Today: Speecherific

That brings us to today. Unless you read this blog from bottom to top like a normal person in which time exists from end to beginning much like the univers after its inevitable collapse according to Stephen Hawking.

I had 3-4 first thing this morning with Hamanaka and Inoue. I knew if Inoue was there we could kind of control the class. I told them I wanted to talk to them for about 5 minutes and that I wanted to hear their opinion.

Basically I told them about the 2nd years bullying the girl with autism. I asked if any of them thought it was ok. Of course no one said anything. Sakakibara who had spent the first bit of class talking about how much he hated me said, "It has nothing to do with us." I told him that that was a valid opinion too but that I felt differently. I asked if he could explain his opinion to us. "Why are you here? Why don't you go away?" I told him that that wasn't really an explanation of an opinion but I would be happy to listen if he could expand on it.

I told them that, in my opinion, that even though they were 3rd years and what I saw was 2nd years that I thought it was their fault. I told them that it was every 3rd year's fault. I told them that they were supposed to be the leaders of the school, but that they were failing. That there were no leaders. There were people who were trying but no one was leading. Most of my talk hinged on the words 認める-mitomeru, which means to "accept, permit or allow", and する-suru, which means "to do." I told them that I found it very hard to see what the difference was between these two things. I talked about the assembly yesterday morning where they acted ridiculous. I told them that they were embarassing. I tried to explain that even if it wasn't their fault, they were there and they ignored it and that is the same thing. I tried to get across that when you are joking around with your friends and not listening to what teachers say that 1st years and 2nd years see that. That then when someone tries to stop them from bullying an autistic girl they say the exact same thing. At this point Sakakibara got up and left.

I told them about when I was a freshman in high school and Jeremy ran to get me and said that a senior was beating up his girlfriend and that we had to go help. About how when we got there and the guy was a huge football player I said, "It isn't our problem." But that that just meant that I was weak and scared. I told them that they will regret being weak and scared one day and that it was their job to stop bad things when they had the chance. They listened better than they usually do but they didn't talk much.

Inoue Sensei had me repeat the story to two of the 1st year classes and they listened well and actually talked a little. Inoue spoke to them when I was done and told them about how a lot of pro-boxers and pro-fighters were people who had been bullied when they were younger. That it takes a strong person to see what is weak in themselves and work to change that. That people who can't see their own weakness will have a hard time being good at sports or anything else (The 1st years really like baseball and other sports.) I think they listened.

I told the story to the 2nd years. The girl who was part of the bullying wasn't there. They were actually receptive and talked a little. They didn't know I could speak Japanese so that was funny because I was saying things like ”尊重できへんか？”　　But they were a very noisy class. We'll see. Yesterday just made the school smell like a rotten fish for me. A big rotten fish with juice running out of its eyeball.