This year, during the teasing times of the COVID crisis, the schools are shut down; people have lost their jobs as well the surge in the deaths of the loved ones due no treatment or vaccine in place; and uncertainity of post-COVID times, we are observing the World Suicide Prevention Day (September 10).
The organizers of the observance point out that due to the COVID19 pandemic, the 'rate of suicides has gone high', therefore, it is 'very important to talk about suicide and depression loud.' .
One may recall that it was in 2013, the International Association for Suicide Prevention (IASP) collaborated with the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the World Federation for Mental Health (WFMH) observed the first World Suicide Prevention Day.
Here, through the following write-up, I urge schools to become stress-free and happy places to develop sound mental health of children.
Experts in social pedagogy, feminist pedagogy, humanistic psychology, psycho-therapy and educational therapy strongly hold that the school environment caring-sharing-supportive web of relationships) and classroom practices (process-based learning) must lead to mental health and well-being of learners. Children are needed to be seen as thinking-and-feeling individuals and their emotional quotient (EQ) matter. Schools are needed to be happy and joyful place wherein children feel emotionally secure and develop an emotional bond - a strong sense of belonging or we-feeling with the school.
A school that does not action-plan itself with emphasis on EQ or mental health development of learners gets marred with bullying, abuse, anxiety-feeding acts, violence, and suicidal tendencies. Bad schools (some educators call them killer schools) often blame children and stigmatise them if they feel low in the school. Many students, especial adolescents, commit suicide.
According to psychologist Noam Shpance, mental health should be treated as a process akin to 'how you drive, not where you’re going.' It has been found that suicide preventive or happy schools or mental-health fostering schools have the following two feature.
Sound social-pedagogical foundation: Caring-sharing emotional ties among learners and teachers; and non-competitive learning environment (School as a living entity with high EQ)
Sound instructional-pedagogical foundation: Cooperative learning; multiple intelligence based learning; process-based learning coupled with formative evaluation
The schools have to child's holistic development support system with freedom to seek help with teachers to whom children can relate to with their self-esteem intact.
Here is psychologist Erik Erikson advice to schools be become child-development support system as he says, “Life doesn’t make any sense without interdependence. We need each other, and the sooner we learn that, the better for us all.”
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