The detrimental impact of school-related stress on children’s mental health cannot be confined to one nation or even geographical region.
In Anthea Lipsett’s article “Stress Driving Pupils to Suicide, Says Union” in The Guardian (March 2008), a survey by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) in the United Kingdom indicates that testing and exams are perceived to be the top contributor to increased stress and pressure felt among children. 89% of the 804 teachers and lecturers in the ATL identified tesing and exams as the main cause of stress.
In South Korea, the National Health Insurance Corp. found in 2008 that an average of 3.85 out of 100 students between the ages of 7 and 19 in the Gangnam area (southern Seoul) have received mental health treatments (Ji-Eun Seo, April 2009, “English Fever Takes Hold of Pre-School Education“, JoongAng Daily). This is the largest portion in the country, in an area most well-known for the wealthiest residents in the nation as well as the plethora of private education entities such as cram schools and tutoring.
When Meery Lee and Reed Larson conducted a study on high school seniors in Korea and their counterparts in the United States (2000, Journal of Youth and Adolescence), they uncovered three key findings:
1) Korean high school seniors spend more than twice as much time per day on doing schoolwork as American high school seniors.
2) More importantly, Korean adolescents feel greater negative affect than American adolescents during schoolwork. Not only that, such negative emotions spill over into other activities (namely socializing and passive leisure) more strongly for Korean students compared to American students.
3) MOST importantly, the negative affect associated with the Korean adolescents’ daily experience partly accounts for the greater rate of depression among Korean adolescents.
News stories break out every year in South Korea about another teenager who committed suicide due to lower-than-expected scores on the standardized university entrance exam. The pressure to be accepted into the best universities is great on many Korean adolescents, and without help in coping with the stress, tragedy occurs.
Suicide is actually a nationwide problem for South Korea: it ranks no. 1 among all OECD member countries in suicide rate, according to Society at a Glance 2009: OECD Social Indicators. Receiving treatments for mental health issues—or mental health problems in general, for that matter—is still not a concept that Koreans widely embrace. With tremendous pressure on children to get the best grades and on adults to earn the highest income/social status, combined with insufficient coping mechanisms, the potential trend of depression and suicide rates in South Korea is quite chilling.
June 6, 2009 at 4:00 pm
As a Korean who happened to experience and observe most of
these negative symptoms assoicated with tremendous school
pressure, I strongly believe that the education system in Korea
should be changed into a more open and flexible learning
environment where students are free to pursue thier own dream
by allowing to develop unique talents and skills.
That is, without needing to worrty too much about the academic
excellence, I hope that more Korean students would be able to
follow their unique dreams, visions, and talents such as
technical, artistic, or cooking skills and so on.
Whenever I encounter many Korean youths who are not free to
pursue what they feel truly passionate about, I truly feel sorry
for them.
June 8, 2009 at 2:04 pm
Hi Christine, thanks so much for your comment!
Over the next few days, my challenge will be to seek solutions that will enable exactly the type of learning environment that you described. Although alternative schools do exist currently that pay much more attention to each individual student’s strengths and passion, these schools are nowhere near mainstream. I hope that I’ll be able to address the root causes of the over-education epidemic in South Korea, such as the cultural emphasis on and reverence for a narrow set of occupations as well as the top 3 universities; the standards set in assessing candidates for universities and jobs; and the state of the public education system and parents’ attitude towards it.
I hope you’ll come back to the blog later this week and let me know what you think of the potential solutions.
Cheers,
Hannah
June 13, 2009 at 11:59 pm
[...] shake off its #1 position in suicide rates among OECD countries (as discussed in my former post, “Pressure, Depression, and Suicide”). In other words, this social problem ultimately afflicts the general Korean population as youth [...]