In June 2023, some media revealed that in Fenyang, Shanxi, 8 underage men and women beat a minor girl; In July 2023, in Jiexiu, Shanxi, a short video showed that 3 underage students forced a peer to eat feces; What's more, in March this year, in Handan, Hebei Province, after an investigation by the public security organs, three minors were suspected of killing a minor and burying the body.
News about bullying in schools has come up repeatedly.
Seeing the tragic scenes, the unbearable painful memories of his youth came to Feng Hao's heart, and in his eyes, these teenagers and girls were full of themselves 15 years ago.
The memory of youth is a carefree summer for some people, a new self, and a deep friendship, but for Feng Hao, he was bullied, blackmailed, beaten, and forced to do a bad thing.
School bullying is not just a concept in progress, it is a wound that will take a lifetime for the person being bullied.
On April 26, the Ministry of Education, together with the Ministry of Public Security, the National Fire and Rescue Bureau and other departments, held a national video conference on the safety of primary and secondary schools and kindergartens, emphasizing the "in-depth implementation of special actions for the prevention and control of student bullying and the formation of a long-term governance mechanism", and carried out a "doxxing" investigation of all primary and secondary schools.
A haze that can't be dissipated
29-year-old Feng Hao decided to sue the person who bullied him back then.
After 15 years, the painful memories of being bullied still torment Feng Hao from time to time.
Feng Hao studied in a public junior high school in Shanghai, a four-year system, and most of the children in the class were migrant workers, and it was a few boys in the class who bullied him. Knowing that Feng Hao was also playing a game called Rainbow Island, the other party began to blackmail him, demanding that he hand over all his game equipment or he would be beaten.
Feng Hao compromised, but this was only the beginning of the nightmare. In the days that followed, the bully kept asking Feng Hao for money and game cards, "even having to share half of his breakfast", and forced him to help buy watermelon knives, electric batons and other utensils and bring them into school, and if he was slightly dissatisfied, he would abuse and beat Feng Hao.
A still from "A Beautiful World".
To this day, Feng Hao can still see the other party's posts insulting him back then. One bully wrote: "A dog is always just a dog, come to me if you have the ability, and I will play with you." ”
"[These experiences] have been brought over in two sentences, and this is my two and a half years." In the face of the endless demands of the bullies, out of fear, Feng Hao emptied his pocket money and New Year's money, but it was still not enough, he could only steal money from his family, and sometimes the bully would even stand at the door of the house and wait for him to steal the money. It wasn't until the bully's extortion of other classmates was revealed, Feng Hao's theft of money was discovered by his parents, and he was finally discovered after being bullied for a long time, and he was overwhelmed at this time. He left school shortly after the start of his third year of junior high school.
The body is out of danger, but the mind is still inflamed.
Feng Hao began to fear the crowd. In the next year or two, whenever he saw a group of people walking towards him on the street, or saw someone wearing a middle school uniform, Feng Hao felt like he was "being pressed to the ground by a heavy object", his heart beat faster, his limbs were paralyzed, and he was dizzy. Later, he went to the hospital several times for psychological treatment, and his condition improved.
The fear of the phone still permeates Feng Hao's life today. In the past, whenever the bell rang, he would often hear the voice of the other party threatening him to give money: "Hey, hit me for 500 yuan tomorrow, if you don't call me, I will come to you tomorrow." Feng Hao described it as "like a ghost calling", and he once unplugged the phone line at home. Today, he is still instinctively resistant to answering the phone, "sometimes I don't want to answer the phone with my nearest and dearest."
Feng Hao is just a microcosm of the thousands of victims of school bullying.
A still from "A Beautiful World".
From 2020 to 2022, a survey of 3,108 minor students conducted by the research team of the China Youth Research Center on "Youth Legal Education" showed that 53.5% of the students believed that they had been bullied on campus.
According to the survey results of the Educational Governance Modernization Research Group of Central China Normal University, the incidence of school bullying among primary and secondary school students in China is 32.4%, which is generally decreasing, but the incidence is still high.
In the three-year career of Zhao Xinyu, a psychotherapist at Zhujiang Hospital of Southern Medical University, "the number of individuals who have been or are being bullied on campus is still quite large." He told Nanfeng that every treatment cycle (4-6 weeks) there will be about 5-8 people who are bullied at school.
Many studies have shown that being bullied can lead to a range of negative physical, mental, social, learning, self-perceived and other negative problems. For example, decreased self-esteem, decreased social interaction, decreased trust, increased aggression, etc., can lead to biological neurological disorders, self-harm or suicide in severe cases.
