Can the barbed wire fence in the school support the falling children?

The Paper

2024-07-26 08:24Posted on the official account of Shanghai The Paper

It was an unusually silent meeting. In order to reduce the number of extreme incidents among students, protective nets should be installed in the corridors and windows of schools in the future. Six years later, Yang Damiao, the principal of the village elementary school, still remembers that the colleagues who participated in the meeting at that time all looked serious.

Yang Damiao was worried, "This is not the fundamental solution to the problem." But he couldn't say, "How can you raise objections when human lives are at stake?" His village is in the central region, and although there has never been a safety accident of this kind, it didn't take long for the school to install aluminum alloy steel windows.

It was 2018, and it was also the year of a sudden increase in campus protection nets. In the eyes of some teachers, students and protective net installers, this is a physical way to prevent students from falling from the building in the school.

After 6 years of installing aluminum alloy steel windows, the same problem once again caused Yang Damiao a headache. Due to a number of major fire casualties in educational institutions and schools at the beginning of the year, in March this year, the General Office of the Ministry of Education and the Office of the National Fire and Rescue Administration jointly issued a notice, clearly pointing out that the teaching buildings, libraries, canteens, collective dormitories and kindergartens of primary and secondary schools are strictly prohibited from setting up obstacles on doors and windows that affect escape and fire fighting and rescue.

A campaign to "break down windows and break nets" was launched across the country. According to incomplete statistics from The Paper, as of press time, 43 regions and 193 schools across the country have carried out "breaking windows and breaking nets", which is the same as the initial installation of protective nets, and is being publicized on the public accounts of many schools.

The protective net was installed and dismantled, all of which were to protect "life" - the "net at the bottom" at that time became an "escape obstacle" at this time. But for the real problems in the "life" topic, educators like Yang Damiao wonder: how to weave a soft and resilient inner web to support the falling children?

Build a network

During class, there was a sound in the corridor outside the classroom, and Wang Chen saw the workers pulling the wires one by one from downstairs to upstairs, and then made a noisy welding sound.

Barbed wire fence installed in the corridor of Wang Chen's school building. Unless otherwise noted, the pictures in this article are courtesy of the interviewee

It was September 2022, shortly after the start of the school year, and Wang Chen's school began to install protective nets in the corridors. About a week later, the corridors above the second floor of the three school buildings were installed. He was a student at an ordinary high school in Tianmen City, Hubei Province, and during his freshman year of high school, he witnessed a student commit suicide.

Liang Ruixue remembers the dull sound of landing very well. In 2022, she was a student at a key high school in Guangdong Province, and she had just finished reading class that day when she clearly heard a loud noise, thinking it was the sound of the door closing. A student who returned from a toilet break looked horrified. Liang Ruixue learned that it was a senior high school student who was about to take the first mock exam.

After some time, she saw that the school had installed barbed wire in the corridors.

Barbed wire fence installed in the corridor of Liang Ruixue's school building.

The junior high school that promised to attend tried to prevent it from happening. Not long after the end of the second mock high school entrance examination, a huge high-altitude anti-fall net was spread in the middle of the teaching building, like a stiff and inelastic trampoline. The head teacher explained that the reason for the installation was a student tragedy at a local vocational school.

It looks like a trampoline.

At the time of the interview, Xu had graduated from junior high school and was a senior high school student at a key middle school in Sichuan Province, which was listed in the forefront of the province's "super middle schools". The corridors of this "super high school" were fitted with barbed wire a year before he enrolled.

Some schools are more "protected". A student from an ordinary high school in Mianyang City told reporters that his school not only installed invisible protective nets as thick as pen refills in the corridors, but also hung a layer of fall prevention nets on the top of the second floor. The windows are also fitted with limiters that can only be opened about two palms wide. In the summer, the classroom was stuffy like a steamer, so he and his classmates secretly unscrewed the limiter, but they didn't expect to install it again the next week.

The windows of a high school in the eastern region are all equipped with limiters, so that the windows can only be opened about 19cm, and many high schools will adopt this method. The Paper reporter Chen Yuanyuan pictured

The most extreme is the metal partition that completely blocks light and air. A primary school teacher in Hebei Province told reporters that in 2022, a sixth-grade student at the school tried to commit suicide after being criticized by a teacher, and after the school installed metal partitions in the corridor, she "often felt breathless" as she passed.

