Overreaction?

A Japanese boy burned down his home, killing his stepmother and two younger siblings, for fear his parents would find out he had lied about his score on an English test.

Talk about your high pressure testing environments.

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With some fuller information (this case has been all over the media for the past week here), the explanation is a bit more than just a missed test.

Both the boys father and stepmother are medical doctors; the father is apparently quite renowned. Both, but especially the father had been pressuring him since kindergarten that of course he will grow up to become a successful physician just like himself. In fact, he seems to have had no other thought in his mind than to mold his sons life exactly the way he wished it to be. No single misstep from the grand plan (which apparently included admission to Tokyo University as a given) was tolerated; at the home they had a "study intensive care" room where the boy was locked in every evening and where the only thing to do was to study.

It was that kind of constant parental pressure - like sports dads from hell but for academic achievement - that broke the guy. If it hadn't been this test it would have been the next one, or the next after that. The tragedy is that he snapped by setting fire to the family house, and not by just running away.