Four Questions on “School Bullying” in Beijing Zhongguancun Second Elementary School

A parent of Zhongguancun No. 2 Primary School in Haidian District, Beijing recently posted an online article saying that the child was "bullyed" by classmates, and an "acute stress response" occurred afterwards, questioning the school's improper handling and causing widespread public concern. The second primary school in Zhongguancun was therefore pushed to the top of public opinion. "Xinhua Viewpoint" reporter investigated the matter.

Question: What happened?

On the evening of December 8th, an article entitled "Every pair of mother and child is a life and death, I will accompany him to say NO to campus bullying!" ”Article, began to screen on WeChat friends circle and other platforms.

The author of the article claimed to be the mother of a 10-year-old boy in the second grade of Zhongguancun Primary School. She said that after the child was detained by the classmates in the toilet trash basket at school, the child developed symptoms such as insomnia, anorexia, and fear of going to school. The hospital was diagnosed as an "acute stress response", and no agreement was reached in subsequent communication with the school.

Zhongguancun Second Primary School said on the 13th that the school "deeply blamed itself" for the incident, and "deeply apologized" for the harm it caused to students and parents.

According to the school, they conducted investigations by calling corridor surveillance videos. The surveillance showed that on November 24, Mingming (a pseudonym, that is, the injured student) came out of the classroom and entered the toilet, and then his classmates Junjun (pseudonym) and Liangliang (pseudonym) ) Also entered the toilet one after another. About half a minute later, the latter two students ran out of the toilet and returned to the classroom. After that, he came out of the toilet and wiped his forehead with his sleeve while walking in the corridor.

In the presence of three classmates and parents, the school listened to the student ’s description. Obviously, he was standing in a compartment of the toilet at that time. When Liang Liang entered the toilet and saw him, he picked up the trash basket from the next compartment and threw it, just clasping it on his head. After that, he washed it in the toilet and came out.

Liangliang told the teacher that he and Junjun saw Mingming was going to the toilet, "want to tease him", he threw a garbage basket from the next door into Mingming's compartment, and ran out without looking . Jun Jun said that he was not involved in throwing garbage baskets, but he was amused by the sidelines and felt a bit overdone afterwards.

Question 2: Where is the boundary between "campus bullying" and "joke"?

During the incident, whether the behavior of the students involved constituted "bullying on campus" has always been the biggest difference between the parties.

According to the State Council's "Notice on Special Management of Campus Bullying" in April this year, "campus bullying" refers to "acts that occur between students, intentionally or maliciously, through the use of physical, language and Internet means to carry out bullying and insult to cause harm."

According to the hospital medical certificate provided by the exposed mother, the deceived child was diagnosed with "acute stress response" on December 2, the eighth day after the incident.

According to the school, parents of Liangliang and Junjun did not recognize the incident as bullying on campus, not even violence. Teacher Lu told reporters that Minghe, Liangliang, and Junjun are usually normal classmates. The interaction between class and class is normal, and there are nicknames, but there are no obvious conflicts. After various investigations by the school, the school believes that "the above incidents are not enough to determine that Liang Liang and the military's behavior has constituted bullying or violence on campus."

Xia Xueluan, a professor in the Department of Sociology of Peking University, said in an interview with Xinhua News Agency that according to the authoritative experts on campus bullying, bullying has three basic characteristics, namely "recurrence, harm and power imbalance." These three characteristics are now accepted by many researchers on campus bullying issues worldwide.

"But the difficulty now is that some people question the essence of bullying should not be the frequency of the behavior, but the imbalance in the strength of the two sides of the behavior; the definition of 'harmfulness' is not clear enough." He said.

Chu Zhaohui, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Education Sciences, told reporters that when judging bullying on campus, one should not judge only on the surface and form, but should rely on the feelings of the "bulled", that is, when the bullied feel pain, the student is Being bullied.

During the period of massive outbreaks of bullying on campus in Japan in the 1980s, the official definition of bullying behavior was that school bullying was only confirmed by the school. That is to say, even if some students are bullied, the school or the teacher thinks it is "joke" and "quarrel", it cannot be said to be bullying. In 2006, Japan revised the definition of bullying and began to define whether a bullying incident occurred based on the feelings of the victim.

Chu Zhaohui said that there is no clear standard for measuring whether this incident is bullying, but if it is "fighting between students", one of the factors is that "being joked" accepts this behavior emotionally, not Will produce psychological pain. Judging from the description of the students involved, the "joke" is psychologically unacceptable, and whether school bullying is unilaterally defined by the school should pay attention to the affected students.

