news

한어Русский языкEnglishFrançaisIndonesianSanskrit日本語DeutschPortuguêsΕλληνικάespañolItalianoSuomalainenLatina

in recent years, discussions about campus mental health have often focused on students' mental health issues, but rarely on teachers' mental health.

at the beginning of 2023, professor yu guoliang, chief expert of the interdisciplinary platform of mental health education at renmin university of china, led his team to conduct an in-depth investigation on the mental health status of chinese teachers from 1998 to 2022. the data showed that the detection rate of mental health problems among more than 500,000 teachers was 17.8%, and the total detection rate of mental health problems among more than 3 million primary, secondary and university students was as high as 18.7%.

to some extent, due to long-term neglect and other factors, the psychological crisis of teachers is more serious than that of students. we can't help but ask, where exactly are the mental health problems of teachers? if the mental health problems of teachers are not improved, how can we talk about the mental health of students?

1

phd in clinical psychology from peking university, founder of daru psychologyteacher xu kaiwenwhen talking about the psychological problems of teenagers, he mentioned:

more pressing than the mental health issues of teenagers now is the mental health issues of teachers, because their professional burnout and exhaustion are very serious.

yu guoliang, chief expert of the interdisciplinary platform of mental health education at renmin university of china, conducted a survey and research on teachers' mental health issues from 1998 to 2020.

the survey results found that "between 1998 and 2020, the mental health problems of teachers in my country showed a slow upward trend overall."

he predicted that in the near future,teachers' mental health problems continue to show a slowly rising trend.

an analysis report on the current status of teachers' mental health shows that:more than half of front-line teachers have psychological problems.in recent years, incidents of teachers suffering from anxiety, depression, insomnia, suicide, and violent discipline of students have often appeared in the newspapers.

according to experts,teachers have now become one of the groups with a high incidence of mental illness.

however, in recent years, discussions about campus mental health have often focused only on students' mental health issues. not only has little attention been paid to teachers' mental health, but in many cases it has even increased their stress and burden (such as requiring teachers to take on more responsibility for ensuring students' mental health).

to some extent, due to factors such as long-term neglect, the psychological crisis of teachers is more serious than that of students.

2

so, what are the main psychological problems that teachers are experiencing at present? and how are they caused?

in xinbang’s opinion, the two main reasons leading to the current psychological crisis among teachers are: excessive social expectations and an unreasonable campus management system.

too high and too many social expectations

1. society’s overall expectations of teachers are high.

people generally believe that an ideal teacher is someone with extensive knowledge, a noble soul, and exemplary character. teachers are required not only to be knowledgeable people, but also to be role models for students to learn from, combining scholars and moralists in one.

society also has high requirements for the qualities that teachers must possess in order to engage in educational work, such as:

the mandarin should be as good as that of a broadcaster, the chalk handwriting should be as good as that of a calligrapher, the lectures should have the style of a speaker, the writing should have the skills of a writer... in short, teachers are regarded as "all-rounders" who can do everything and know everything.

source: china education news

these high standards and strict requirements are actually endless pursuit goals, which will cause role overload and bring invisible pressure to teachers.

2. under the overly inward-looking concept of educational competition, parents place excessive demands on teachers.

in a survey, 85% of primary and secondary school teachers believed that the pressure of academic advancement was their biggest source of stress, and that students’ unsatisfactory test scores were the biggest setback in their lives.

one of the sources of this frustration is parents' anxiety about their children's academic performance. their high expectations of "wanting their children to be successful" and "wanting their children to win at the starting line" translate into high demands on teachers, and they attribute their children's academic performance and even character development entirely to the teachers' responsibility.

parents’ excessive demands and lack of understanding have made teachers feel more stressed and frustrated.

unreasonable campus management system

1. overloaded workload

jiang shengnan, a well-known writer and member of the national committee of the chinese people's political consultative conference, pointed out that in recent years, many primary and secondary school teachers have to complete too many tasks every day, including various activities, inspections, app downloads, clocking in, taking photos, open classes, etc.

the survey shows:

90% of primary and secondary school teachers have to teach 15-20 classes a week; mark a large amount of homework; prepare lessons, write lesson plans, and make courseware; make and correct test papers, write teaching plans and teaching summaries; organize students to participate in a large number of competitions; face all kinds of inspections and evaluations; deal with parents; and class teachers also have to handle a lot of class management work, such as maintaining discipline, managing student duties, watching the "two exercises", dormitory management, etc.

source: china education news

it can be said that teachers' work has been in a state of overload.

2. improper reward and punishment mechanism

the current education system is still dominated by exam-oriented education. schools use academic performance and admission rates as the evaluation criteria for teachers' teaching ability. they ignore students' original foundation and reward or punish teachers according to the final class ranking.

on the one hand, a large amount of repetitive and inefficient non-teaching administrative work takes up a lot of teaching time (and often there is no reward if it is done well, but if it is not done well, the teacher will face criticism from the leader, administrative penalties and other punishments). on the other hand, grades and admission rates are regarded as the only standards of teaching ability, which makes the teacher group exhausted, and the professional pressure and psychological burden are increasing day by day.

3

one thing is certain, teachers' mental health will not only affect their own health and career development, but also affect the development of many students.

teacher xu kaiwen pointed out in an interview:

when a teacher is burnt out and exhausted, how much patience does he/she have to treat children? he/she may speak without thinking and may take some actions to vent his/her emotions.

earlier this year, a female teacher in a certain city in hunan lost control of her emotions while tutoring students in her office. she not only insulted the students with words like "i will beat you to death", but also used body language, pinching their faces, pulling their hair...

after this scene was filmed and uploaded to the internet, it triggered a strong backlash from public opinion.

of course, we can simply criticize this teacher from the perspective of morality and professional ethics, but we cannot ignore the fact that what she showed in the video is a state of mental breakdown. she is out of control and crazy.

the more important question is, as the psychological problems of teachers increase day by day, and as the burden and pressure increase, how many teachers like her who have or are about to have emotional breakdowns are not captured by the camera? and to what extent do they affect the mental health of children?

mr. rosenthal, an internationally renowned psychologist who passed away in january this year, proposed the famous pygmalion effect in 1968:

this effect reveals that if school teachers can look at students with kindness and more expectations, students will perform better in school. on the contrary, if there is no such kindness, positive view, or even a very bad view of students, students will be affected and become worse.

when there are many teachers facing psychological crises or even on the verge of psychological breakdown in our campuses, how can we expect them to face students with a "kind" and "positive" attitude? how can we expect students to become mentally healthy?

when interviewing mr. shen jiahong this year, mr. shen talked about the family system issue: the parents' original family will affect the parents, and the parents constitute the children's original family, and will pass on the problems brought from their original family to the next generation.

to some extent, education is also a system, and everyone in the system is influencing the people in the next link.

when our education system still encourages excessive competition and passes the pressure of competition to teachers, causing them huge psychological burden, they tend to pass this pressure to students, causing students huge psychological burden. when teachers are forced to collapse due to excessive teaching pressure, their collapse may also cause students' psychology to gradually collapse.

from this perspective:if the mental health problems of teachers are not taken seriously, it will be difficult to truly solve the psychological problems of students. and if our education system is not improved, it will be difficult to improve the mental health of teachers.