Best of intentions, the most misguided of results

If the Beijing Municipal Commission of Education (or as I will refer to it, the BMCE) has anything to do with it, soon all college students at Beijing universities will be required to take a course entitled, "Mental health for College Students" with a expanded section on 'relationship skills.'

According to the BMCE's plan, students would take a 16 to 18 hour class for one course credit. The course itself would cover nine chapters and follow a recently re-drafted syllabus outlined by the BMCE.

Upon hearing this news, I didn't know whether to laugh at be absurdity of it all or shake at my head at just shake my head at how misguided this entire idea seems.

After all, if love and relationships could be simply defined and outlined in a textbook, there wouldn't be millions upon millions of books, poems, songs, blogs, and even Twitter tags on the subject matter. But while many may wish it were so, relationships and love do not follow any set path nor do they they all fit in a certain mold. Perhaps if it did, then we could all take a class in high school, be done with it and literally move on with our lives.

Unfortunately, that's not how it works. What works for one person does not necessarily work for the next person. In fact, I'd personally argue that love's ability to morph and change according to the people and circumstances around it---much like a chameleon---is what makes it so mysterious and popular topic for literature, music and the like. With this in mind, I cannot see how anyone or any group of people could possibly outline in nine short chapters on what is is the 'right' and the 'wrong' way to handle relationships.



Furthermore, learning to maintain healthy relationships---romantic, platonic, familial or otherwise---is a vital part of matur that everyone has to do on their own. Despite the BCME's seemingly good intentions, in this arena they aren't doing students any favors by trying to substitute this very personal learning process with a class.

Additionally, I fear that the content of the class, particularly the portion pertaining to relationships, will be too quick to outline what's the 'right' and 'wrong' way to handle a relationship, especially considering how much (I feel) that the education system in China values the idea of right and wrong. As I mentioned above, when it comes to relationships, there is very little black and white area and a lot of gray. However, I fear with a class such as this, some students may feel that something personally is wrong or abnormal about him/herself since each of his/her lives doesn't meet points A, B and C as listed in the course guidelines, when in reality there are no set points or guidelines to relationships, or life, in the most general sense.

Moreover, I think including an entire nine chapters on romantic relationships alone in a course on mental health puts too much emphasis on the role of dating and romantic relationships have on people's lives, particularly those of young college-aged students. As I mentioned before (here and here), the pressure to find someone and get married by a certain age, especially for girls, in China is very large. Devoting at least a portion of a class on the subject matter I think would only increase this pressure. While undoubtedly for some people romantic relationships are a large part of his/her life, but that is not the case for everyone. These people should not be made to feel that their life is abnormal or missing something simply because romance isn't a large part of his/her life.

Included on these nine chapters on love and relationships, is one entitled "Happiness starts with learning how to love" (Chapter 7, according to the article). Though I know culturally the Chinese enjoy coming up with concise, pithy statements to simply summarize a larger topic at hand, I find this particular statement troubling for a couple of reasons. First of all, to say happiness only starts from experiencing romantic love, diminishes all the other forms of love and all other ways of achieving happiness. Who is anyone to say that romantic love is the best direct route to happiness?

Not to mention that from what I've seen, romantic love sometimes causes more pain than happiness; thus, if experiencing romantic love is the only starting point for being happy, then happiness is not all that it's cracked up to be. (Note: That last statement is supposed to read sarcastically.)

All jokes aside, I think the larger problem at hand with the chapter entitled "Happiness starts with learning how to love," is the fact that it essentially says that happiness can only be found through romantically connecting with other people. But I think it's a largely acknowledged truth that true happiness can only really begin when a person is first and most importantly of all happy and satisfied with him/herself. That is to say, if you are not able to accept yourself first and foremost for who and what you are, then nothing or no one outside of yourself can make up for that lack of self-confidence. Perhaps it's the individualistic American in me, but I feel that having a chapter entitled, "Happiness starts with learning how to love" ignores the important role the individual self plays in one's mental state and instead champions the idea that by finding some mystical, perfectly compatible 'other half' will solve all of person's unhappiness and personal problems. 

Now before I continue to bash what I think is a well-intentioned, but misguided idea, I will concede that requiring college students (or people in general, for that matter) isn't a bad idea at all. Understanding our own mental health needs is as equally vital, if not arguably more so, than our physical health. I also applaud the BMCE for wanting to address an issue---mental health---that is often ignored or shunned as nonsense, especially here in China. However, to think that mental health issues begin and end with romantic relationships is very naive. 

In the Global Times article about the new class, Lin Guirui, who, along with being a professor at Capital Normal University, also spearheaded the latest syllabus revision process, states, "Compared to other issues, failing in a relationship has been a main cause for mental health problems in college. We'll try to help students with their love skills, including how to properly confess one's love, accept another's or to turn it down."

Another interviewee in the same article, Xiong Hanzhong, the director of the Beijing Youth Stress Management Service Center and teacher of the mental health class in question at Beijing Normal University (yes, as in the same university I'm currently attending), even goes further to say that students' romantic troubles lead to extreme behaviors including suicide.

To pinpoint students' romantic troubles as the main reason for him or her committing suicide is ridiculous. From my understanding and without delving too much into these much larger and complex topics, suicide and depression are never caused solely by one factor and one factor only. That is to say, believing that one factor, and one factor only, can drive an otherwise perfectly healthy person to commit suicide is vastly oversimplifying how human psychology works and will not help students understand the larger topic at hand--mental health and how to stay mentally healthy.

The last issue, but in no ways least, I take with this class is it's approach to homosexuality. While I applaud the fact that the class addresses homosexuality (despite some critics' fear that it's unnecessary and "mislead students who are still exploring"), I fear that their approach to the topic will be very misguided, much like the rest of this course.

When questioned about the portion of the class that deals with homosexuality, Lin stated, "We are not going to 'correct' anyone's behavior, and only intend to help analyze the reason behind homosexuality, to see if it's genetic or because of family issues."

While Lin claims the aim of the syllabus on homosexuality isn't to try to 'correct' anyone's behavior, her diction in the above statement and the fact that class includes a discussion on what 'causes' homosexuality, implies that homosexuality is in some ways a wrong and deviant behavior. Considering the homosexual community's (not to mention the bisexual and transgender community's) constant daily battle against stigmatization (particularly in China), I fear that the course's approach to homosexuality will only do them a huge disservice and further the idea of homosexuality as 'wrong.' In China, where the idea of homosexuality is still new, strange and often stigmatized, I think this could be a huge blow to the homosexual community's fight for acceptance and equality.

In short, while the BMCE seems to have good intentions by requiring this course for all college students, it's approach to the subject matter seems completely misguided and ill-advised. While for the time being I think China, or in this case the BMCE, can still plead ignorance as an excuse, I fear that their very black-and-white way of thinking will never change. Considering China's rising prominence in not just the Asian arena, but also internationally, it's particularly troublesome since undoubtedly these domestic actions can and will have a larger effect internationally.

But as I often say, change takes time. I don't expect the Chinese government or Chinese cultural values to change overnight. While the Chinese economy has grown at an astronomical rate, I realize that it will take much longer for Chinese cultural and political values to catch up to where China's current economic status in the world.

Until then, all I can really do is shake my head and wonder how China can start off with such good intentions, but come up with end results that are so astonishingly off.

China, China, China. What will we ever do about you?