There was once such a photo circulating on the Internet: in the patio-style teaching building structure, in the corridor of the three-sided teaching building, the iron fence and the banners outside the wall are stacked like sandwich biscuits, and the banner with yellow letters on a red background is printed - "The success of the college entrance examination comes from the success of every day, the success of the class, and the success of the questions......

Iron fence and banner in Hengshui No. 2 Middle School in 2015. From the web

When she saw the photo, Lu Xiaoxiao recognized it at a glance that it was the Zhisheng Building of Hengshui No. 2 Middle School where she had studied hard for two years. According to the Beijing News, in early April 2015, Hengshui No. 2 Middle School installed iron fences in the corridors of its teaching buildings and dormitories, and "the guardrails that were originally more than half a person high were heightened and sealed to the top." When interviewed, the school said only that it was doing this for the safety of students. Public information shows that before the iron fence was installed, there were at least two incidents of high school juniors falling from buildings in the school within half a year.

The installation of protective nets in schools sends an important signal: extreme events for students need urgent attention.

A May 2023 study on suicide mortality in China in the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention Weekly (CCDC Weekly) showed that suicide mortality among both urban and rural children aged 5-14 years showed an upward trend between 2010 and 2021. Between 2017 and 2021, suicide mortality also increased among adolescents aged 15-24 years. At the end of the paper, the authors recommend targeted prevention efforts for high-risk groups, such as children and adolescents.

As part of their prevention strategy, protective net installers have long been aware of this phenomenon.

Yang Qi, who has been in the protective net installation industry for 18 years, said that the school's concern that students "can't think of it" is the core demand of all primary and secondary schools to install invisible protective nets. He has the impression that since about 2018, there has been an increasing demand for schools to install protective nets.

Due to the lack of unified regulations, in reality, the appearance of protective nets is varied, including aluminum alloy steel windows, iron fences, high-altitude fall prevention nets, and metal partitions, among which "invisible protective nets" are the most common, and are frequently publicized by protective net installers and schools.

This is confirmed by the tender announcement of the invisible protection net of each primary and secondary school. According to public information, around 2022, the demand for the installation of invisible protective nets in primary and secondary schools will heat up again, and primary and secondary schools in Sichuan, Guizhou, Fujian, Guangdong, Jiangsu and other places have issued procurement and installation bidding announcements.

Lin Dapeng undertook the installation of protective nets across the country, and he had installed a primary school in Maotanchang Town, Lu'an City, Anhui Province.

For example, the installation area of a primary school in Maotanchang is 6,000 to 7,000 square meters, and the corridors and balconies of classrooms and dormitories are installed to the top, and the total cost is about 600,000 yuan.

According to incomplete statistics from The Paper, as of press time, at least 104 schools across the country have installed protective nets in the corridors of teaching buildings or dormitories, including 57 high schools, 16 junior high schools, 10 primary schools, 1 technical secondary school and 2 undergraduate colleges.

Of the remaining 18 schools, there are 3 9-year schools, 5 12-year schools and 9 full secondary schools, which have been fenced with barbed wire in at least one of the four stages of education: kindergarten, primary, junior high and high school.

"Grades are dignity, classroom is face"

Why do students end up in a dead end? Behind the installation of protective nets is the mystery of suicide on campus that teachers and students have talked about but has not been solved. "Being robbed of a mobile phone" and "being scolded" are often the most talked about.

"Suicide is a complex result of multiple factors, but the public often only sees the precipitating factors, such as the teacher snatching the student's mobile phone, the student having conflicts with others, and so on." ”

Suo Peng is the deputy director of the Psychological Steering Committee of the China Intelligent Engineering Research Association and the founder of the Safety Island Youth Suicide Hotline. At work, she often confronts teenagers with suicidal ideation.

Half of the cases she took over committed suicide due to psychosocial factors, such as school pressure, school bullying, family and peer relationships, etc., and half of the teenagers committed suicide due to mental illnesses such as bipolar disorder and depression.

