Few weeks back when sensei was in town, he and I briefly talked about bullying in schools in Japan and he stated the main culprit was the demographic and cultural homogeneity in Japan. It then got me wondering why in Hong Kong, the phenomenon was not as widespread despite also being a highly homogenous society. When I was growing up, there was always a fear of not being popular in school and that lunch break would be spent eating alone. So there was definitely a pressure to fit in. But outright bullying was rare. We all seemed to be too busy doing our own things: going to cram school, learning some musical instruments, practicing some sports, taking extra language class...etc, and did not have time to go out of our way to bully specific classmate. It probably has something to do with the culture: Hong Kong has less emphasis on team success and instead, getting ahead of each other is important. So being different (in a good way) arouses jealousy but jealousy does not translate so much into resentment. It just adds to the competitive pressure in school. There are many reasons that can attribute to the differences in culture and one of them might have been that Hong Kongese are always highly insecure about our own livelihood. With an de-facto non-existent social net and a Darwinian like economy, there is simply not much we can fall back on. And that culture is transmitted into schools. So i guess in that sense, the culture curbs bullying at school because school's purpose is reduced to simply helping students prepare for exams, but not so much a place for students to socialize.
