What the hell’s with all these primary school attacks?

What the hell is going on? I know times are tough, I know there is huge economic disparity between the rich and the poor, I know nobody likes you, I know your boss made you lose face, I know society looks down on you, I know your parents beat you. But why the fuck do you feel your only out is to go to a primary school with a knife and start stabbing kids?

When I opened this story this morning I couldn’t figure out why AP had written an article about the school stabbings in southern China that happened more than a month ago. Were they trying to pass it off as current events on a slow news day? Had they gotten their dates wrong? Was it just sensationalized Western media begging to cast China in a negative light? Nope — this was a totally different cockhead, a totally different school in a totally different province — trying again to kill kids at school.

GUANGZHOU, China – A teacher wielding a knife broke into a primary school in southern China and stabbed 15 students and a teacher Wednesday, the same day another school attacker was executed for killing eight children last month, police and state media reported.

The attacker taught at another primary school nearby, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

The attacker, identified by a local official as Chen Kangbing, broke into Leicheng No. 1 Primary School in Leizhou city about 3 p.m. (0700 GMT) and hacked at the students and teacher, Xinhua said. He teaches at the Hongguan Primary School in nearby Baisha town, the report said. He is in police custody.

The fourth and fifth graders were stabbed in their heads, backs and arms, Xinhua said, citing comments from Li Changwu, Leizhou city’s Communist Party secretary.

A nurse at emergency clinic of Leizhou People’s Hospital said staff there treated eight of the students for knife wounds to the head. “None of them have life-threatening injuries,” said the nurse, who would give only her surname Wu.

Thankfully this nutjob was less successful in his murderous ambitions than Zheng Minsheng, the doctor who at the end of March entered a school in Nanping, Fujian, and brutally cut short the lives of 8 kids.

The thing that unnerves me is how minor this news tends to be in China. Where in my home country this would be sensational news that would grip the nation for a week or two, the news in China barely makes it through a news cycle before being forgotten. I can think of a lot of reasons why this is the case, but they all point to what seems to be an unspoken mandate the media has that basically states they will not shine too bright a light on anything lest we be expected to connect the dots between a pattern of behavior that points to flaws in the system.

Update: Not even an hour after hitting “post”, this happened: “Man stabs children at Chinese kindergarten“.

Two children and three adults are critically ill and 23 other pupils have injuries after a man burst into a nursery in east China and knifed them this morning – the second such attack in two days.

Most of the victims were only four years old, said officials in Jiangsu province. Two teachers and a security guard were wounded in the attack at 9.30am.

Anxious parents crowded outside the closed kindergarten, desperate for news of their children.

Police have detained a 47-year-old suspect, Xu Yuyuan, officials in Taixing said. They told a press conference that his motive was unclear.

For fuck’s sake. (h/t to Alex in the comments for pointing it out).

Additional (somewhat recent) Teacher-Student School Violence

• December 2008: Angry Teacher Rips Student’s Cheek Off
• December 2009: Student who is punished to stand outside freezes to death