JT editorial on school violence says we can Change

The Japan Times editorial on the recent reports about school violence begins this way:

Violent behavior in Japanese schools increased to an all-time high in 2008, according to a recent report from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). Students, teachers and other people were victims of 60,000 violent incidents involving primary, middle and high school students.

And ends this way:

Students need better outlets for releasing tensions, and in ways that are meaningful for them, not simply imposed from above. Schools need to provide clear guidance and well-defined boundaries, but this clarity must be balanced by reasonable flexibility and student autonomy, too. When that happens, students can learn that violence is the worst choice of all, and always a failure, for all involved.

In the midsts of all this I can't find a single concrete policy suggestions. I can certainly find some fairly weird and vague comments like this:

Despite the shocking increase in violence, some hope was contained in the report. Schools have been successful in reducing bullying. The number of bullying cases reported was down by 30 percent from 2006. This two-year turnaround resulted from the hard work of teachers, administrators, police and parents, as well as from students themselves. If the serious youth problem of bullying can be curtailed, school violence can be as well. One day, hopefully, violence, like bullying, will start to be seen as dasai (uncool).

I don't know a lot about this issue. I do know that once you get into junior high school in Japan you are basically a full time student in almost the same sense a salary man is a full time employee. That is you spend all your time at club or at school or studying or going to a juku. A lot of the time spent studying is in memorizing a massive number of facts that have no pertinent meaning to your particular life. A lot of time is spent learning how to submit to authority. A lot of time is spent acculturating and learning how to "get along" with others. So the system isn't working that well these days. Violence is breaking out. Now, why am I suppose to be surprised? 

How about doing away with public schools? Okay, that's too radical. Fine. Well, how about just making it easier to go to private schools? From what I've heard it is extraordinarily hard to get accredited as a private school in Japan, is that wrong? Given the massive amount of money that goes towards financing jukus, I'm sure parents could afford private schools, if they were made more readily available. The irony is that basically most of the important stuff a lot of studnets learn these days, like how to pass tests, is done studying at jukus. So if that's the case, why not just let the jukus sort of work their way into private schools?

But, I don't doubt that the jukus support the current system. After all, public education has to show tangible results so the focus is always on standardized tests. This favors the jukus because that's what they teach, how to do well on standardized tests. Surly these juku companies must lobby government officials to support the present system. I would guess.

Now, I'm just a blogger, and I can't claim any expertise here. This is all speculation. How much can I really say? But I would have hoped that the Japan Times would have been able to do a better job than just saying we can change. Just consider all the issues out there worth exploring.

What do you think?