It is right for the government to be focusing efforts on preventing school violence rather than penalizing perpetrators. The Education Ministry said last week it would develop programs to prevent school violence and bullying, and implement them at primary, middle and high schools across the country by 2017.

The experience-oriented programs tentatively named “eoulim,” which means harmony, will be designed to help students recognize the destructive effect of harassing acts and learn how to communicate and empathize with one another through music, plays and other art-based activities. It is hoped that the new plan, modeled after Finland’s anti-bullying project “KiVa Koulu,” will be instrumental in reducing and modifying students’ violent behavior.

Since a string of suicides by bullied students in 2011, the government has stepped up efforts to clamp down on school violence and bullying, setting up an interministerial commission to deal with the matter. In February last year, the government announced a set of measures, which has turned out effective in curbing school violence.

In a nationwide survey of elementary, middle and high school students, conducted by the Education Ministry in March and April, 2.2 percent of respondents said they had suffered from school violence during the previous six months. The proportion marked a sharp drop from 12.3 percent and 8.5 percent in similar polls in the first and second half of last year.

It appears that the government wants to complement the earlier package with the “eoulim” project and other measures with a greater emphasis on prevention. Continuous efforts should be made to make schools free of violence and bullying as nearly 100,000 students are still being victimized despite the recent improvement. Particularly, it needs to be noted that cases taking a more persistent pattern ― more than once per week for a period longer than four months ― have decreased at a far slower pace. Behind-the-scenes incidents of ostracism and cyber bulling have still remained pervasive, while cases easier to find, such as beatings and financial extortion, have been declining more tangibly.

In this context, the government is advised to be more cautious about easing its policy of documenting penalties against perpetrators on their school performance records and keeping them for five years after graduation. Education Ministry officials said last week they would revise it by the end of this year to make it possible to erase the disciplinary records immediately after education upon the approval by a relevant commission.

The rule, which was included in measures put into practice last year, has been cited as an effective tool to cope with school violence. In a survey conducted by a local research institute, 6 in 10 teachers and students polled replied it had helped prevent the problem.

Shortening the duration of keeping the records can be considered. But it may give a wrong signal and reverse what has so far been achieved, if disciplinary records are allowed to be deleted right after education by an arbitrary judgment based on no objective and substantial evidence of true repentance. It is no exaggeration to be concerned that most of the records would be erased in an unduly compassionate atmosphere, eliminating the preventive effect of the rule.

Certainly, it is against the principles of education to become unnecessarily harsh toward misbehavior by students. But they also need to learn that compassionate treatment can and should be restricted to the extent of the suffering they inflict on others.