英国学者研究中国小学生的精神压力

英国学者研究中国小学生的精神压力

英国《每日电讯报》网站1月19日刊登Peter Foster 发自北京的报道，题目是Third of Chinese primary school children suffer stress, study finds（研究表明：三分之一中国小学生承受精神压力），摘要如下（英语原文附后）：

　　一项国际研究表明，中国儿童迫于不能错过“新”中国各种机会的压力，最早从六岁开始就在学校处于严重的精神紧张之中。这项对中国东部9到12岁儿童的科学调查发现，超过80%的受访者表示“非常”担心考试，三分之二的学生害怕老师的惩罚，近四分之三的孩子都称害怕父母的体罚。

　　由伦敦大学学院的Therese Hesketh教授主持的这项研究发现，三分之一的受访儿童显示出典型的精神压力体征，包括头疼和胃痛。

　　Hesketh教授说，“在几宗引起广泛关注的中学生自杀案之后，已经有了不少对青少年压力的研究，但是对小学年龄段儿童的研究则很少。有的学生早在六岁入学时就遭遇这些问题，当他们发现自己在每周测验中排名不佳，就会极度低落。”

　　中国的独生子女政策意味着许多孩子是在父母和祖辈的共同关心下成长起来，并顺从长辈的要求在激烈的竞争中考大学，考公务员，找好工作。繁重的家庭作业和课外活动在新中产家庭的孩子中屡见不鲜，父母们拼命想让自己的孩子比起跑线上的竞争者赢得优势。

　　“许多没能接受良好教育的父母热切地将资源投注在唯一的孩子身上，”研究称。

　　这份报告发表于英国医师协会的《儿童疾病文献》，作者呼吁尽快采取行动，降低中国儿童的压力。 报告总结说，“竞争性和惩罚式的教育环境导致了很高的压力和心身症状，应尽快采取措施降低学生不必要的压力。”这份报告是由中英两国研究者在浙江省的农村和城市学校做出的。

　　其中，城市组的研究对象是杭州的2191名小学生，农村组则在浙西衢州地区的一个贫困县进行。对农村学生而言，压力表现为另外一种形式：非常传统的儒家教育制度中强调的对老师的顺从，以及大量的写作练习。

　　去年，联合国儿童基金会利用儿童节的机会来宣传“玩的权利”，一项据称常被遗忘的权利。 联合国儿基会中国的一位发言人称，“儿童压力的问题也是我们所关注的。我们发现农村的教育方式还是很强调记忆和重复信息，我们正在努力让教育变得更加以儿童为中心。但在北京和上海这样的大城市，教育制度经过改革之后，质量有所提高，但是人们的期望也在迅速上升，这给儿童带来了更多的压力。对于转型时期的经济体来说这并不罕见，同样的情况也曾发生在日本和韩国。”

　　除了学校的压力之外，更长远的问题是，中国传统的权威式教育制度能否造就出具有独立思想的学生，这样的学生才是构建现代化知识经济的关键。

　　一名在中国工作了2年的美国教师Jimi Sides称，中国的独生子女相对来说较为缺乏主动性和沟通技能，“我不认为他们是被宠坏的一代，但他们是跟随者，而不是领导者，很少有人能主动参与团队工作，并以最有效最快捷的方式达成目标。”

　　他说，“过去一年中我在2个不同的中国学校教过书，我担心，中国儿童的经历中，似乎缺少了领导力训练。”

Third of Chinese primary school children suffer stress, study finds
A third of Chinese primary school children suffer from psychological stress as a result of China's pressure-cooker schooling system and pushy parenting, a study by a leading British researcher found.
 
By Peter Foster in Beijing
Published: 3:24PM GMT 19 Jan 2010

Chinese children as young as six are suffering from serious stress at school, according to the international study, which shines a light onto the pressures faced by Chinese youngsters being pushed to take advantage of the opportunities of the 'new' China.

A scientific survey of 9 to 12-year-olds in eastern China found that more than 80 per cent worried "a lot" about exams, two-thirds feared punishment by their teachers and almost three-quarters reported fearing physical punishment from their parents.

 
Teach social skills at five, says studyThe research led by Therese Hesketh, a professor at University College London (UCL), found that one in three children questioned exhibited the "physical symptoms" typical of stress, including headaches and stomach pains.

"Stress among adolescent Chinese has been well documented after several high-profile cases of suicide by secondary school age children, but there has been little research among primary-age children," Professor Hesketh told The Telegraph.

"The problems start from as young as six, when children enter school and find themselves obsessively ranked against their peers with weekly examinations, which the children find incredibly stressful."

China's one child policy means many children grow up with their parents and two sets of grandparents focusing exclusively on them, driving them to succeed in a nation of 1.3bn people where gaining entry to universities, government jobs and graduate careers is highly competitive.

Even among young children, mountains of homework and long hours of extra-curricular activities are not uncommon as China's new middle classes strive to give their only children an edge over their playground rivals.

"The aspirations of many parents, who had limited educational opportunities themselves are now invested in their only children," the study said.

Reporting their discoveries in the British Medical Association's Archives of Disease in Childhood journal, the authors called for urgent action to reduce the stress on Chinese children.

"The competitive and punitive educational environment leads to high levels of stress and psychosomatic symptoms," the study concluded. "Measures to reduce unnecessary stress on children in schools should be introduced urgently." The study was conducted in rural and urban schools in the Chinese province of Zhejiang by Chinese and British researchers.

The "urban" setting for the study of 2,191 pupils was Hangzhou, the provincial capital of Zhejiang, while the "rural" setting was a poor county in Quzhou prefecture, in the west of the province.

For rural children, the pressures take a different form, emanating from the still highly traditional system of Chinese education which emphasises Confucian obedience to the teacher and demands large amounts of wrote-learning.

Last year Unicef, the UN's children's fund, used its Universal Children's Day to promote children's "right to play", a right which it said was often forgotten.

"The issue of child stress is definitely on our radar," said Dale Rutstein, a spokesman for Unicef China. "In rural areas we are still finding the emphasis on memorisation and parroting back information and are working on making education more child-centred.

"But in bigger cities like Beijing and Shanghai the system is more reformed and quality has improved but people's expectations are rising fast, which puts more pressure on the children. This is not unusual for economies in transition, similar traits were seen in Japan and South Korea."

As well as school stress, there are longer-term questions over whether China's traditional and authoritarian schooling system is suited to producing the kind of independent-minded students essential to innovation in a modern, knowledge-based economy.

Jimi Sides, an American teacher in China for the past two years, told a leading Chinese newspaper that he had found China's only children comparatively short of initiative and communication skills.

"I would say they are a generation not of spoiled offspring, but of followers, not leaders, with little to no motivation to work as a team and accomplish goals in the most effective and timely manner," he wrote in China's Global Times newspaper.

"Having worked as a teacher for the past year at two different Chinese-run schools, I worry that leadership training appears to be missing from Chinese children's experience."