Tagore said: "Life is like the beauty of summer flowers, and death is like the beauty of autumn leaves." Life has a beginning and an end. In recent years, with a series of growth tragedies caused by children and adolescents' indifference to life, life and death education should increasingly become an important part of parents' general education. However, how to educate the growing children about life and death? How should parents respond to their children's "question of life and death"? This issue pays special attention to it and hopes to inspire parents.
The healthy growth of children is the hope of families and countries. However, the news of teenagers' suicide often appears in people's field of vision, and some cases of children's murder are even more shocking. From time, we can see an unexpected fact: such a tragedy has a long history and still happens today. While we are shocked and sighed, we have been trying to find the root cause behind it. What made a carefree child give up his life? Why do innocent children become murderers? What should education do and what can it do for children's life injury?
As a matter of fact, life education for young people in China has never stopped. Pictures of Children's Psychological Education published by Shanghai Xinya Bookstore 1952 has two pictures about life and death, which vividly and intuitively tells the questions about life and death. (See the picture below) As early as the beginning of 2 1 century, in order to deal with life-threatening behaviors such as children's suicide, life education developed in full swing after the rise of China, and rose to the national level in 20 10. After more than 20 years of development, life education is unprecedentedly prosperous, and there are countless related theoretical researches and practical explorations. However, children's life injuries are still heard from time to time. It seems that life education has not really made all children cherish life.
Life-and-death education itself belongs to life education. However, due to the serious tradition of death taboo in China, life-and-death education, as an important part of life education, is often ignored intentionally or unintentionally, which makes life education "purely talk about life and automatically filter out death". Professor Cao Zhuan from the Life Education Research Center of Beijing Normal University put forward that "it is not recommended to carry out too much death education in primary and secondary schools ..." Because primary and secondary school students are full of vigor and vitality, it is best not to mislead students with death education. Professor Cao Zhuan's point of view is not unreasonable, and unscientific death education may mislead children and lead to negative effects. But this does not mean that children do not need death education. At the same time, the view that "death is dark and negative and should not be carried out in primary and secondary schools" represents a considerable number of life education researchers and primary and secondary school educators. For this reason, most schools are only willing to carry out life education, but are unwilling to give life and death education a development space. More than one primary and secondary school principal told me, "Life education is ok, and death education is too negative, so we should tell students more positive things. "As a researcher of children's death education, my thinking is that there is nothing wrong with being cautious about life and death education, but if we think that death education is dark and negative, because teachers can't talk about death, or because we can't give up eating because of choking, it is irrational and objective to refuse to carry out life and death education outside campus.
In 2002, China Education News published a report entitled "The Unbearable Weight in Life —— Investigation and Reflection on Adolescent Suicide", calling on young people in China to popularize death education urgently and expecting that death education can really enter the classroom in the near future. By 20 16, China Women's Daily was still tirelessly issuing "When will death education become a compulsory course for adults?" The appeal that "death education should be paid attention to from the student days".
Fortunately, at the Third Session of the 13th Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in May 2020, a member put forward a proposal of "strengthening life and death education in the whole society after the COVID-19 epidemic", which was officially replied by the Ministry of Education. The reply said, "Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic, we have attached great importance to the life and death education of the whole society during the epidemic prevention and control period, and paid attention to closely combining life and death education with ideological and political education and mental health education during the epidemic prevention and control period." Special mention is made of "integrating life and death education into classroom education and teaching". Primary school moral and life curriculum requires students to "cherish life and love life", while junior high school ideological and moral curriculum requires students to "know the uniqueness of human life and cherish life". In his reply, he affirmed life and death education and said that it would be further strengthened.