Suo Peng said that the current social atmosphere is not friendly to the mental health development of teenagers, "It implies that young people, if you don't study well and can't find a good job, you are not a good person."

The content of those banners has been engraved in Lu Xiaoxiao's mind for a long time. In fact, in the photos searched on the Internet, most of the campus protection networks have pulled up long inspirational banners, and the two complement each other.

In a middle school in Yuechi County, Sichuan Province, on the side of the protective net, the exterior wall of the teaching building is pasted with a striking red slogan - "Grades are dignity, and the classroom is face". It alludes to the connection between the "barbed wire" that protects students in schools and another invisible "net" – the promotion of academic competition and discipline.

A slogan in a middle school in Yuechi County, Sichuan Province.

Academic competition is reflected in class rankings. Xu Promise studied in a "super middle school" in Sichuan Province, and the whole school knew the class rankings - Qingbei class, quasi-Qingbei class, head fire class, small fire class, big fire class, parallel class, and sports art class. He is the top student in the Qingbei class, but he is ranked lower.

As a student in the Qingbei class who was given the most hope by the school, Xu Yu clearly perceived that the exams from the third year of junior high school to the first year of high school were becoming more and more intensive, and he had almost no complete rest time. Regular classes are held from Monday to Thursday, competition classes are held on Fridays and Saturdays, and one day off every Sunday. In this way, there is only one day left, and sometimes it is used for exams - semi-monthly exams are arranged on weekends, which has little impact on the normal teaching order.

In this learning competition environment, corporal punishment is also rationalized. Zhou Hao, who studied in Hengshui No. 2 Middle School, remembered that his biology teacher would directly take the blackboard and send it to the other party's mouth because the student couldn't answer the question.

often saw classmates being punished, and when it was Zhou Hao's turn, he found that he had acquiesced to such a rule, "This can be regarded as a kind of group pressure."

Wu Bin, a high school teacher in a county town in Henan Province, has been teaching for 24 years, and his school installed protective nets in the corridors two years ago. He agrees with the school's strict management system, "Only when you get rid of bad problems can you do your best." ”

Wu Bin told reporters that all behaviors unrelated to learning in their school are considered disciplinary violations, in addition to the regular behaviors such as being late and carrying mobile phones, there are also reading novels, playing with electronic watches, and eating in the teaching building. As for the relationship between men and women who are too close, it is a major violation of discipline.

If a student violates discipline, not only will the student be criticized by the whole school, but the class teacher's quantitative management score and performance will be deducted.

In Lu Xiaoxiao's cognition, in Hengshui, getting into a good university seems to be the most important and only way in life, "If you want to drop out, your family will say, 'Why can't you stand it?'" ’”。

In the second semester of the third year of high school, Lu Xiaoxiao dropped out of school with a classmate from Dezhou, Shandong, who couldn't sleep for several days and couldn't stand the pressure, so he transferred back to his hometown. There is no shortage of outstanding students in Hengshui No. 2 Middle School, and if the grades are average, there will be no teachers to retain them when they drop out.

After the corridor was equipped with barbed wire, Guangdong student Liang Ruixue's books could no longer fit on the guardrail, and she used to rely on the corridor to endorse books. Now, the net is so dense that the gap is as big as a slap, and she can't poke her head out, even if she wants to greet her classmates in the opposite building. "It really gives people a very closed feeling."

Liang Ruixue is in her freshman year, and she still feels that "there is pressure in all directions" when she recalls her high school life, and every time the pressure reaches a critical point, she confides in her mother to release a little bit, and when it is about to overflow next time, she will release a little more.

However, more of the students interviewed said that in the face of academic pressure, it is difficult for families to provide effective psychological support, and even become the party to exert pressure.

Promise that grades will regress, and parents will put on a face. He was born in Qinghai, and when he was six years old, his parents took him back to Sichuan, considering the limited educational resources in the area. In order to provide for his education, his father worked outside the home, and his mother quit her job and has been studying full-time since elementary school. When he was accepted into one of the best super high schools in the city, his family was happy, which meant half a foot in the top university.

Although his parents' life revolved around him and gave him a lot of material support, they also quarreled from time to time about his declining grades.

