From the article of 'Petrel'
No.641 / August 10, 1997
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send us your opinion and the impression about this article without reservation.
The school education that is going to ruin and is being dismantled
The packing of knowledge and the selection
From the site of education
The school that has broken up for the summer is indeed quiet.
The teachers are resting with relief for a while because the student goes to school for the club activity only here and there in the summer vacation.
The excessive work, the consumption and tiredness of the mind and body, and the feeling of practical powerlessness that every one of the teacher feels, which the recent school education gives to the teacher, have reached to the top.
Therefore, the lives of children who annoy teachers are put on a very bad, social environment, too.
<> The teachers are "The Victim," too.
There is a woman teacher. She never shows the appearance to the school since April and recuperates in own house for the reasons of "The absence because of sickness." However, it is actually not from sickness. To tell the truth, she can not come to the school for a long time because she can not recover from an excessive mental shock. The cause was the student's violence toward teacher.
She cut into the students who began to fight from a trifling thing during school hours and was used violence conversely by the student, and she fell into the situation not to be able to come to the school since the next day.
Though our union branch is defending her and is holding out the hand of help to make possible to work somehow of course, but the shock might be great. Though I do not know how many such teachers are there in this whole country, the ruin of children's life and the feeling of practical powerlessness are serious as to make the teachers "the refusal to go to school."
The maximum one that makes the teacher to say "being exhausted" is a sudden increase of the violent incidents the student causes. Though the fights between children existed for a long time, the recent characteristic is to become the one more violent and increasingly exceeding limit.
It becomes an everyday affair especially in the school, and the interruption of the lessons, the breaking of things, taking to the hospital from injury, the home visit for the report and the apology to the parent, and the like in every time, so the teachers are free from to take a rest.
Though the many are the violence between students, if the student is in bad temper the violence is turned to the teacher indiscriminately, too. The brake becoming not to work when losing one's temper, to become excited easily and not to be able to control feelings are the general characteristic of the children in these days.
We can feel the thin human relation there, that is, the lack of children's sociality, the lack of the enough transmission of one's will to the stranger, and the like. Once in passion, they destroy things at random and without considering the consequences such as the wall, the doors, the windows that exist surrounding, and use violence with all their strength in hands and feet.
Though even only the restoring cost of the things' damage rises to considerable amount, it is rather better to the things, and excepting whether the teacher was actually used violence every teacher might happen to be such tense site. When this is a junior high school student, we need a considerable courage and a decisive attitude to confront him because his power is more than us.
I say how to do in such case incidentally, anyway it is a matter calling for prior settlement to return the student in panicky situation to the original and steady mental status, I intend to make him to calming, to admonish meaningless of violence, and in case of helpless, it is necessary to suppress him by power though it is sad.
However, it does not confront violence by violence but for calming down of feelings to the end.
If we would face the student with violence, it would become the one not worth to the name of education any longer. In addition, the bigger violence would rebound and it would get out of our control. And after a while, he mostly regains calm and returns to an original childlike. And, he will go to school the next day as if there was not a matter. It is the childlike, too.
Though the homicide event of the school child in Kobe of the other day gave in no small way a big impact to the school site, however, it was the event that should get up and should occur is an honest voice of us who receive to such children in the site. The reason for it is that there is not mysterious in any way even if the violence is turned to the general adult and the smaller, weaker children, if the violence turned to the other students and the teachers inside the campus goes out outside one step.
Actually, it is always exist to destroy facilities in the park and to use the violent language or to curse the adult who notes smoking and drinking. Moreover, there was the incident in the past to push down the keeping cat from the second floor of own house and to soak in pleasure, and to have killed the end at last.
It is the matter how the children who can only express their will by such violence are built, and why they are forced into such corner of cruel acts.
<> The school is not "community" any longer.
One of causes that forces them into the corners will be the school education today.
Most children are feeling that they are not admitted socially to graduate from the obligation education if not go to school, and that they cannot go on to high school and cannot find employment, and surely not to be guaranteed their future.
Therefore, they reluctantly go to school every day though they do not want to go truly.
However, there is not a bit enjoyment to throw and burn their energy there, and it is difficult to find the one to acquire the fulfillment feeling and the satisfaction feeling from experience.
There are the study pickle for a long time and the pseudo symbiosis, with which they feel to have no purpose if investigating thoroughly.
As everyone admits, study is the one for acquiring more excellent result and taking an examination of the better high school, and is nothing but the object by which they pack knowledge as much as possible with enduring single-mindedly and patiently, with being attacked by the fear that the road to the course is shut if they take the delay in study once.