Among the victims treated by Zhao Xinyu, a certain number of them have self-harmed by cutting their wrists. Cutting wrists is classified as suicidal and non-suicidal, with those who are bullied often having the latter. According to Zhao Xinyu's analysis, there are many motives behind this behavior, one is that the victim hopes to achieve a kind of psychological satisfaction and venting by hurting himself; The second is that parents did not pay attention to it before, so the child attracted the attention of parents through more exaggerated performance; The third is a form of self-punishment for dissatisfaction. According to his observations, the second type is many.
The shadow of bullying is long-lasting. Because the bully has not been punished for a long time, Feng Hao did not believe in the law for a while.
Later experience told him that although the law exists, the cost of defending rights is very high for ordinary people, and it takes a lot of experience and time.
Stills from "Young You".
In 2019, he encountered fraud while trading on social platforms and bought a "scrapped car" without legal procedures and annual inspection. In 2022, despite being burdened with a debt of 200,000 yuan, he still borrowed 8,000 online from a college student who claimed to be "difficult to start a business", and finally the other party refused to return it. Feng Hao went to the court in the province where the college student lived, and finally got the money back, and this time he used it for two years.
Zhao Xinyu analyzed that Feng Hao's behavior of donating money to college students to start a business and help others defend their rights can be summarized as "sublimation" in psychology. To put it simply, it is to transform a bad thing into an act that is more helpful to life and others.
This also reflects the long-term impact of bullying on people. When he was bullied, because Feng Hao's family and school could not provide support to meet Feng Hao's needs, coupled with his own lack of ability to deal with and solve things as a middle school student, many of the things he did in his life when he grew up were related to the school bullying he experienced as a child.
"To some extent, Feng Hao is lucky." Zhao Xinyu believes that Feng Hao's innate strong personality and acquired experience have prompted him to have the ability to "sublimate". But there are not many Feng Hao. According to his observations, most of the victims will become submissive, lacking the ability and courage to solve problems, and will not dare to fight for rights and resist authority in life.
Alone
In the class, Feng Hao was not the only one who was bullied. "Whether it's in school or sports, if you outrun someone in the bullying group, you're going to get punched and kicked. This is an indelible pain for me and my classmates. Feng Hao said that there are four classes in one grade, and only his class is in which no one has passed the high school entrance examination.
In addition to this, bullies not only bully students in the same grade level, but also engage in extortion in the vicinity of the school. I and my classmates were asked to go to the flower and bird markets and roadside stalls during their lunch break to buy all kinds of knives and put them in school bags, "at least two or three", and electric batons.
Rao is involvement is a large number of people and bad nature, Feng Hao and his classmates are still often isolated and helpless.
Stills from "Dark Glory".
Feng Hao told Nanfeng Window that many cases of bullying cannot be seen on the surface. Bullying often takes place in hidden locations, and school toilets are the "hardest hit areas," Feng Hao said, adding that 80 or 90 percent of the bullying around him takes place in the toilets. Bullies also deliberately choose unsupervised times to bully. For example, in the early morning, when the students have just entered the class, when the teacher has not yet come to the classroom, or during the lunch break.
He and his classmates repeatedly asked the teacher for feedback, and the teacher would call the bully to the office to criticize the education, but it didn't help, and they even got more crazy retaliation from the bully.
Feng Hao remembers that there was a "short and glasses" classmate in the class at that time, and he was asked by the bully to wipe the teacher with chalk during class, and if he didn't, he would be beaten after class. "In fact, even if that classmate really smashes it, he will be beaten after class."
The classmate did so. The teacher asked him why, and he answered truthfully. Feng Hao used "horror" to describe the results brought by telling the teacher.
Feng Hao was very impressed. The next morning, when the students entered the class one after another, the bully stood at the door of the classroom, and every student who walked in was slapped in the face. "[The bully] even kicked his feet and asked, 'Who the said that?' Who told the teacher? Over time, they didn't dare to tell the teacher anymore.
"Oh my God, is there anything the teacher can do?" Feng Hao asked rhetorically.