On the surface, the academic pressure promised comes from his parents, classmates, and teachers, but he believes that these people are not the main cause of the stress, "[The pressure] will be transmitted to you through the people around you." ”

According to the aforementioned study of suicide mortality, the current educational perception of a significant number of Chinese parents and teachers that "academic performance is more important than anything else" puts a tremendous amount of stress on adolescents, and that mismanagement of stress can lead to severe mental disorders and increased suicide risk.

Wang Yingguang, director of the psychology center of a key middle school in Shenzhen, told reporters that in the process of psychological census, she found that the students' peer pressure and academic pressure were relatively high, and the indicators of depression, anxiety and compulsion were relatively high.

According to incomplete statistics from The Paper, 41 of the 104 schools equipped with protective nets have been rated as demonstration schools, key schools, first-class schools or star-rated schools. These schools are mainly concentrated in the three provinces of Hubei, Henan, and Hebei.

Comparison of a middle school in Yongcheng, Henan Province before and after installing a protective net.

In the three years of Hengshui No. 2 Middle School, Lu Xiaoxiao was so focused on learning that she never thought about looking up at the sky, let alone barbed wire, her yearning for being admitted to a good school had overshadowed her negative emotions.

Lu Xiaoxiao said that she had mixed feelings about Hengshui No. 2 Middle School. When she went to college, she realized that such an educational model deprived her of her learning ability and subjectivity, and she needed to learn to eat and play from scratch. But there is also a good thing about it, she got a good grade from it, and now a graduate student at a 211 university in Beijing, she finds that she has been trained to be particularly able to adapt to high pressure.

After graduating from Hengshui Middle School in 2019, Zheng Qi was successfully admitted to a university in Beijing and is now working in Beijing.

In the three years of high school, he ranked low in the experimental class, afraid that others would look down on him, and his mentality became autistic, and he didn't want to talk to people very much.

Hengshui No. 5 Middle School was chosen for junior high school and Hengshui Middle School was chosen for high school, and Zheng Qi valued the high admission rate. He was born in a rural area of Hebei Province, and when he was in primary school, his father was sick and could no longer work, and the family's main source of income was cut off, and his mother cooked for his employer to support the family. His goal in high school was realistic, which was to get into a good university.

A classroom at Zhengqi High School.

Looking back at the examination experience in Hengshui Middle School, "Do you say this is a kind of luck or not?" In the interview, he asked himself, "You also have to consider the person who chooses this set of things, where is the scope of his choice, and what kind of resources he wants and can have, what is his own situation?" You can't stand in the perspective of a person from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, and judge the choice of people in Hengzhong, it's unfair. ”

Campus Mental Health: A Weak Pressure Relief Valve

For students, schools and families that place great emphasis on grades and ignore other aspects are like the "body" and "lid" that make up the "pressure cooker".

Lu Xiaoxiao is a 2019 graduate of Hengshui No. 2 Middle School, and during her time at the school, she had never heard that the school had a psychological counseling room and a psychology teacher, but only remembered the "heart-to-heart talk" session. In the evening self-study class, if a student fails to do well in the exam, the teacher will call him into the corridor to talk and ask him why he did not do well in the exam and why he did not get the question right. Lu Xiaoxiao has the impression that no teacher will care, "Have you felt too much pressure recently?" ”

Almost all of the teachers and students interviewed in schools with barbed wire fences mentioned a common problem: the lack of mental health education.

The government's focus on mental health on campus began early on. In 1999, the Ministry of Education issued the "Several Opinions on Strengthening Mental Health Education in Primary and Secondary Schools", requiring that the training of mental health education teachers be included in local and school teacher training programs. By 2021, the Ministry of Education issued the Notice on Strengthening the Management of Students' Mental Health, requiring each primary and secondary school to have at least one full-time mental health education teacher.

During the interview, one student said that there are students who go to the psychological counseling room every day at the school, and her classmates have been there and commented very well.

However, it is more common for mental health education to be non-existent. A middle school student in Hubei Province said that the door to the school's counseling room was often closed; A middle school student in Guangdong Province said that the psychology teacher would give a lecture once a semester, and usually could only make an appointment for online consultation, so it was difficult to meet the psychology teacher. A middle school student in Sichuan Province said that once a semester, the class teacher would only select one or two students from the class to attend the psychology lecture.

