Parents worry more about bullying than anything else

家長們最擔(dān)心是校園霸凌



“THEY forced my ten-year-old son to wear used toilet paper on his head,” complained a mother in Beijing on WeChat, a Chinese social-media site, in 2016. Her post soon went viral. It touched a nerve in a country where school bullying has traditionally been seen as a rite of passage. Her son’s school, one of the best in Beijing, dismissed the brouhaha as “harmless mischief between kids”. But a spate of reports about even more vicious acts of bullying at other schools soon followed.

2016年，北京的一位母親在中國的社交媒體應(yīng)用微信上發(fā)朋友圈抱怨道：“他們強(qiáng)迫我10歲的兒子把用過的廁紙蓋到頭上。”她的朋友圈被瘋狂轉(zhuǎn)發(fā)。這觸動了中國的神經(jīng)，在中國，校園霸凌歷來被視為一種成年儀式。他兒子就讀的是北京最好的學(xué)校之一，該校將這場騷動斥為“孩子間的無害惡作劇”。然而，隨后又有大量的報道稱，其他學(xué)校發(fā)生了更多的惡性霸凌事件。



Children who are from ethnic minorities, short, obese, disabled, gay or have poor social skills are at higher risk. Victims of bullying may in turn bully others. In America bullies pick on “nerds”. In China and South Korea, by contrast, those with poor grades are at higher risk. A study in 2013 of the Arab world found that the best predictor of being bullied was having crooked teeth. But bullied children everywhere risk long-term health effects. A graduate student at Oxford University says he was “emotionally scarred for at least five years” after being tormented in middle school in Hong Kong.

少數(shù)民族、矮小、肥胖、殘疾、同性戀或社交能力差的孩子受霸凌的風(fēng)險更高。被霸凌的孩子反過來也會霸凌其他其他孩子。在美國，惡霸欺負(fù)“書呆子”。而相比之下，在中國和韓國，成績差的學(xué)生更容易被霸凌。2013年對阿拉伯世界的一項(xiàng)研究發(fā)現(xiàn)牙齒不齊的人最容易被欺凌。但是世界各地被霸凌的孩子都存在著長期健康影響的風(fēng)險。牛津大學(xué)的一名研究生表示他在香港讀中學(xué)時飽受折磨，“承受了至少五年的情感創(chuàng)傷”。

The prence of bullying varies greatly across the world. Data, largely based on students’ own reports, probably underestimate the scale of the problem. They suggest bullying is most common in parts of Africa. A survey from 2011 found that 70% of Egyptian 13- to 15-year-olds reported being bullied at least once in the past 30 days. At the other end of the spectrum stands Sweden, where, according to a poll from 2014, only 11% of children in the same age group reported being bullied in the past month. In America, Britain and Canada the rate is between a quarter and a third. Cross-country comparisons, however, are problematic. Perceptions of what constitutes bullying vary across borders. For instance, the Chinese word for bullying, qifu, has a very physical connotation.

霸凌行為在世界各地的發(fā)生率差別很大。主要基于學(xué)生自主報告所得的數(shù)據(jù)可能低估了這一問題的嚴(yán)重性。這一數(shù)據(jù)顯示霸凌行為在非洲的部分地區(qū)最為普遍。2011年的一項(xiàng)研究表明13歲到15歲的埃及人中有70%在過去30天內(nèi)至少遭受一次霸凌。另一個極端是瑞典，2014年的民意調(diào)查顯示同一年齡段的孩子中，在過。去一個月里僅有11%受到欺凌。在美國、英國和加拿大，這一比率介于四分之一到三分之一之間。然而，跨國比較是有問題的。不同國家對霸凌的認(rèn)知也不盡相同。例如，漢語中“bullying”一詞是“欺負(fù)”，有著非常具體的含義。