Zhang Ping, who is currently studying at a vocational high school, had a similar experience. He reported that during his junior high school years, he was repeatedly abused by his classmates, and sometimes his books would be glued up and his school bag would be thrown in the trash. Zhang Ping said that he sought help from his teacher from the beginning, and the teacher felt that it was just a quarrel and asked him: "Is this bullying?" ”
During a break in the second year of junior high school, Zhang Ping was once again "looking for trouble" by girls in the same class. Faced with the situation of three or five girls abusing him together, Zhang Ping scolded back at that time, and then one of the girls went to the head teacher to complain, and then the head teacher came to the class and first criticized Zhang Ping. He told Nanfeng Window that when he was about to explain, the head teacher told him, "There is something the office says." Zhang Ping believes that this is a statement that the teacher does not intend to solve this matter. He still thinks about the criticism, "[at the time] it was really very uncomfortable."
Zhang Ping said that his homeroom teacher was a very good-tempered person. But in the face of what he suffered, the other side often only took the action of criticizing education, which did not work at all. After feeling disappointed again and again, Zhang Ping stopped going to the teacher for help.
Later, Zhang Ping sent three letters to the school's anonymous mailbox, but received no response. It has been two years since he graduated from junior high school, and he has been angry about the "inaction" of the school and teachers, and has repeatedly complained on social platforms. The head teacher later contacted him several times online, or went to Zhang Ping's home offline, asking him to delete the content about the school on the Internet.
Zhang Ping reported to his parents about being bullied very early, but the answer he received was: "Why? Why don't others bully you if they don't bully others? You have to find the reason in yourself. Later, no matter how he complained on the Internet platform, he never let his parents know about it.
A still from "A Beautiful World".
Feng Hao didn't dare to tell his parents.
Feng Hao told Nanfeng Window that his parents' education for him is similar to repressive education. In daily life, Feng Hao has become accustomed to obeying his parents' potentially unreasonable demands, which leads to Feng Hao's subconscious reaction when facing the unreasonable demands made by the bully, "no thoughts of resistance at all".
It wasn't until shortly before leaving school, when Feng Hao's stealing money was finally discovered by his parents, that his parents learned that he had been bullied for a long time. Parents believe that the reason why Feng Hao is difficult to escape bullying is because he "did not report it" and did not tell teachers and parents about the problem in time.
But Feng Hao felt that "not reporting the information" was only one aspect, and more importantly, he had no way to communicate with his parents about bullying normally at that time. He used "one point to explode" to describe his mother's character, and his father was even more difficult to communicate. He said that anything that is beyond the scope of parents' knowledge is not done right.
Until adulthood, communicating with his parents was still difficult for Feng Hao. He remembers that he didn't tell his parents when he first bought a motorcycle, and his parents reacted violently when they found out, threatening to smash the car. Feng Hao's response was to buy another one if he smashed one. "If you don't say that, I've been walking all my life."
A faint cry for help
The plight of Feng Hao and Zhang Ping is very representative.
As bullied people, their confusion lies in the fact that they have been in so much pain, and even tried to cry out for help, why is there no one around them who can really understand and help them solve the problem?
To truly understand the problem, it is not enough to simply blame teachers and parents for their lack of attention. In fact, for them, the voice of the bullied may be very weak.
On an objective level, as Feng Hao pointed out, bullying itself has a certain degree of concealment. According to the analysis of "Criminological Theory Analysis and Prevention and Control Strategies of School Bullying: Taking 100 Online News Reports in the Mainland in the Past Three Years as a Research Sample", 36% of the incidents occurred in the toilets and dormitories on campus, and 30% of the incidents occurred in alleys, woods, and rivers outside the school. Most of the bullying occurs on or around the school in a hidden place. Correspondingly, it often occurs outside of regular class time, such as before morning class, lunch break, or evening class. For teachers in particular, the difficulty of paying attention to this type of bullying has also increased, making it easier for bullying to become a gray area of supervision and further breed and spread.
On the subjective level, children are afraid or unwilling to tell adults about things, which is also one of the reasons.
One scholar gave the explanation that children have their own "rivers and lakes". The study mentions that in the rivers and lakes, the problem solving mainly depends on the communication between children. If you are bullied, there should be classmates who will help you "block it" or ask the teacher for help, rather than the bullied person asking for help themselves, let alone asking the teacher and parents to solve the "Jianghu" problem.
Stills from "Young You".
In particular, it should be noted that campus life has always presented a healthy, sunny and positive outlook. The orderly school life and children's rivers and lakes that seem to exist without a reason will make the bullied become an excluded "other" in the context of school life after being bullied, making them feel ashamed of their victimhood. This shame prevents them from speaking.