Mental health is not at the top of the value spectrum in schools. When asked if he had the opportunity to ask the psychology teacher for help, Zheng Qi's first reaction was a little dazed, "If you go, it is estimated that you have to ask the head teacher for leave, otherwise how can you go to psychological counseling in class or other times?" "The study schedule is very tight, and there are teachers watching me," he explains.

On social media platforms, many students reported that the attitude of their psychological teachers towards privacy protection is the primary condition for determining whether they are willing to seek psychological assistance.

Once in an exam, Promise's score dropped to the top 500 in his grade, and he decided to go to the school's counseling room. The house was converted from an office, but with partitions designed as a relatively private space, with two sofas and a desk. In that reassuring environment, he promised to confide in the psychology teacher that he was in a bad mood because of the pressure of studying.

It didn't take long for things to take a subtle turn. A few days later, the promised homeroom teacher specially called him outside the classroom and comforted him that he could be admitted to high school, and that the high school entrance examination was just a process for him. Although the homeroom teacher's words were encouraging, Xu still felt uncomfortable, "Why did the counseling room inform my homeroom teacher without my consent?" ”

This small incident destroyed Xu Promise's trust in the psychology teacher, and later the study pressure was too great, and he chose to talk to his friends or "mess up" for a while.

"Whether it's on or off campus, students' privacy must be respected." Wang Yingguang said that in her middle school, once a student shows a high-risk signal, the psychology teacher will definitely ask for permission, clearly telling the student that this part is confidential and needs to be communicated with parents or class teachers. If it is not a high-risk situation, the student will consult the psychology teacher and will not disclose it to the class teacher.

The lack of psychological teachers is also one of the reasons why students cannot get help in time. The school where Long Lifei teaches has a total of 3,000 students, but only one full-time and one part-time psychology teacher. Throughout the county, she found that such problems were widespread, and the best schools had only two full-time mental health teachers. During the conversation, Huang Ling, a primary school psychology teacher in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, also boasted that she was a "lone seedling".

Psychology teachers, however, have a lot of work energy and are required to do a lot of part-time jobs. Fang Wenjing, a psychology teacher at a nine-year school in Hunan, has a part-time job as a principal and an administrative post in the school, and is "as busy as an octopus every day."

The material work to deal with the inspection is more like Fang Wenjing's work focus. Huang Ling has the same dilemma, she said, it is not important to do well in class, what is important is to write news about activities, stand guard for the week, cooperate with superiors to check materials, and do other chores arranged by the school.

Huang Ling said that the principal had made it clear at the meeting that the teacher would not be protected if something went wrong. She is well aware that the purpose of these efforts is to protect the school and teachers from being held accountable, or rather, to protect herself.

Under the issue of safety protection, the function of primary and secondary school psychology teachers is becoming more and more embarrassing. After just joining the work for a year, Fang Wenjing felt that her enthusiasm had been consumed a lot. The feeling of powerlessness hit from time to time, and she could only comfort herself, "Make the materials beautiful, wash and sleep." ”

"But I really wanted to do something." Fang Wenjing added.

Suo Peng also noticed that the pressure on the school teachers was very high, "Suicide prevention should not be just the job of the school. Suo Peng believes that psychological problems originate in society, and these front-end problems are difficult for school psychology teachers to solve, and need the support of family, medical care, school and society.

How to Reduce Teen Suicide Rate? Suopun believes that the most important thing is to create an environment with humanistic care.

"No matter what I eat, what I wear, what I do, how well I study, I have the right to live, to enjoy sunshine, air, love and warmth, and to pursue happiness in various ways." ”

"Making up for the dead"

When the invisible protective net woven by the psychological level still cannot stop the falling students, the physical physical protective net should be born.

In 2023, psychology teacher Long Lifei's high school will also install protective nets in the corridors, and she has also noticed that many high schools in her county have installed them.

