By Yuko Iseya

In recent years, suicides among elementary students and junior high school students happened one after another. Bullying, which is the cause of their suicides, became a big problem. Bullying problems were picked up by television, radio and newspapers, for some time and many people might have given thought about the bullying problem at that time. However, it seems to have faded away and people seem less interested in bullying than they were before. But bullying still exists today even though people are not interested in the problem.

In July of this year, a male student at a private high school in Suma ward, Kobe killed himself because he had been bullied. A male student who had blackmailed money from the male student who committed suicide was arrested for attempted extortion. It turned out that the male student had not only demanded money over and over again, but had also uploaded a naked picture of the victim on an Internet site without his permission.

What could have been done for him before the worst happened? In many cases of bullying, a person is attacked psychologically or physically by a group of people. And other people do not make bullies stop their bullying. Many people are afraid that they will also become a target if they try to stop the bullying. Teachers also cannot stop bullying even though they know there is bullying in their class. In the case of the male student in Kobe, his homeroom teacher could not stop the bullying even though he knew that it was happening in his class and he could not prevent his student's suicide.

The number of elementary, junior high, high school and college students who commit suicide tends to increase in recent years. The number of elementary school students who committed suicide this year is double that of last year. Most of the reasons for suicide seemed to be bullying. This means the number of the hounded elementary school students who choose death to escape from bullying is increasing.

Bullying is not new, and it may have taken place from long ago. Although everyone understands that bullying is bad, it never disappears. This shows that people are lenient to the bullies. Everyone, including bullies, people who are bullied and other people who turn a blind eye to bullying, live in a society where bullying is commonplace, and they just accept it. People who grew up in such a society cannot prevent their children who enter bullying society because they have been accepted it.

These days there are many voices in the media that speak to not only people in schools, but also to people in society to extinguish　bullying. We must remember that not only people who are immediately concerned with bullying have to think about the problem. The people who need to educate children to do the right thing are their families, their teachers and others in society. We really need to have a firm belief that discrimination and bullying are always wrong and establish a society where people do not bully others and do not condone bullying by anyone.