame is the most powerful weapon you have at your disposal, not hitting the kid or making them do menial chores.

[jingai]

female teachers getting violently kicked until they were bruised and crying by boys who had just been sniffing paint in plastic bags out behind the gym, if you saw bathrooms vandalized daily, kids riding motorcycles in the halls, furniture set on fire and thrown out of second story windows,

I know where this is from... It's a Matsuda Yusaku picture- Bouryoku Kyoushitsu (Violent Classroom). It's about a former boxer who was barred from the sport for accidentially killing his opponent in the ring who comes back as a high school teacher. He beats the hell out of yankii, bousouzoku, and finally the principal. It's a very cheesy movie but I think you guys would enjoy it!

[AssKissinger]

The week after that Asshole-kun's mother showed up and publicly apologized in front of the entire class for her son misdeeds and pleaded with me to allow Asshole-kun back into class

I'd have listened to her apology and then refused to let him back in the class anyway. Whenever a kid who's a real ass apologizes or tries to I cut them off and tell them I don't care and don't want to hear it and that he should shut up and never talk to me or get near me again.

[jingai]

I was just thinking- there is a tendency for Japanese not to want to interfere with others and just mind their own business, so what is a culturally sensitive way to respond to something that is just wrong? It's times like this I think "What would Takakura Ken do?"

There is also a tradition of strong protecting the weak from abuse by those with power. You have an obligation to the children and their parents. I think Takakura Ken would slowly walk up to the teacher as he was attacking the students and quietly ask "yamete moraimasu." Try it, it works. (At least until the final scene where Ken dies trying to fight off 50 gangsters at a time. I suspect this part doesn't apply to high schools.)

http://www.jingai.com/yakuza/movies.html

[GomiGirl]

I've decided to just ignore it this time. In the past 2 days he hasn't done shit. So maybe this was a fluke? I dun't know. I do know if it happens again, I will report it using the theoretically, hypothetical, what if BS... We'll see what happens.

Ignore it for now but document it in detail - names, times, dates, etc etc

[GomiGirl]

The week after that Asshole-kun's mother showed up and publicly apologized in front of the entire class for her son misdeeds and pleaded with me to allow Asshole-kun back into class

I'd have listened to her apology and then refused to let him back in the class anyway. Whenever a kid who's a real ass apologizes or tries to I cut them off and tell them I don't care and don't want to hear it and that he should shut up and never talk to me or get near me again.

A kid needs to learn that they can improve from mistakes not be tagged for one error for the rest of their life.

Think of the message you are sending with your big tough talk. Accept the apology, let him back in class. If he does it again then he is gone for good.

People make mistakes. Holding a grudge shows more about you than anything else.

[AssKissinger]

Yeah, I agree, but not if a kid lays a big loogie in my face. In that case he'll learn the lesson that some shit doesn't get forgiven.

Holding a grudge shows more about you than anything else

If something is fucked up enough I'll hold a grudge for fucking life. I'm not gonna forgive a kid who spits on me, no fucking way, fuck that kid forever