Monday, June 18, 2007

A New Social Crisis: Idiots as Parents

Japan has a new crisis: monster parents from Hell.

Examples of some of the cruddy things bad parents have been doing or saying to teachers, from this morning's front page top story of the Yomiuri Shimbun:

"My child doesn't do any house cleaning in our home so please do not make him/her clean anything at school."

"Please do not teach my child anything that will not be on the entrance examination."

As regards even the tiniest bit of trouble between two students, "Ask the other child to switch to another school!"

After asking a middle school student a question on a primary school level because he/she could not answer at a middle school level, "You hurt my child's pride."

"My child is gifted in piano. Letting another child play accompaniment for the choir is bizarre, you understand?"

After the child on his/her bicycle collides with an elderly person, "There is a problem with the way the school teaches children how to ride."

Calling the teacher or the principal at his or her private residence in order to talk on and on about problems in the school.

Parents who in order to make sure their requests are taken seriously, insinuate that they have relations with organized crime.

Because nothing says "family" quite like claimed ties to organized crime.

Now I would hardly give a darn about all this--except that last nigtht TBS had a program on exactly the same subject, with further weirdness like a parent calling a teacher and telling her:

"My child refuses to take a bath. Can you come over and make my child get in the tub?"

O.K. First of all, everyone call down.

Individuals who should have never become parents have been becoming parents since time immemorial.

We have a slightly more atomized society, where the grandparents--the solvers of all problems great and small and the grand store of common sense in days of yore--are not in the adjoining hut anymore. So the bird-brains are calling on the teachers when they are overwhelmed by simply living.

There are a lot more only children, smaller families with just a few children spaced close together and children who have few relative--who are now themselves reaching child-rearing age. OF COURSE, they will not know thing one about discipline, how to care for children and how to be anything but reliant on others.

Japanese need to get used to monster parents from Hell...or, if they want to do something about them, encourage babysitting so that kids learn to take care of kids.

Whatever happens, let us hope (Pray!) the foreign press shows a little sense and does not immediately follow the lead of the Japanese press in identifying a new Japan-specific social crisis ready to bring this country to its knees.

Because "Some persons are just nuts" is not news.

Later - Yomiuri Online has today (07/06/19) published a translation of the article.

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