Some children may not have the awareness to ask for help at all. Lin Xiaoyu, a Chinese teacher and class teacher at a public primary school in Guangzhou, shared her childhood experience. When she was in elementary school, she met an older boy on the road, who was holding a knife and drawing at her, telling her to go back and tell her brother that if she messed with him again, he would be welcome. The sharp knife was close at hand, and Lin Xiaoyu was frightened. It was a dangerous thing to do, but she didn't realize that she had to go home and tell her parents.
"[I] didn't have that way of thinking then," so the child who is being bullied now may be in the same predicament as she was back then. According to Lin Xiaoyu's analysis, this may be due to the lack of self-protection education.
Zhao Xinyu felt that it was necessary to carry out theme class meetings in a timely manner. "At the very least, children can be aware of whether they have experienced bullying at school, so that they can give feedback to parents and teachers in a timely manner."
In fact, just recently, the Ministry of Education issued a notice to organize and carry out the theme activities of "National Primary and Secondary School Student Safety Education Week" from March 25, 2024, including special education on school violence and bullying prevention.
Stills from "Sadness Flows Into a River".
This is a big step forward, but how to ensure the implementation of class meetings is still a problem. Liu Ge, a middle school chemistry teacher and class teacher who has been teaching for three years, told Nanfeng Window that they had arranged a class meeting on the theme of anti-bullying, but in fact, Liu Ge only spent seven or eight minutes on a one-sided introduction, and then asked the students to sign an "anti-bullying pledge" as required, "to be honest, it is useless". The remaining 30 minutes or so were used to explain the monthly exam papers.
As far as Liu Ge knows, the development of the vast majority of classes is like this. The reason is simple: in this leading middle school in the district with a better student background, learning is always more urgent than bullying incidents with a low incidence.
It's also worth thinking about how to convey bullying-related content. Nanfeng Window learned that due to the fear that negative cases would have a bad impact on students, some schools do not directly mention the word "bullying", but use words such as "being kind to others and growing up happily" for positive guidance. But whether this indirect way of expression really works remains to be seen.
Hear a cry for help
Due to various restrictions, teachers and parents themselves lack the awareness and ability to prevent and control school bullying. Therefore, it is common for children to ask for help, and they do not hear it; Heard it, and didn't know how to deal with it further.
At present, the establishment and management of primary and secondary schools in the prevention and control of school bullying is not perfect, no special school bullying prevention and control organizations have been established, and many teachers have not received special training in the prevention and control of school bullying. In April 2018, the Ministry of Education issued the "Guidance Manual for the Prevention of Bullying and Violence among Primary and Secondary School Students", proposing a response system from prevention, occurrence, response to aftercare, but it has not yet been applied on a large scale.
Work is ongoing. On April 26, the national video conference on safety work in primary and secondary schools and kindergartens emphasized that teachers, students, and parents should regularly carry out special education and training on the rule of law and the prevention and control of student bullying, and at the same time strengthen education and punishment measures and improve the accountability mechanism.
The one-school-one-social worker system implemented in Hong Kong, China may serve as a reference. The duties and scope of work of the Resident Social Worker are to assist schools in implementing personal growth education, providing support to parents and teachers, and providing ancillary services to students in need.
Stills from "Little Shede".
Zhao Xinyu pointed out that the information gap is a point worth paying attention to. The most common situation he encounters is that the child has really asked for help, and the parents and teachers have also provided help within their ability, but due to communication errors, this help does not really meet the needs of the students.
In the stories of Zhang Ping and Feng Hao, the teacher's way of dealing with bullying incidents is often to strengthen supervision or criticize and correct from the perspective of "educational reform"; Although parents subsequently supported the defense of their rights, they once pointed the finger at the victims themselves. This behavior not only ignores the complexity of bullying, but also puts a lot of psychological pressure on the person being bullied. Zhang Ping and Feng Hao felt disappointed, and over time they lost their desire to express themselves, and things eventually intensified.
In order to recognize a child's cries for help in a timely and accurate manner, teachers and parents must deepen their understanding of bullying in schools. Based on the experience of dealing with children in the past 14 years, Lin Xiaoyu's advice is that as long as the child reflects or perceives that the child is in a bad mood, even if it is a small matter, it should be dealt with as soon as possible, because "the small things in our eyes may be big things for students".
In general, children will show some signs after being bullied, such as sudden reluctance to go to school, unwarranted mood changes, complaints about being targeted by classmates, sleep problems, and scars on their bodies.
