作者：王天天

小嘉賓：王好奇

指導教師：陳耔亦、Steven Chen

我們的作者王天天同學是一名小學六年級學生，他與二年級小嘉賓王好奇，在陳耔亦老師與Steven Chen老師的指導下，共同探討了心理健康與教育議題，並發表了這篇來自孩子們的真實心聲與感悟。這篇文章真切表達了當代小學生對教育、對心理健康的看法，值得我們傾聽與深思。

王好奇

王天天

陳耔亦

Balancing Study and Mental Health

Nowadays, as competition between countries is becoming increasingly fierce, governments are in urgent need of talented people to develop military equipment and create high-tech innovations for a better future. However, this will increase academic pressure on students, and breed a series of behaviors harmful to students’ mental and physical health, such as bullying, smoking, or even suicidal thoughts.

To balance study and entertainment, schools should set up related classes and offices. In this way, students can study happily and efficiently.

First and foremost, how can we prevent negative behaviors? From my perspective, it is not only superficial punishment. For instance, a teacher finds a group of students smoking in the bathroom. The teacher immediately throws their cigarettes away, without asking the motives of their behavior, where they got them, or telling them the impact of smoking. The teacher only throws away the cigarettes and makes each student write a 3000-word essay.

This action doesn’t tackle the root cause of smoking, and may even worsen students’ bad mood. Students will smoke more to express their anger. What they think next time is not “I shouldn’t smoke” but “I should find a safe place without teachers”. Because the root cause of their smoking is the desire to look cool, follow others, or turn their emotions into smoke that they blow out.

So, what is the core action to take when a teacher finds students smoking? In my opinion, it is too difficult to find every student who is acting badly and teach them what is right. Instead, schools should offer mental health classes to teach the impact of bullying, smoking, and teenage love.

Some may argue that mental health classes are only for private schools, where students’ families can afford extra money to offer such classes and counseling services. But how can public schools do this? Public schools are already under pressure to afford basic equipment and it is hard to cover key knowledge points in limited time.