English Intensive Class Assignment for March: School Bullying- Everywhere, Everyday

It was an ominously chilly winter morning and Mrs. Lim hurriedly drove back home. She was a teacher and the proud mother of two boys, and she just heard from police officers that some sort of ‘accident’ happened to her youngest son. She had no idea what happened to him. As soon as she arrived at the apartment she lived in, she saw handful of police officers standing round in the apartment’s garden. One ominous thought popped up in her mind but she tried to erase the thought. “It can’t be,” she thought. But her youngest son was there, on the frozen ground. Police officers were taking pictures of the body and marking the place. She shook him and screamed his name. He didn’t move, but was still warm. She cried with agony, “Please call the ambulance! My son is still warm, he is alive!” Nobody but an abyss of silence replied. The police officers gazed at her with compassion. She cried out his name over and over, but to no avail. This is the real story of Mrs. Lim Jiyoung. Her son Seongmin committed suicide at a very young age because he couldn’t bear the bullying of his classmates anymore. The tragic suicide of the boy illustrates how dangerous and serious school bullying is. His classmates made fun of him, battered him, and even tortured him. Later, when people asked them why they did so, they replied, “we did it just for fun”.

Admittedly, Korean teenagers these days are facing a lot of problems. Almost every day, I hear experts on TV news or debate programs saying, “Korean adolescents are addicted to smart phones and computer games, they hardly respect their teachers and parents, they do not read many books, and… Oh, they are so troublesome!” But these problems are relatively minor, compared to this huge problem: school bullying. It is reported that about 460 million Korean students are suffering from school bullying. Everyone living in this country knows a great deal about this problem due to the tragic death of many victims. Relentless tragic news about them even made some people misunderstand this phenomenon. They claim that school bullying is only taking place in this country. But, their opinion isn’t quite true. School bullying is an everyday occurrence in every country. In other words, it has been going on for many decades, and is happening in many foreign schools as well.

The 1990s were truly remarkable for Koreans: we experienced both rapid economic development and devastating economic crisis. Rapid development gave dreams and hopes to us, but the following economic crisis gave us huge economic loss and discouraged many people. So many people lost their job, went broke, lost their houses, divorced, and committed suicide. It was such a horrible and stressful turn-of-the-century, especially for teenagers: their parents and teachers shocked by the sudden economic crisis forced them to study, study, and study so that they could enter good colleges and land good jobs, their families suffered from poverty, and it was becoming more and more difficult to succeed. So they tried to relieve stress by misbehaving: many adolescents became addicted to drugs and alcohol, smoked, and bullied their classmates. The bullies made fun of weak peers. They sometimes ordered the victims to give them some money or do evil things with them. If the victims denied their orders, the teenagers were gruesomely beaten. Many teenagers suffered a lot, and even killed themselves. However, the government, the police, and schools didn’t listen carefully to the victims’ complaints and requests for help. They just said, “It is something that always happens. We have no power to stop it”. I suppose if they at least had tried to put an end to this problem, school bullying might have been eradicated from this country by now.

As I mentioned above, school bullying is not only Korea’s problem. Putting aside alcohol addiction, drug addiction, and teen pregnancy, many western adults are saying that they feel somewhat humiliated because of the serious school bullying taking place in their countries. According to 2008 article in The Guardian, school bullying turned out to be worse in England than other European countries. Americans are saying that ‘bullying is a common occurrence in most American schools’. It is reported that about 70% of junior high school/high school students experienced bullying at school in the US. About half of Canadian parents are claiming that their children are being bullied at school. Furthermore, some English websites even provide tips for parents who have children being bullied by their teachers. It looks like their situation is not much different from the situation of Korea. School bullying is becoming more and more serious all over the world and giving bigger and bigger pain to the victims.

Nevertheless, it doesn’t mean that we can’t stop it. Yes, it is true that school bullying lasted for decades and decades, but that might be because we never dared to deal with this problem. That might be because we were too afraid. (Think about the government, the police, and schools of the 1990s) However, now, there’s no more time to be afraid: so many adolescents full of potential and talents like Seongmin were sacrificed because of school bullying, and so many adolescents are suffering from bullying even right now. We should do something right away. We should be more aware of the horrible results of constant school bullying and try our utmost to prevent it. We should not evade this problem anymore. We should be more courageous and clear headed. If we do so, we can surely eradicate school bullying.

Reference List

“School Bullying” Wikipedia (English), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_bullying
“What Are the Top Ten Teen Problems in America?” eHow, http://www.ehow.com/info_7882465_top-ten-teen-problems-america.html
“Is your child being bullied?” BBC, http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/schoolgate/aboutschool/content/2discipline.shtml
“UK schools worst in Europe for bullying” Education Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/education/2008/feb/29/schools.uk4