A school plaque in the eastern region reads "Safety First, Prevention First". The Paper reporter Chen Yuanyuan pictured

The school did not explain the reason for the installation of protective netting. She speculated that this was the school's "helpless move" - the school had sought many solutions at the mental health level, such as psychological lectures, psychological group support, etc., but extreme events were still happening, and finally they didn't know how to prevent it, so they adopted such a "relatively simple" and "easy to control" method.

When asked if he had seen the installation of protective nets in school corridors, Suo Peng replied, "I have seen too much." She believes that schools are crowded places, and if there are frequent accidents of students jumping off buildings, it is natural to take good protection.

She has the impression that around 2021, the problem of adolescent suicide has become serious. Suo Peng said that in the management of the site, the installation of protective nets can play a certain restraining role. "At least, they won't be able to jump, but that will only stop the last step."

More complicated and difficult to solve is the protection against the cause of suicide, in this regard, Suo Peng believes that the protective net will not play a role, and even play a side effect, which in turn reminds students that there has been a jumping incident. This has the potential to reinversely reinforce suicidal thoughts, especially for students who already have thoughts but are not strong.

Since the installation of the high-altitude fall prevention net, Xu Promise felt uneasy, his classroom was on the first floor, and when he went out, he obviously saw a layer of net covering the top of his head, the mesh was not dense, close to the size of a human head, just enough to support a life.

Promise will be indignant when he sees it, believing that installing protective netting is the school's exempt strategy. At the same time, he also "regrets that those students are not helped, because I will also have times when I am depressed, so I will understand the predicament that they can't get out of."

Later, when he entered high school, the corridors above the second floor of the school were equipped with protective nets, and although his classroom was on the first floor, every time he left the school building, he could see the gray gold wire wrapping around the building, and the feeling of unease was like a shadow.

The corridor of a high school building in Hunan Province has been fenced out from the sunset.

"[Installing barbed wire] is essentially a remedy." Suo Peng told The Paper that what needs to be paid more attention to is that "the front-end work is far from enough." ”

Usually, Suo Peng will go to all parts of the country to do psychological crisis intervention. From another perspective, psychological crisis intervention, especially in the early stage, is also to let people who have come to a desperate situation in their lives, feel temporary warmth and security in this atmosphere, so as to have the ability to regain the power of self-healing.

The front-end work includes life education, parent education, discovering early warning signs of students' psychological crisis, timely assessment of risk levels, and taking different measures according to the risk situation.

That day, after the senior high school students jumped off the building, the class teachers of Liang Ruixue's school stood at the door and did not let the students go out. By the time Liang Ruixue went out, the scene had been cleaned up. That night, the class teacher held a class meeting to warn everyone to cherish life. This turmoil passed very peacefully, as if it had never happened, but it left a mark in Liang Ruixue's heart.

Suo Peng often encounters that after the suicide of a student, the school's first reaction is to block the news as much as possible because it is afraid that other students will be psychologically affected and avoid triggering a crisis of public opinion. She explained that it has to do with human instinct, which is to instinctively deny, withdraw and defend when a crisis comes, like an ostrich, "They (schools) may feel that if they do this, others will not find out, and speaking out will stimulate everyone." ”

The core reason, she argues, is that too little is known about suicide, which has led to some prevention efforts lagging behind, ineffective and even a little ironic.

Life education is often misunderstood. Some schools will warn students that safety education such as drowning prevention is not allowed, Suo said. "This is called life admonition, it is terror education."

This spring, Suo Peng received an invitation to a suicide crisis management case, and for the first time, the middle school took the initiative to invite crisis intervention workers to the campus. Within a week, Suo Peng rushed to the school, where she learned that it was a high school junior with a high suspicion of schizophrenia who had committed suicide under the control of delusional auditory hallucinations.

After that, Suo Peng held a life education class meeting for the student's class, conducted group crisis counseling for the student's roommates, and counseled the teachers and school leaders who handled the incident individually, summarizing the shortcomings of the crisis intervention work in advance.

After contacting all parties, Suo Peng found a problem, like other suicide incidents she had come into contact with in the past, the student who had the accident in this incident had expressed the words "It's useless to do anything by yourself", and the people around him just advised him not to think like this, but they didn't realize that this was a very dangerous signal.

