Tokokyohi 登校拒否

A teacher with a tokokyohi 登校拒否son writes that, when she wanted to show the report she had written about her son to her colleague, she was advised that she shouldn't show such a thing' but 'should conceal' her son's tokokyohi. (Ishikawa et al. 1995.85)

Tokokyohi means that the children refuse to go to school.

If you have a child who refuse to attend school, you tried all ways that you could, but nothing worked. And then the child became more reclusive, and even refused to communicate with the family members. What will you do? Will you seek help?

Do you think that not going to school is 'shameful'?

Do you think that it is okay not to go to school?

I think not going to school is not okay to many people in many societies, especially in the cities. I would suspect that this phenomena, seeing tokokyohi as a 'shameful' act is quite dominant in the Asia countries. Of course, we could have people who hysterically screamed out that, "NO, it's our children choice, how could you say that?" Perhaps, but with the middle class, I do see many were moulded in this way. "You need to go to school, education is a must, and you need to learn!" That tune wouldn't really change much.

Maybe one would say, I should do some research and gain supporting statements before I could claim this. Hmm... I don't know. Since this is a journal/diary, I can just put in so much, even without evidence, to jot down what I felt, before I forget it.

But then, perhaps, 'Shame' is a term with different meaning in different society. The toleration or reaction to 'shame' is certainly different with East and West. Even within East, Chinese, Korean and Japanese might see 'shame' in different lights.

Coming back to the above statement of what the teacher should do: if the above statement was true, where the teacher 'should conceal' her son's tokokyohi rather than 'exposing' it, the community support in this area seems to be very weak.


That will lead me to another question: Japanese is well known as their strong social capital, in local or overseas. So, these seem strange for me. Another question could be rude in asking, but that include a Chinese clan support that I knew back in Malaysia: Community support exist where there is a need in the community, or it exist to look good?