Is School Good for You?

 

School and it's negative impact on children's mental health

By Eleftheria Kolovou

 

Lately, there has been a monumental increase in teenage depression and because of that, I decided to look a bit more into it and the results I found were concerning, to say the least.

 A recent survey that was conducted showed that 37% of children report finding it difficult to cope with daily life and mostly focus on the impact of the current educational system and the expectations that come with it.

In particular, 52% of children identified that school is having a negative impact on their mental health, which is the opposite of what the school is meant to be doing. That's because of how the school system works and how society views education, and by writing this article I hope to raise awareness on this everyday problem.

 Some of the mental load of teenagers is stress connected to exams, grades, the expectations some parents have for their children and fear, fear of failure, of failing the ones that helped them, and invested money for their education in many ways, but most of all children's biggest fear is failing themselves even though they tried so hard.

 Another thing that feeds into this problem is the educators themselves. Some teachers are not meant to be teachers for various reason such as inexperience, being unable to transfer their knowledge to the students in a respectful and understanding way, and even due to being underqualified in some areas like communication and knowledge on their subject, with the later mostly happening in understaffed schools. In such cases, the schools do not have a specific teacher for a specific subject and a substitute teacher is asked to cover a field even though their knowledge on the subject is lacking.

Now, the only thing that can be done in this situation, is for the parents to stop putting so many expectations on their children and for the teachers to stop focusing solely on exams scores, and stop giving children too much homework, so they can spend more time with their family and friends and have more time to themselves in general. Life is so much more than a piece of paper! If all of us unite and tackle this problem by raising awareness everywhere and daring to change perspective and make the difference, then our children's future and our country's as whole can become very bright and promising.