The surroundings including the teacher also say that the study is not as such one and it is the more pious one, but actually it is only the means to go on to the better high school, and to acquire a private profit and a better individual income, and the individual life as well.
It is the world of the competition and the selection and the one to act individually dividing the children into parts and severing bonds always.
If so, where do the class and school management called making the class or the group have the element as the community? It is a community of pseudo, a pseudo-community, or rather only a strategy that binds children with reality.
What the empty one it is, the high-level but empty educational target that the educational bureaucrat and the scholar kept by the government produce, such as "the formation of the character, the progress of individuality," and furthermore "the education of symbiosis" of the fashion recently!
If there is a student who feels once having been defeated at this competition and the selection, though such a student who is directly conscious of so does not exist of course, it comes to "It is irritated," "The school is not interesting," and "Get angry" to borrow their words. For them, there is no purpose to go to school and no meaning to participate in the community of pseudo either.
Therefore, the student refusing to go to school called "lazy" increase today, they become not to even go to school and to stroll about town aimlessly all the day, or if they go to school lately, they do not attend to the class and yet to the class room, stroll around the campus. However, because it is always the group action in the school, they collide with the noting teacher, smoke with repulsing, eat the candy, and break the things, and become to display the will by violence finally. How many such "sulking" children to school there are!
<> The home does not "function" at all, too.
The second cause is the ruin or the collapse situation of the home. There are many children who were not poured enough love at the infant period and the bonds with the parent are thin, or who were over-interfered too much oppositely, and grow up without own will.
And, how many parents there are, who substitute money and the academic career intention for love and teaching to the child! (The following is a story that existed actually, to give 100,000 yen when possible to graduate from the junior high school without smoking, to buy every one wanting if can enter a public school.)
There are in no small way the parents' separation and divorce from the infant period to adolescence and the influence to the children is large. If the home environment does not give enough love and repose to the children, children's minds go to ruin more and more and the children do nothing but play around until midnight or repeat to leave home and staying out overnight without permission. And, how many numbers of children who dissipate at midnight there are!
The situation that such ruin in school or in home become aggravated is the direct reflection of this society. Only something school is easily regarded as another world separating from the society, a sacred community, and the criticism rushes easily only to parent's responsibility as a private practice at home. To begin with, how much the children are influenced strongly by the evil of this society!
The shoplift, the blackmail, the theft, the injury, the drug, the telephone club, the sexual impure, the violence, and the homicide add to a large amount in this society, and they enliven the mass communication frequently. We cannot criticize children running to such acts by the reason as they are children, can we? The world of self-interests, of the worship money principle of bourgeois, Diet member of the Assembly, and bureaucrats, the world of briberies and receiving a bribe, being flooded to the television and magazines is the one aiming only at selling and the private profit, the world of eroticism and nonsense, the children, the home, and the school receive the influence of such society corrupting and rotting every day. It is justifiable that the children running to the delinquency say "The adult is tricky" and "Why are only we blamed?"
The one having brought such a society is from the reason that this capitalism pursues only the moneymaking and the profit, and it reduces all matters nothing but the purpose. It is the social system that does not mind what it is or what kinds of adverse effect and crime it brings. As there are all crimes and corruptions in the society, it is also in the school. Recently, the medicine damage by drug (Children call this the S or the speed, the reason is that it demonstrates the effect at once) and the sexual damage by the telephone club gradually surge to the school, and there will not be the one to symbolize the rot of this society like this.
The society divided into the parts of the capitalist and the worker, the large crowd who sell own manpower by the piece and have no provisions of life besides it, the world without human bonds where the individuals are divided into parts, and are isolated, so it should not likely to be that only the home and the school are the special communities separating from the society in such world. The reason teachers are worrying, being exhausted, frightened by the hugeness of the problem is just that the educational practice demanding that will prove fruitless after all. (Though especially the Communist Party says with power to confront practically.)
Such principle of educational practice teaches to the children after all not to see the reality, not to affect the society, this is the thing of a society besides us, to work hard single-mindedly in study and to shut oneself up in the self world, consequently your private life will surely be guaranteed. If such children actually go out to the society, what will they think?
Now, the workers of education bump to a big wall. They begin to feel the useless of the mere educational practice. They begin to aware that the school also does not change as long as this society is not revolutionized from foundation. Therefore, our duty is to talk with such education workers, and to appeal to stand up to the joint act to revolutionize these societies together, and to organize them tenaciously.
(Shizuoka, A education worker)