Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday November 07 2018, @04:32PM   Printer-friendly
from the alarming-statistics dept.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-46096626

In the fiscal year 2016/7 up to March, 250 children from elementary to high school age were recorded as having taken their own lives. The number is five more than last year, and the highest it has been since 1986.

Concerns the children had reported included family problems, worrying about their futures and bullying. But schools said the reasons behind about 140 of the deaths are unknown as the students did not leave a note. Most of those who took their lives were of high school age, where Japanese students typically study until they are aged 18.

[...] Overall suicides across Japan fell to about 21,000 in 2017, police say, down from a peak of about 34,500 in 2003.

[...] "The number of suicides of students have stayed high, and that is an alarming issue which should be tackled," education ministry official Noriaki Kitazaki said as the latest figures were released.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 07 2018, @04:51PM (12 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 07 2018, @04:51PM (#759037)

    if they're anything like the angst ridden teenagers of the US it's because they have been raised to have screwed up priorities and world view. too much tv and SM in the US. maybe it's more to do with pressure from family and peers in japan, idk much about japan. kids need to be raised in small decentralized schools where they learn what's really going to give them the tools to be successful and happy and to have their priorities straight from an early age. kids in the US want to be rock stars/rappers, gangsters or some other unrealistic or destructive goals. they are concerned with bs that goes on in these huge slave training centers the government likes to call schools. kind of like a prison reality show. it's a credit to these kids sacrificed to the government by their naive, selfish or poor parents that *every* school doesn't have a shooter at least once a year.

    Starting Score:    0  points
    Moderation   +4  
       Insightful=1, Interesting=3, Total=4
    Extra 'Interesting' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   4  
  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday November 07 2018, @04:59PM (8 children)

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Wednesday November 07 2018, @04:59PM (#759043) Journal

    Yeah, that's never going to happen. The Japanese education system is highly organized and ingrained to stratify everyone according to their test results. In middle school exams determine if you're going to go to an academic high school to learn to be lawyers, doctors, and scientists, commercial high school to learn how to be salesmen and clerks, or industrial high school to become a factory worker or farmer. Once you're placed, there are no second chances. From high school those kids take the college entrance exams. A late bloomer in an industrial high school can get the highest score on the exams ever registered and he will still not be accepted to Tokyo University.

    So there's immense pressure on those kids to study their asses off morning, noon, and night and get a phenomenal score on those exams because it really does determine the course of the rest of their lives. Understandably, failure to perform well is devastating. Those kids understand that their lives are already over and they kill themselves instead of living with the shame.

    --
    Washington DC delenda est.
    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Bobs on Wednesday November 07 2018, @06:25PM (1 child)

      by Bobs (1462) on Wednesday November 07 2018, @06:25PM (#759077)

      Interesting.

        Would be curious to see a breakdown of the suicides by both time : before or after testing, and testing results. Are people killing themselves before the tests, or after doing poorly on the tests?

      These would indicate different causes and mitigations.

      FYI: In the USA, suicides are rising, and become the second leading cause of death of older teens in the USA [cnn.com].

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday November 07 2018, @10:46PM

        by Phoenix666 (552) on Wednesday November 07 2018, @10:46PM (#759192) Journal

        Bullying and physical abuse are contributing factors, too. "The nail that sticks up gets hammered down" is a saying in Japan because bullying and peer pressure are that institutionalized.

        Physical abuse is rampant in schools also. Teachers and administrators beat the hell out of students. There was a story of a teacher who locked for students in the trunk of his car during a class hike. He felt they had misbehaved. When the hike was done he opened the trunk and found they had all smothered to death on the hot day. The dude wasn't even charged with a crime. "These things happen."

