School installs anti-suicide barriers across campus
Print Edition
You might think a picture posted online recently was of a correctional facility. Iron bars guard every stairwell and red propaganda banners flutter in the wind.
However, the compound is not a prison, but a prestigious school in north China.
Hengshui No. 2 High School in Hengshui, Hebei Province, has installed “anti-suicide iron barriers” across its campus after at least two of the school’s pupils killed themselves in the past year.
Yesterday, a member of staff told the Beijing Times that the school installed the barriers “out of safety concerns,” but said they also put plants on them to “lighten the mood.”
“The pot plants are supposed to make the building feel less bleak,” the teacher said.
Hengshui boasts several high schools notorious for their exacting approach to exam preparation.
Many critics say that the schools are nothing more than sweatshops that churn out successful gaokao, the college entrance exam, results.
The gaokao, which usually takes place in June, has been criticized as an academic treadmill that confines pupils’ creativity and interests, not to mention exerting tremendous pressure on them.
One pupil told the newspaper that many of the school’s buildings were only “partly guarded” but that the building for pupils who were due to sit the exam, was “fully guarded.”
“I think it’s understandable; the school is doing it for our safety,” one pupil said.
Tian Susu, an expert with the Hebei Academy of Social Sciences, said the barriers may make the school feel like a penitentiary, but it was an extreme example.
There was wide criticism online, however, with many people saying that the pupils had been turned into “angels in prison.”
“Maybe the school should consider a policy of more love and care?” was one comment.
Officials with the school and the local education bureau declined to comment.
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