Suicide

I have a sad but unsurprising story to relay from my college. I came into the office on Monday and one of the teachers greeted me with the grim news: one of the students in our department had commited suicide.

My first thought was something like "my god, I hope it wasn't one of my students."

Fortunately (is it wrong to say that?) it wasn't. Sydney, the other English teacher, was her instructor. To the best of my knowledge I never spoke to or knew her at all, aside from passing in the hall a few times I'd guess.

Still it was a terrible way to start the week. We learned later that she had always had family problems - her parents had wanted a boy as a child, and when she was born gave her up for adoption - and also that the stress of dealing with school had recently really gotten to her.

Young suicides are a real problem in South Korea (which has the highest suicide rate of anywhere in the world) and I've recently learned from personal experience that it's a serious problem in China as well. The reason is simple: education is the only measure of success for young people in these cultures, and the prospects of potential failure can sometimes be so overwhelming that young students do something desperate. Peruse the ESL message boards for Asia and you'll be shocked at how many "My Student Killed Him/Herself" threads there are.

Sad.