How to eliminate school violence

Nowadays, as living conditions are getting worse, more and more people are sadly taking their own lives.

According to a recent report, Korea is at the top of the suicide rate list among OECD countries. Reasons behind their sad decisions may be diversified, but financial distress could be the main culprit, considering the current dire domestic economic situation.

However, when it comes to our teenagers’ suicide, I think the blame should be on school violence. Moreover, imitated by horrific crime and influenced by violent media, degrees and types of school violence are increasingly shocking and numerous, ranging from teasing, beating and harassing to water torture.

As a high school student, I feel scared to go to school whenever I hear of such horrendous incidents. I think without fundamental measures to mitigate it, more of my friends will be victimized by the mass harassment of mischievous students, resulting in suicide.

The other day, I happened to see a one-and-half-minute video clip in the Internet uploaded by an anonymous student. I was shocked at the horrific image contained in it. A boy of about my age was surrounded by several other boys. He was being brutally beaten and trampled by them.

The victimized boy was tearfully pleading with his chums to stop. What if the boy happened to be me? The boy who had taken the picture wrote underneath the video clip that he was a friend of the victim and that he couldn’t stop them beating his friend, the only option was to secretly tape the scene with a mobile phone.

Why was he beaten so miserably? Because he just stared at them, his friend wrote. While watching this, I felt that the degree of mischievous behavior committed by teenagers is beyond common sense.

I have been taught that Korea is a country which cherishes morality and good manners. Then, why is this school violence so sensationalized in our society?

I think the blame should be on people’s indifferent personality. As our society becomes busy and complex, most of us have a hard time talking with each other, not to mention, sharing love and affection. This tendency goes directly to family life, making it hard to have communication between parents and children.

So many teenagers, including me, may not get proper moral education at home, which will produce many mischievous teenagers.

Our competition to enter prestigious universities may induce us to grow into such violent teenagers. After all, the scoring good grades in school has become the judging yardstick of conduct. In that sense, all we have to do is outperform our classmates in order to succeed in the entrance exam, which makes us harbor negative emotions such as hatred and jealousy against each other.

Of course, I have seen a lot of efforts made to stem school violence. Advertisements to expel school violence are on air every day. Posters and banners are posted on most schools.

Even I also participated in the street campaign with my schoolmates. However, I am afraid this violence will hardly be purged out of our society through such formal ways.

School violence has a lot of harmful effects on many helpless students. It leaves them indelible physical and mental scars. In extreme cases, those teenagers unable to overcome the horrific harassment take their own lives.

In this regard, I think we need to take more urgent and specific actions to save our friends. My opinion is that collaboration between schools, parents and communities is the foremost approach to addressing this canker.

I wish someday I will walk to and from school without the worry of meeting those bad guys.

The writer is a first-year student at Gimhae Girls’ High School in South Gyeongsang Province. She can be reached at kosg8654@naver.com. <The Korea Times/Kang Su-jeong>