        --
        Washington DC delenda est.
    • (Score: 2) by shortscreen on Wednesday November 07 2018, @08:00PM (1 child)

      by shortscreen (2252) on Wednesday November 07 2018, @08:00PM (#759126) Journal

      There's pressure. But is it justified? Which one of those outcomes is the bad, shameful one? (A salesman or a clerk? イヤ)

      If a kid goes to industrial high school and gets high scores relative to their peers, how hard is it to find a job?

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday November 07 2018, @10:41PM

        by Phoenix666 (552) on Wednesday November 07 2018, @10:41PM (#759188) Journal

        It depends on which of those outcomes is that which the parents and the child's teacher did not expect. If they wanted the boy to become a doctor, and he only tested into a commercial high school, then it's a lot different than the kid whose parents are fine with that.

        There are other layers of course. I had a student in the academic high school where I taught and she was one of the top three in the school across the board. She really wanted to become a doctor, but her parents were traditional and thought it was improper for a girl to have that career. The most they would allow her to go for was a pharmacist. I saw her some years later when I was passing through Tokyo on the way to China; she was in her second year of pharmacy training and the bright eyed, energetic high school star I had known was stooped and dulled. The light had already gone out of her, and it broke my heart.

        Against all that the suicide rate for Japanese youth makes perfect sense to me. I am only surprised it's not much higher, or, heck, that Japanese youth don't vote with their feet and decamp for Europe and the US en masse.

        --
        Washington DC delenda est.
    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Barenflimski on Wednesday November 07 2018, @08:01PM (3 children)

      by Barenflimski (6836) on Wednesday November 07 2018, @08:01PM (#759127)

      When you have systems like this in place, it makes it extremely hard for people that have a change of mind in life to alter their course. Because you need a 4-20 year degree to even be considered in many fields, once people are out of a field, it is nearly impossible to strike out in another direction. This can be devastating to people at any age. Of course people want to see credentials before hiring someone for any job, but the system today can keep decent people out of fields they might be extremely helpful in. What you may be good at in middle school and like when you are 15 doesn't always translate to a happy future with a career. Once you have financial obligations, starting over in a new field can be next to impossible. When you take hope away, the sense and reality of being able to accomplish anything productive can be destroyed.

      Its a dream, but it would nice if it was about the person, and helping to develop each other, instead of filling cogs who can do job X until its time to replace the cog. It would create a much more integrated populace, who felt more connected to the system they are supporting. Happiness is a thing. A system to support this would be great for workers, while at the same time reducing the power hierarchy across the board.

      • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday November 07 2018, @10:34PM (2 children)

        by Phoenix666 (552) on Wednesday November 07 2018, @10:34PM (#759185) Journal

        I agree, and the gap between that and what we have now constitutes the vast untapped human potential in the world that is being squandered by a system set up to enrich a very few at the expense of all, even those few themselves.

        Even most of us who are blessed to live in the first world rely upon countless others doing grinding, dirty, dangerous, damaging work to enable our standard of living. It's a hierarchy of suck.

        But how do we get that guy there to go unclog the sewer main for those people over there without a system of remuneration we have now? Robots? AI? If you were an AI, you'd have even less reason to go unclog the sewer mains for a bunch of dumb dirty humans. If our replacement system to maximize happiness doesn't solve basic questions like those, all other concerns that take those things for granted will quickly go by the wayside. That is, nobody's gonna care much about their iPhones if their street is a cesspool.

        --
        Washington DC delenda est.
        • (Score: 2) by Barenflimski on Wednesday November 07 2018, @11:56PM

          by Barenflimski (6836) on Wednesday November 07 2018, @11:56PM (#759225)

          I'm not sure that the two systems have to be mutually exclusive. For instance, some years I enjoy putting up drywall and cutting boards. Some years I enjoy database work. Some years I enjoy putting together robots. With that said, if no one feels like diving in sewage to clear a blockage [apnews.com], that doesn't help anyone. If I were in a specific job, I'd of course be required to do that job if I said I'd do it.

