Students mental health
by Tianzhe Chen
In the last two weeks I have reflected on English education problems and classroom management prompted while working on an internship at my school in China. This blog will focus on students mental health in the education system.
My contact with students enhances me to worry about students mental health. It can be pointed out that students are under high pressure. In my high school, students have to study for more than 10 hours per day. Despite this, they still have to take part in shadow education every weekend, sometimes even after school. Moreover, they have lots of exam to take, from weekly ones to final ones. In addition, they can get to see their marks and rankings from school system in two days. Their parents can also find their grades on group chatting. In class, it is common for them to hear teachers talking about their grades, warning them the gap of them between other class students. The above evidence has demonstrated students study life through their endless study and competition, which causing them to live under stress. Despite this, they still have to face peer pressure. My high school has a good reputation since last century, as a result, plenty of students from top middle schools choose to join my high school. These students often achieve high marks on large-scale exam, and win medals for subject competition. Moreover, they are also good at skills, such as playing instruments and drawings. Many of them have achieved rewards on these areas. For common students, seeing these students names on honour roll and from teachers talking is a kind of suffering, they hate it a lot. This situation is because they are still struggling for study, these peers great achievement gives them much pressure. Receiving pressure from both school and peers can easily enhance students to become more stressed and depressed, which is easily cause them to have problems on mental health.
Nowadays, it’s believed that students mental health is the most important thing in education field. In comparison with my parents, I have got psychology classes to take from primary school to high school. Moreover, education ministry also published the burden-reduction policy to “free students from the heavy-homework burden and double education’’ (Li, et al 2023, p.2). However, it is sad that psychology classes are often devalued by schools, other major classes teachers can adopt them as their own classes. In my high school, there are only three psychology teachers. In the final year, students don’t have any psychology classes. The burden-reduction policy also doesn’t reduce students burden, parents are more eager to send their children to shadow education now. Under this worrying condition, it is really hard for students psychology to be learned. Evidence above demonstrates clearly that both schools and students still don’t care about students mental health seriously. The reason behind it comes from attention on grades. This attention is because in China, if common students want to change their lives, entering the best universities is still the best way (LI, 2021). As a result, schools and parents try their best to encourage students to study. When I was in middle school, I often heard parents saying that “If my child has a good grade, nothing needs to be cared about’’. Unfortunately, nowadays, caring FOR students mental health only appears on document. Maybe in the future, when the education philosophy is changed, things can become better.
Tianzhe Chen is a student on the BA Education, Culture and Childhood at The University of Sheffield.
