My son goes to school in Japan.  He is different from the other kids at his school with his blond hair and relatively poor Japanese.  The kids are friendly when the teachers are around, but some are very sneaky and get punches and kicks in, and call him names when the teachers look the other way.

When my wife and I found out we complained to the teacher, and he said they are just lively kids just like he was when he was young, and nothing was going on - my son was too sensitive.  Kids are sometimes rough, and you just have to get use to it, but he would look into it.

A month later nothing had changed - the bullying was still going on, so we saw the teacher again.  He became very hot headed and denied that anything could be going on in his class, and my son was just making up stories and just likes to draw attention to himself and be the center of attention.  Nothing could be further from the truth, as my son is quite shy.  The relationship with the teacher went downhill and so did my sons grades.

We escalated the situation to the head master, who listened but also was skeptical as my son's teacher was the schools star performer and a highly respected educator.

The outcome was that he changed classes to another teacher, and the star performer continues to live in a fantasy that no bullying occurs in his classroom.

I have forwarded this program to the teacher and headmaster, and hope they follow through.

Thanks for setting up this great project.

Adrian.