Teacher Bullying Student ~BichonFriseOwner~

FUKUOKA -- A middle-aged elementary school teacher is in hot water for allegedly bullying one of his students for racist reasons, the Mainichi has learned.

The unnamed instructor at a Fukuoka municipal elementary school has been stripped of his responsibility as a homeroom teacher after the family of the victim, whose great-great-grandfather was American, filed a complaint.

The principal of the school condemned the behavior of the 44-year-old teacher, who bullied the victim by making him a target of his crude "physical punishment."

"The teacher has admitted to me that he made a reference about the 'mixed blood' of the student. It is a big problem to hurt the student's feelings like that," the principal said. "Corporal punishment is unacceptable and making students decide the type of punishment they receive is an awful thing to do."

The principal said the teacher had been inflicting several types of "physical punishment" on his fourth-grade students since April this year.

His students were forced to decide whether they wanted to be punished in the "Mickey Mouse" way, where they had their ears pulled by the teacher, "Pinocchio," where they had their noses pulled, or "Anpan Man," where they their cheeks pulled.

On May 12, the teacher made a visit to the home of a male student. During the meeting, the boy's mother told the teacher that her great-grandfather was American.

To the astonishment of the mother, the teacher reportedly responded by saying, "Japan used to be a pureblooded nation, but unfortunately we now have dirty blood mixed into us."

From the following day, the teacher began to inflict his physical punishment routine only on the boy.

"The teacher started picking out my son as a target of his physical punishment just after the meeting. He is a racist," one of the parents said when they complained of the matter to the school in late May. (Mainichi Shimbun, Japan, June 28, 2003)

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