          I imagine that if over time people were able to do different jobs without losing all of their pay, that would foster something like this. I guess in the world today, that would be like having a merry-go-round job with people at Microsoft, Home Depot, and tutoring at the local University. I suppose one could say that this is called "a student." I digress. To continue to get paid the same amount across these so to make it financially feasible, would require an entire cultural change. Some sort of job-sharing agreement between people and companies that feel like participating would be the idea.

          It is an intriguing thought.

           

        • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Thursday November 08 2018, @04:03PM

          by urza9814 (3954) on Thursday November 08 2018, @04:03PM (#759405) Journal

          But how do we get that guy there to go unclog the sewer main for those people over there without a system of remuneration we have now?

          Remuneration doesn't have to be money. It could simply be earning the respect of the people who you helped, who are more likely to help you in return. Cory Doctrow's "Whuffie" [wikipedia.org], essentially. People do this already to some extent -- I regularly see "Hey, how do I write a program to do [x]" posted to Facebook, then within twenty minutes three different people post the scripts they wrote to do exactly that with three different methods. Rarely do these people demand or anticipate any real payment, they just want to impress with their speed and skill. (YMMV based on gender and appearance...) Of course, I also see artists complain about the exact same thing, about being "expected" to do design work for free. I think it depends on financial security -- decent coders tend to have no problem finding steady work to support themselves, and once you don't have to worry about money then you're more willing to work for other reasons.

          Of course, even without some kind of currency alternative...if someone living in the affected neighborhood knows a thing or two about plumbing, then they've certainly got plenty of incentive to go fix the broken sewer main.

          We see that sometimes already, particularly with potholes...people get fed up waiting for the city and they go patch it themselves. And then the city sometimes charges them with vandalism...they don't WANT any random person going to "fix" the problem, because they want to ensure that the work meets their quality specs. Which kinda sucks...but they've got a valid point too. If you want to rip up and recycle that asphalt someday, you can't have any random person throwing in any random material that they happen to have laying around...or they could even make the situation worse if the material they use doesn't have the same thermal expansion properties as the original pavement.

          The problem is...as technology advances, there's more and more to know about almost every field of work. But there's a limit to what one person can know and understand. You can be a bit of a "jack of all trades" when it comes to repairing your own home, but you still probably don't have the requisite knowledge -- or equipment -- to repair a municipal water main. Some tasks just kinda need an expert. AI can help, but it's not necessarily going to fix the issue unless the AI robot is the one doing the repairs (at which point the whole concept of work becomes kinda obsolete). We all know how many people simply refuse to read the manual or ask for help...AI can't help those who ignore its advice.

          I really do agree with you in theory, I think the world would be a much better place if people weren't so damn afraid to go out and fix the problems they see by themselves...but I can also easily see the ways in which that could go very wrong. Standards are important, and they require enforcement mechanisms. Expertise is important too, and "you don't know what you don't know". Even with the best intentions you can make the problem worse by missing some critical detail. Could we build some kind of repair corps that provides the requisite oversight? Or maybe we can specially license certain industry professionals to do certain kinds of repairs on their own if they choose to do so? That would at least be a start...

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 07 2018, @09:32PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 07 2018, @09:32PM (#759159)

    Pffft what a bunch of generationalist garbage. Learn history sometime, older people have been complaining about the younger generation since the dawn of time. It just shows that you prefer simplistic reasoning over critical thinking.

    • (Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday November 08 2018, @01:01AM (1 child)

      by Bot (3902) on Thursday November 08 2018, @01:01AM (#759244) Journal

      > older people have been complaining about the younger generation since the dawn of time

      And they were right. Every. Single. Time.

      --
      Account abandoned.
      • (Score: 4, Touché) by krishnoid on Thursday November 08 2018, @02:33AM

        by krishnoid (1156) on Thursday November 08 2018, @02:33AM (#759272)

        In all honesty, I'm not surprised to hear that kind of a talk from a life form directly affected by Moore's law.