Yesterday, I participated in a lecture on preventing school bullying at a local boarding middle school.

Campus Impressions

As soon as I entered the campus, I heard the loudspeaker blaring. A middle-aged man’s voice, tinged with anger, was calling out students from various classes, instructing them to report to the playground immediately.

What greeted my eyes next were rows of neatly aligned students and the stern faces of their teachers.

The students were undergoing a semi-militarized assembly on the playground, marching in unison and chanting slogans loudly before being led into the auditorium by their teachers.

Once inside the auditorium, students entering from the outside didn’t know where to sit.

A female teacher was almost hysterically shouting at the students to move to the back rows as they filed in. Her commands were interspersed with a mix of Mandarin and Cantonese profanities.

Sitting in the front row near the entrance, I watched the students stream in one by one. Their youthful faces, tinged with a hint of rebelliousness, felt strangely unfamiliar.

This scene made me recall my own middle school days. In my memory, middle school was relatively mild, with teachers focusing more on guidance and care rather than the strict management I witnessed today.

Even the most unpleasant memory I have—a math teacher publicly criticizing me in class after an unpleasant home visit—was still a far cry from what I saw. Back then, only he and I knew the context of his criticism, as he never mentioned my name.

The theme of this event was preventing school bullying, with the direct goal of strengthening youth protection and preventing juvenile delinquency.

Before the event, I had consulted with relevant departments to determine the target audience for the lecture. Without hesitation, they suggested this school.

The reason was obvious: this school has been particularly problematic in this area, with several negative incidents occurring in recent years.

Root Causes

During the event, I gained some insight into why such schools face more pronounced issues.

• Neglect of Ordinary Middle Schools Amid the Separation of Academic and Vocational Tracks. With high school enrollment rates generally below 50% in many regions, schools outside urban core areas, lacking traditional educational advantages, often see high school enrollment rates as low as 10% or even 5%. Most students end up in vocational schools or technical colleges. In such a context, neither teachers nor parents have much motivation, and parents unconsciously lower their expectations for their children. Many adolescents sense that they are about to be marginalized by society, leading them to seek collective rebellion.

• The Unique Student Demographics of Urban-Rural Fringe Areas. In schools located in urban core areas, most students come from middle-class families, where parents have more time to accompany and support their children, resulting in fewer psychological and physiological issues. Similarly, in purely rural schools, the traditional inertia of a close-knit community means students are often more straightforward, and the student body is relatively homogeneous. The main issue there is the uncertainty surrounding left-behind children. However, in schools located in the urban-rural fringe areas of megacities, the family backgrounds of students are extremely complex. Locally, there are families who missed out on land expropriation opportunities and harbor resentment, as well as families of migrant workers. The migrant population is even more complicated, with many families only able to take one child with them to the city for education, often a son. These families place great hope in urban education, believing it to be far superior to rural schools, and hope to use their limited income to help their children adapt to urban life and achieve upward mobility. At the same time, they fear the challenges of urbanization and worry about their ability to protect their children, especially daughters, from harm.

• The Impact of the Internet on Students’ Values. During the lecture, I noticed that many students were aware of current internet trends. Most admitted to frequent exposure to violent, sexual, and other inappropriate content online. Some student groups on platforms like QQ shared shockingly explicit messages, unbeknownst to their parents. Many students lacked a proper understanding of life, treating scenes of suicide, school bullying, violence, and gore on short video platforms and social media as commonplace. Their psychological perceptions and values are vastly different from those of students two decades ago.

Solutions

Honestly, from my perspective, there are no easy solutions to these problems.

I can only hope to raise awareness of the severity of these issues and help more minors in such environments improve their self-protection awareness and abilities.

It’s particularly important to foster harmonious relationships between parents, teachers, and schools, easing tensions and allowing professionals to do their jobs with patience and support.

Instead of pointing fingers and creating sharp conflicts, we should recognize that adult conflicts inevitably exacerbate tensions among minors.

For example, at this school, I observed teachers struggling to manage difficult students, often resorting to stern expressions and harsh words.

In essence, teachers themselves find it hard to control their emotions, frequently resorting to shouting to cope.

Sitting in the front row, I felt the oppressive atmosphere in the auditorium during those few minutes when teachers barked orders at students. It’s hard to imagine how many times a day children have to endure such commands.

Perhaps only a few students require such discipline, but in the school environment, all students are subjected to the harshness of adults on a daily basis.

Middle school is the most formative stage of life, a watershed moment for personal behavior, life trajectory, and educational potential.

No matter what, I hope things will improve over time.