"All the signs of suicide are asking for help." Suo Peng said. These suicide signals are clearly indicated in professional work guidelines and can be learned by everyone, just like CPR. She has a suggestion that when you recognize the signs of suicide, you can listen patiently to the other person's troubles when the other person is more trusting, and tell the other person to ask for help when the suicidal thoughts are strong and difficult to control.

This is also the focus of Suopong's crisis intervention work for teenagers, so that teachers and parents can learn professional methods of suicide prevention, and "do life education and help-seeking education" for teenagers. The cause of suicide is difficult to solve, and it is an individual effort.

Suo Peng is asking for help in popular science education.

Suo Peng found that some teenagers have a lot of confusion about life. She is not shy about talking to teenagers about death, and treats every opportunity for crisis intervention as a life education. "Life education is a big theme," Suo said, adding that it is a variety of entertaining and playful ways to make people feel the power and warmth of life, such as writing an epitaph for a dead pet, writing a letter to a loved one in heaven, or nurturing seeds with their own hands. "In short, it is to observe the world, make people feel the loveliness of life, and love the world."

Dismantle the net

In April this year, Yang Damiao received a notice from his superiors that for the sake of fire safety, the aluminum alloy steel windows that had been installed for 6 years must be removed.

The cause of the incident was a fire in a store in Xinyu, Jiangxi Province on January 24, 2024, which caused a fire caused by illegal construction by construction personnel, resulting in 39 people killed and 9 injured. In addition, the relevant person in charge of the National Fire and Rescue Bureau said that there were obstacles such as anti-theft nets and billboards that affected the safe escape of personnel and fire fighting and rescue in this accident.

A week earlier, on January 19, a fire broke out in the dormitory of a rural boarding school in Chengxian County, Henan, killing 13 people and injuring four. At present, the cause of the accident has not been officially announced, but according to the "Sanlian Life Weekly", after the incident, a student said that the dormitory has windows, but the school considers that it is not safe for students to enter and exit through the windows, and the outside is equipped with protective nets. The dormitory has two doors at the front and back, but one door is blocked by the bed, and only one door leads to the hallway.

In addition, since the start of the spring school year this year, the National Fire and Rescue Administration has counted 516 school fires nationwide between March 1 and May 27, a total increase of 2% year-on-year.

Now, these major school fire accidents have attracted the attention of the local education department and fire department, and the fire inspection storm has radiated to other areas, and the protective nets installed to protect the safety of students have once again become the focus of the problem.

After receiving the notice of "breaking the window and breaking the net", Yang Damiao had a headache, because he was the one who wanted to leave the protective net.

Six years ago, his superiors asked Yang Damiao's school to install barbed wire in the corridors and windows, and he negotiated for a long time, but later persuaded his superiors to agree not to install barbed wire in the corridors, but only to install aluminum alloy steel windows on the windows, citing the fact that "primary school students are relatively small and the walls of the corridors are relatively high".

This time asked to remove the aluminum alloy steel windows, Yang Damiao's worry came again, "Now that these barbed wire fences are removed, will there be a situation where children will accidentally fall down in the future?" ”

Yang Damiao communicated with his superiors many times, and finally agreed to sawed off a piece to escape, and saved the aluminum alloy steel window on the window.

An iron railing was finally removed from the windows of Yang Damiao's school. The Paper reporter Chen Yuanyuan pictured

Yang Damiao's worries are over for the time being. As for the mental health of the students, his village is surrounded by mountains, and the sound of chickens and running water can be heard on campus, and the mountains protect the children to some extent, they have no academic pressure, they can run carefree between classes, and there is a remote mental health class every month, and on the other side of the screen, the teachers in Shanghai will teach them classes.

There are still a large number of schools whose protective nets have not been removed, and the promised school is one of them. However, barbed wire has also brought unexpected fun. The promised class was briefly changed to the third floor with a high-altitude fall prevention net, and between classes, occasionally a few birds frolicked on the fall prevention net, and he and a few classmates leaned on the guardrail to watch.

Suddenly, Xu Promise and his classmates burst into laughter.

Poster Design: Bai Lang

(All names have been changed except for Suo Peng)

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