Yue Chunhe, deputy chief physician of the emergency department of Beijing Tongren Hospital and a national second-level psychological counselor, once introduced in the "Minsheng Weekly" that each child has a different personality and state, and may have different reactions, but in general, there will be obvious contrasts with before, and these contrasts may be negative. In particular, school bullying is not a short-term behavior, but a long-term, repeated state of mental and physical oppression, debasement, bullying, etc., it has undergone a process of change, in this process, the sooner parents find out, the better. Especially for left-behind children, once there is an abnormality, such as coquettishness and asking for help, parents must pay great attention to it at this time, because this may be their last call for help.
If the harm has already been done, schools and parents must also learn how to patiently accompany and encourage victims to come out of the shadow of bullying.
In daily life, teach your child self-esteem, self-love and self-protection, and encourage him or her to build beneficial relationships. When a child tells about bullying, parents and schools should listen calmly, empathize with the child's feelings, accept the child's possible stress, soothe the child's emotions, and thank the child for his courage to speak up.
In the case that Zhao Xinyu came into contact with, some parents and schools used the hospital as a repair shop, hoping that the hospital would quickly "repair" their children and continue. But psychotherapy is often a long-term process, and even if your child's symptoms improve and he or she returns to school, there are plenty of problems he or she faces. For example, fear of crowds, inability to keep up with school homework, emotional relapse, etc. The process of getting rid of the haze is long and painful for the child, so be concerned and avoid impetuousness.
Bullying and law
Feng Hao is currently gathering evidence to prosecute the bully, and he hopes to hold a trial in the second half of the year. The lawyer told him that he had a record of the bullies who had accidentally kept the news of the blackmail and insults against him, and that he could file a lawsuit against the other party in the name of infringing on the right to reputation.
Feng Hao told Nanfeng Window that he had missed the best time to defend his rights. He learned on media platforms that the best time to defend his rights in such situations is in the first three years of adulthood. According to Article 188 of the Civil Code of the People's Republic of China, the limitation period is calculated from the date on which the right holder knows or should know that its rights have been damaged and the obligor.
The reason was that he was still in the stage of "not believing in the law" at that time, and he lacked legal knowledge.
He doesn't want others to repeat the same mistakes. "Is it possible to tell children in school what means and methods they have to protect their rights?" Feng Hao believes that the cultivation of children's legal awareness should be strengthened. In this way, if you are really unfortunate enough to be bullied, in addition to the help of teachers and parents, children will also have the courage and ability to take up legal weapons to protect themselves.
Stills from "Young You".
However, the current construction of the legal system related to school bullying in mainland China needs to be optimized. In fact, the mainland has not formulated specific laws and regulations to deal with school bullying, and only sporadically presents constraints on school bullying in laws such as the Criminal Law, the Public Security Administration Punishment Law, the Law on the Protection of Minors, and the Law on the Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency.
However, the legislative purpose of school bullying is mainly education, supplemented by punishment, and the relevant provisions are mostly principled and instructive, lacking specific implementation plans and implementation measures, and there is a problem of weak enforcement.
By chance, Feng Hao heard from a motorcycle rider that one of the bullies was still "complacent and has no regrets" about the evil deeds committed back then.
Feng Hao didn't care if he could get compensation in the end, "(If it can really be compensated) I may ask him to compensate me for the registration fee of the psychiatrist." Feng Hao said he was willing to donate all his money to building anti-bullying related projects.
A few days after the interview, Feng Hao sent Nanfeng Window a photo of his former junior high school graduation. He did not appear in his graduation photo because he took a year off from school, which he said was "a lifelong regret." Correspondingly, the bullies and classmates and teachers brought back by their parents appeared on a graduation photo.
Feng Hao is now a father. Because of his own experience of being bullied, he is quite sensitive to every subtle emotional change in his daughter. If my daughter comes back from school with an unhappy expression, he will definitely ask repeatedly, what happened to you today? Did your classmates bully you? Or is your teacher unkind to you? "You have to ask your child calmly, so that she won't have psychological pressure."
He hopes that his daughter can have a happy childhood without shadows.
The pictures in the article are partly from Visual China and partly from the Internet
This article was first published in the 10th issue of Nanfeng Window magazine in 2024
Author | Lin Qixin, Song Yuling, Zhang Yu
Editor-in-Chief on Duty | Zhao Jinghan
Edit | to the by
Typography | Toru Kazama