At noon on the 13th, the reporter randomly interviewed several parents and students at the gate of primary and secondary schools in Beijing, Tianjin and other places. Mr. Liang, who lives in the Heping District of Tianjin, told reporters clearly that from the current survey results of Zhongguancun No. 2 Primary School, it is not as simple as normal “fighting” between students. On the contrary, it means more of bullying. His daughter, who was in the fifth grade of elementary school, told reporters that if someone was dumping a trash basket in the toilet, "it would be unacceptable in his heart, and he might cry on the spot."

Three questions: Why is event handling so difficult?

A seemingly simple conflict, why quickly ferment in just a few days? What are the difficulties in handling such incidents?

Some parents of Zhongguancun No. 2 Primary School told reporters that the school has been doing a good job in children's education, but the information disclosed in this investigation is not timely enough. From the incident on November 24 until the beginning of December, many times of coordination remained unsuccessful. Later, after the public opinion was amplified, its influence expanded and it reached a deadlock.

In an interview with reporters on the 13th, Yang Gang, principal of Zhongguancun No. 2 Primary School, said that after the incident, the school has been actively coordinating and repeatedly communicating with the parents involved. However, the obvious parents insisted that the school believe that Liangliang and the military's behavior was bullying on campus and recorded it, and made four claims in writing, resulting in uncoordinated parents.

"We were also protecting these three children at the time, and we didn't want the parents to escalate their conflicts. It is still the same idea, and we hope to minimize the harm to the children." Yang Gang explained the reason for the school's lack of voice.

He believes that in the process of children's communication, it is inevitable that accidents and unexpected incidents will inevitably occur. "School education should assume the role of a coordinator rather than the role of a punisher."

It is understood that the current "campus bullying" incident generally has the problem of difficulty in obtaining evidence and identification. Who will determine whether it is bullying? What should I do? It is still relatively vague. As a result, the legal system and standard gaps of related issues in practice are also exposed.

Some interviewed primary and secondary school teachers said that there is still a problem of insufficient cognition and insufficient punishment for the bullying incident on campus. Schools tend to reconcile privately and calm things in line with the principle that big things become small and little things become small.

"Campus bullying is not as obvious as campus violence. There are no serious injuries such as beatings or minor injuries. They are often mixed with slaps, jokes, and contradictions between ordinary students." Said Tong Lihua, director of Beijing Youth Legal Aid and Research Center. Minors are physically and mentally fragile. Some jokes, jokes, and mischief may not matter to some people, and may cause psychological harm to others. "

In addition, some experts believe that although the country attaches importance to the problem of bullying on campus and has introduced relevant policies, its effectiveness at the implementation level has gradually weakened. Tong Lihua believes: "Many grass-roots education administrative departments and schools are not paying enough attention to this, which leads to simple and even rough handling of similar incidents."

Focus Four: Where are the weak links in anti-school bullying?

In recent years, campus bullying incidents have occurred frequently. According to the "China Education Development Report (2016)" released this year, campus bullying has occurred in a wide range of areas in recent years, covering most provinces with a high frequency. According to statistics from the Ministry of Education, from May to August this year, 68 incidents of bullying on campus were reported.

Some college psychology teachers believe that China has a greater distance than developed countries such as Europe, America, and Japan on the issue of anti-school bullying. For example, Georgia, the United States, took the lead in enacting anti-bullying laws in 1999. So far, the United States has legislation against bullying on campus. In China, legislation against bullying on campus is still blank.

Yu Yafeng, director of the Educational Law Research Center of Beijing Normal University, believes: "The current norms of bullying on campus mainly rely on traditional laws, lacking pertinence and referral. The education of unhealthy or misbehaving minors also mainly depends on families and schools. "

In November this year, the Ministry of Education and other nine departments jointly issued the "Guiding Opinions on Prevention and Control of Bullying and Violence in Primary and Middle School Students", which put forward a number of measures that require active and effective prevention of student bullying and violence, and handling incidents of student bullying and violence according to law and regulations.

Tong Lihua believes that the key now is that the education administration, schools and parents should really pay attention to implementation and form good and close contact and interaction. "Make students and parents aware of the society's" zero tolerance "of bullying and violence on campus. In addition, if students are bullied, parents go to the school to discuss the argument, how to deal with it properly, what emergency mechanism is adopted, how to respond in time, etc. It should be further refined in the daily management of each school, and even an operation manual for effectively preventing and dealing with campus bullying problems can be developed. "

Chu Zhaohui said that the responsibility of family education for "bullying" in the prevention of bullying on campus is particularly important. "According to previous statistics, there is a lack of family education in the 'bullying person'. In single-parent families, rural left-behind children and other groups, school violence is prone to occur frequently, which means that the shortcomings of family education should be filled."