(LI SHIGONG)

School violence has repeatedly made headlines in recent years. In March 2015, for example, a video clip showing a female student in east China's Jiangxi Province being beaten and slapped in the face by classmates because of conflicts between her and one of the attackers went viral on the Internet. Soon afterward, in May 2015, a junior middle school student was stripped naked and beaten by 10 peers in south China's Guangdong Province. Video and images of the incident were later posted online. In the first half of this year alone, media outlets across China reported at least 20 major campus bullying cases.

The Education Supervision Committee under the State Council, China's cabinet, has recently issued a document ordering primary and middle schools, as well as secondary vocational schools, to take effective measures to eradicate campus bullying, which may involve online harassment as well as any form of physical or verbal abuse. Schools are required to work out preventive schemes and to conduct legal awareness education among students and teachers.

What are the reasons that drive these students toward violence against their peers? Traditionally, campus violence has been seen as a moral issue in China, and offenders have typically been let off easy for their wrongdoings. A popular view attributes the rise in such cases to a lack of relevant laws and accountability systems for indifferent school managers and parents.

Zhu Naijuan (21st Century Business Herald): School bullying has been around everywhere. One can easily find a lot of campus bullying-related videos on the Internet. In countries where such bullying is rarely seen, the law, rather than persuasion or teaching, plays a crucial role in curbing it. Besides, students who are bullied promptly receive psychological treatment and follow-up care so that they do not live under the shadow of the experience for long. According to the Law on the Protection of Minors, the family is chiefly responsible for the safety of children. But a family's protection cannot reach all places, and this makes it possible for campus bullying to happen. In many cases, schools try to cover up student bullying or to mediate solutions between the students involved. Seldom is the law employed to reach a settlement, and the perpetrators are often punished lightly. So, despite so-called penalties, those responsible are not effectively stopped from bullying other students.

This does not mean, however, that family education and protection does not matter. The family education of young people who insult others must be problematic in some aspect or another. And, victims who do not speak out or resist bullying deserve more attention from parents, education authorities and police departments, as their silence might result from lack of parental care and love.

Multiple measures should be taken to stop on-campus bullying and violence. Laws and administrative regulations must be worked out and revised in response to new problems. Also, family education should follow to fill the gap. Rural children, whose parents work in cities, need particular care, and ensuring their safety both in and out of school appears to be more urgent. Families must impart fair-mindedness, love and respect to their children rather than violence.

Besides, teachers must pay attention not only to students'schoolwork but also to their psychological health and inner world. Social problems, in fact, lie behind campus bullying, and if these deep-rooted issues could be dug out, their symptoms would be more easily solved.

A worrisome fact is that nowadays, campus bullying is used by some students as a way of showing off their power. They even upload videos in which they beat and insult other students so that their  "heroic deeds" will be seen by a large audience. The lack of relevant laws only encourages more youngsters to commit bullying, since they know they don’t need to take legal responsibility for such cruelty.

Consequently, there has been a growing call in society for an anti-campus violence law to be enacted, so that juvenile offenders will be held accountable for their behavior.

Families and schools should play a role in curbing bullying, and targeted campaigns by the authorities are also necessary. But, effective law enforcement is what can really bring the problem under control.

Ye Zhusheng (The Beijing News): Families, schools and society should all take up the responsibility to curb bullying. Children are vulnerable to misleading information. Suppose the overall social atmosphere were more pure and clean, young students would not be so frequently exposed to violent movies, TV programs and information on the Web. Everyone has to admit, however, that the situation will not change overnight.

Parents are children's first teachers. Research shows that those who commit violence and other crimes tend to come from families that pay little attention to childhood education. As a result, the role of such families in disciplining their children is comparatively weak. If all parents could fulfill their responsibility to impart ethical behavior and morals to children, bullying would be a much easier problem to tackle.

Schools are by no means supposed to cover up or turn a blind eye to such behavior. Unfortunately, however, they usually lack effective methods to deal with the problem.

So far, no primary or middle school in China has a special department to deal with complaints of campus violence, and many teachers have received little or no training in coping with the problem. Future legislation must explicitly state the obligations of schools in this regard. Schools need to share more of the responsibility because their involvement will produce the most effective results in the short term.

Yin Yulin (China Youth Daily): School bullying is actually an issue plaguing education sites around the world, and up to now, we still lack effective methods to cope with it.

When I was a young student some 30 years ago, the ways of dealing with bullying were limited, and the outcomes were also unsatisfactory. Either a bullied student silently endured all the pain and misery, or the student's parents would go to the school to accuse the bully in front of teachers, and the perpetrator would be criticized or their parents would be summoned to the school to address the issue. Later, however, the perpetrator might take revenge on the victim. Now, so many years have passed without this issue being solved, and the situation is deteriorating somewhat.

The education authorities' recent launch of a campaign to tackle campus violence reveals the severity of the issue. This is just the first step toward eradication, and tangible results will come only after severe punishments are enforced.

Yang Zheng (www.southern.com): The increasing number of campus bullying cases has highlighted current challenges in ensuring the safety of students. As these incidents involve minors, the ways to deal with them have focused on education and criticism. But some believe that this is not enough to deter corrupt students and that tougher measures are needed.

Undeniably, severe punishment will provide an effective deterrent. Fundamentally eradicating bullying, however, requires raising moral standards among young students. We need a combination of laws and moral codes. Adolescents have yet to develop their outlook on life and the world. So, to deal at this stage with issues such as school bullying, moral education seems extremely important.

The current exam-oriented style of education, however, marginalizes moral education, and this, in turn, gives rise to bullying on school campuses.

Both schools and families need to prioritize the establishment of high moral standards among young people. Only when a high moral code has taken root in young students’ minds can we expect bullying and violence to be eradicated. n

Copyedited by Chris Surtees

Comments to yanwei@bjreview.com