WEEK 47 Nov 11th to 17th 2002

   TEACHERS HARASSING PUPILS

   In a major survey covering United States, Canada, Europe, Japan and Australia 52 percent of the pupils say that their teachers are actively harassing them. The trend is the same everywhere, from nation to nation, both locally and internationally.
   The harassment can take many forms, from outright verbal abuse to long-term persecution. All kinds of pupils and students may be a victim, not just the odd boy or girl, but there are clearly over-represented of those victimized. Students standing up for themselves or a classmate, will also very probable find themselves the object of the teacher's bile later on. It's described as a random, yet deliberate set of actions where many of the students themselves are participants. The general view has been that harassment was a student-to-student thing, and that teachers just weren't very effective in dealing with it. That till now prevalent view is now about to change.
   One of the researchers, responsible for collecting material on a local level, has this to say:
   - This is not some conspiracy making all the children and youths throwing wild accusations, independently of each other. These are the facts, as experienced on thousands of schools worldwide. The problem are so big, exists in such a scale that we're definitely not talking about isolated cases, but of a random, but yet organized oppression and alienation. It has roots in our very culture and isn't isolated to the school. Current society has a very sorry tendency to attack those who think and act differently, and it starts early on, in pre-schools and kindergarten. Variety is not encouraged today.