Chinese children sickened by school pressure
A third of primary schoolchildren in China are suffering from
psychological ill-health as a result of classroom stress and parental
pressure, according to a study published on Tuesday. The problem is so
bad that urgent measures are needed, warns the study, led by British and
Chinese researchers.
The investigation surveyed 2,191 pupils aged nine to 12 in nine
schools in urban and rural Zhejiang, a relatively prosperous coastal
province in eastern China.
Eighty-one percent of the youngsters said they worried “a lot” about
exams, 63 percent feared being punished by their teacher, 44 percent had
been physically bullied at least sometimes with boys likelier to be
victims than girls and 73 percent had been physically punished by their
parents. Most of the children complained they struggled to cope with the
amount of homework they were assigned.
Over one-third reported headaches or abdominal pains psychosomatic
symptoms of stress at least once a week. The most stressed children
reported incidence of aches or pains of four times a week.
The investigation, led by Therese Hesketh, a professor at University
College London (UCL) Centre for International Health and Development,
pointed the finger at extreme competitiveness in China’s education
system, from the onset of primary school.
“The competitive and punitive educational environment leads to high
levels of stress and psychosomatic symptoms,” the authors say. “Measures
to reduce unnecessary stress on children in schools should be introduced
urgently.”
The paper appears in Archives of Disease in Childhood, a
peer-reviewed journal of the British Medical Association (BMA).
The “urban” setting for the study was Hangzhou, the provincial
capital of Zhejiang, while the “rural” setting was a poor county in
Quzhou prefecture, in the west of the province.
The study highlights some of the complexities that, it says, explain
the demands for academic excellence and intolerance of failure. One
factor is the country’s dramatic rise in prosperity, which has created
“previously unheard-off possibilities for upward mobility” and in turn
stoked pressures on children to do well at school. Paris, Tuesday, AFP
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