Using The Daily Yomiuri in the Classroom
Simon Goddard Weedon / Special to The Daily Yomiuri
This month's article looks at the topic of Internet bullying, something that's becoming increasingly worrying for parents and teachers. The Internet provides a high-interest topic for students of all ages and should stimulate language learning in most classrooms!!
Web sites hotbeds of bullying / Half of student Internet bulletin boards contain abusive messages
About half of informal Internet school bulletin boards contain abusive messages to other students, according to a nationwide survey conducted by the Education, Science and Technology Ministry. The survey also found that 27 percent of the Web sites contained offensive, especially abusive or threatening, messages such as "drop dead."
The ministry will inform teachers and students' parents of the survey results on the so-called gakko ura sites, some of which have become hotbeds of bullying. It will encourage schools to improve their efforts to educate students on how to use Web sites appropriately.
Different from official Web sites run by school administrations, these sites are unofficial bulletin boards independently operated by students and alumni.
The ministry's survey, conducted between January and March, confirm!ed 38,260 such sites in all 47 prefectures.
Among these sites, the ministry randomly chose about 2,000 bulletin boards of middle and high schools in Gunma, Shizuoka and Hyogo prefectures to get an idea of the content of messages posted on the sites. (218 words)
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