Kids Are Treasure

Regardless current growing number of child abuse, kids are still recognized as treasure in Japan. Major outflow of personal information from an education business firm, making an unusual scandal, proved that. Although the leaked information was name, address or telephone number, not credit card numbers or test scores, what surprised the public was the number of personalities, which would amount to twenty million. It is not clear who had stolen that.

Benesse Holdings announced on Wednesday that personal data of its 7.6 million clients had been stolen by someone, which amounted to the worst data theft in Japan. Those clients were for Benesse’s twenty-six kinds of services, including homework assistance or advanced education for infants. The theft was realized when clients received direct mails from another educational corporation, on which appeared personal information only Benesse had to know.

The mails were delivered from Just Systems, which originally known as Japanese word processing system for personal computers and currently joined educational business. Just Systems obtained those personal data from a small corporation specialized in exchanging personal data. Using the information, Just Systems approached a number of kids, recommending their educational kits. Tailored offerings based on age, residential area, or educational achievement helped the company to get deal from families that had uneasiness in test scores of children.

Competition over test scores is highly severe in Japan. Teachers in all kinds of school, elementary, middle or high, selects students which school they should enter after graduation. A brilliant student in elementary school will go to famous private school, which has been producing leaders in many stages in the society. Such kids have ordinarily been doing home study with textbook of educational corporation such as Benesse.

Recent low production of child in Japan jeopardized educational business, precipitating them into hard struggle for survival. Information theft is a natural consequence stemmed from competition to catch clients. But this major leak of personal information from Benesse will take a toll. Police is going to investigate this case as violation of Unjust Competition Prevention Act.

Behind the scene, there is a vertical division, rich and poor, in Japanese society. Afraid of being in the lower class, every child struggle each other to go up social ladder. Business firms take advantage of that kind of sentiment. If politics keep on making the social division clear, kids will only learn defeating friends without knowing the happiness of studying liberal arts.