'Monster parents' plague Japan's schools

[MarrickG]

TOKYO - Breakfast for parents at day-care centres, laundry and nail-clipping done at school, a pick-up service by teachers - these are some of the requests from Japan's so-called "monster parents".

The increasingly outrageous demands have driven teachers' stress levels to record heights and led the Tokyo city government to publish a handbook on tips to cope with them.

More than 60,000 teachers and other workers at Tokyo's public schools will get a copy by the end of March in a 10-million-yen (S$154,000) project. "There are so many," a Tokyo teacher said as she recalled complaints her elementary school has received.

"A mother rings us at 7:30 am and keeps nagging for two hours... One morning she was saying 'Why did you make my child speak before other children? My child doesn't like to make a speech...'," said the teacher.

"They are looking at their children alone and demand teachers attach special importance to them," she said, asking for anonymity.

Education critic Naoki Ogi, who has conducted a survey on "monster parents" - as they have been dubbed by the media - said that behind the problem was the introduction in the early 2000s of commercial principles in education.

Many municipalities now let parents choose which school their children attend rather than allocating one depending on the district they live in - making schools compete to woo students.

In a nation with one of the world's lowest birthrates, the consequence was that "education has become a merchandise," Ogi told AFP.

"Customers are "god" at department stores with buyers having absolute superiority over sellers - and (in schools) parents are the buyers." Even the royal family came under scrutiny this month after the palace announced the crown princess's only child had skipped school after suffering from anxiety due to "raucous" boys.

"Is Princess Masako a monster mother?" a magazine headline asked, amid a controversy over whether it was excessive to disclose a school problem through a palace spokesman.

Ogi collected more than 700 examples of monster parents through educators and parents across the nation.