lit review 6

Do young Chinese need death education?

A 6-year-old girl asks after watching a movie with her mother, "Mom, will I die?" The mother immediately replies angrily, "Shut up! Little girls should never mention death. It's bad luck!"

"In this case, the mother lost an important chance to explain to her daughter about the meaning of life and death, which could have also been a lesson on safety," said Yuan Ailing, a preschool education professor at South China Normal University.

This mother, like any other parent in China, may not see it as an appropriate question from a child. They believe it's such a heavy and horrible issue that it may inhibit healthy development of a child's views on life.

"It's not necessary to give a lesson on death to primary school students, and basic knowledge about health is enough for them," said Xia Xueluan, a renowned Chinese sociologist.

"But in college, students are adults and need proper education to teach them not to take the easy way out and cherish life," Xia added.

But in a society where talking about death is taboo, China's suicide incidents sporadically reported in the media prompt strong responses and debates. Last year, a string of suicides involved nine workers at Foxconn, an electronics contractor, in about half a year.

Still, some scholars say China's suicide rate is not alarming when compared with other countries. Jing Jun, a sociologist at Tsinghua University, put his calculation of China's suicide rate in 2004 at about 0.01 percent and 0.007 percent in 2009, which were both lower than the world average. （http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/opinion/2010-11/11/content_11532044.htm）

But statistics released by the Beijing Suicide Research and Prevention Center in 2007 showed that more than 287,000 people end their own lives every year on the Chinese mainland. According to the report, suicide was the leading cause of death for people aged 15 to 34. (http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2007-09/11/content_6095710.htm)

"The point of providing education on death-related issues is to tell people about the meaning of life and urge them to extend the length of their life, during a time when the risk of losing life exists every minute," said Zou Yuhua, a professor and lecturer on death education at the Public Health School of Guangdong Pharmaceutical University.

Zou, an advocate for death education for all ages, told chinadaily.com.cn that the high suicide rate in China is related to society's lack of attention to death education.

"Lack of study and educators in this field have led to difficulty in China in infusing correct views on death into school curriculum to fend off bad influence from negative content in entertainment activities such as playing unhealthy video games," Zou said.

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