Of all the students I know, preschool all the way through graduate students, four have been on my mind. This school year, they are seniors in high school. In Come Set Them Free: A Tale of Four Teenagers, you read about one of them—Lili—and how children in China are slaves to the education system. Now Lili along with JR, Lucy, and Willow have reached their final year of high school, a grueling period as they prepare for the college entrance exam next June.

The pressure on school children in China is immense. It starts in elementary school and peaks during their senior year of high school. Lili, JR, and Lucy board at their schools. They are in the classroom until 11pm. Lights out is at 12, and then they’re up the next morning by 5:30 or 6:00. Although Willow lives at home, her schedule isn’t much better. She’s up each morning by 6:30, at school until 9pm, and does a couple hours of homework before going to bed around midnight. For all four seniors, this schedule repeats seven days a week with a half day off Sunday afternoons—when they are assigned extra homework.   

When Lili arrived at her school the first of September, she and her classmates were given a practice college entrance exam. Perhaps the school was checking to see if the students had kept up with their piles of summer homework, or teachers may have wanted to measure each student’s starting point and give them a goal to work toward. When Lili saw her results, she felt good about her progress and confident about her plans to go to college. Three of her classmates, whatever their reasons, had a different reaction. They attempted suicide. Only one survived.

When my colleague shared what happened at Lili’s school, I suggested we take our four seniors before the throne but especially Lili. My friend responded, “Especially all four of them because what happened with Lili’s classmates is likely also happening at JR, Lucy, and Willow’s schools.”

Every year, stories come out, when they’re not covered up, about suicides among school children. The number of incidents grows while the age of the children gets younger and younger. One news headline from 2023 reads, “Chinese youth suicide rate quadruples in over a decade.” The statistics measured two groups of youth, 5-14- and 15-24-year-olds. The quadrupling happened among the first group.  

And nothing changes.

I try very hard to speak with respect about my adopted country. That’s what Water for the Weary is all about, sharing good news from a distant land. Usually, good news is easy to find. When it’s not, I push myself to look for positive in the negative or to keep my mouth shut. However, when we’re talking about injustice, especially in my field of expertise, particularly when the youngest and “least” are involved, righteous anger spills over into word and deed.

• writing blog posts for parents and teachers on the importance of play, sleep, and rest
• training future teachers about learner needs, academic and also physical, emotional, and spiritual
• sending encouraging messages to our four seniors, reminding them that they are loved and not alone, substituting for parents who are absent or cannot understand because they never completed school themselves
• telling students that sleep is as vital as studying (if not more) and advising them to skip needless homework like rote copying
• encouraging parents to stand up for their children when teachers complain, even giving them some trigger phrases to use (because teachers, if nothing else, don’t want to be blamed for a student’s suicide)

Yet, what good are the small efforts of one insignificant outsider in an out-of-the-way place? What more could I do before another student chooses suicide as the only way out?

My watchtower is exactly where I should be as a new year begins. Will you join me from yours?

The system is unjust. It is literally killing children. How are You going to orchestrate change? School children, including Lili, JR, Lucy, and Willow, are slaves to the system. Will You open prison doors and break the chains of the oppressed? These young souls cannot see a good way out. Will You flood them with peace beyond human understanding, give them tangible hope, and illumine the pathway to life?

Photo by InstaWalli.