Name: Pham Anh Thu

Class: 17E3
“School is bad for children?”
Draft 1

Children are sent to school at a certain age because it’s believed that academic institution is
an appropriate place where children have the chance to develop their abilities. It is
undeniable that school has positive impacts on students’ development; however, schools
are not always beneficial with students. In my opinion, school is not the good place for
students due to its negative impacts on both children’s mental health and behaviours.

Schools are regarded as one of the reason which lead to students’ mental illness such as
stressful, aggressive. First of all, students are under pressure to take numerous exams at
school which make them stress. Most schools are built based on exam-oriented system
which overemphasize on high score; hence, students’ intellectual capacity is often evaluated
through test results. Take curriculum in China as a typical example. According to Kirakpatrick
& Zang (2011), in China, score is regarded as the only criteria which people based on to
evaluate children’s worth. Students who get high results might be provided more chances to
expose to better educational environment than lower-scoring students. As a result, students
have to cope with a large amount of exercises to get the courses’ purposes. Secondly,
students are influenced by hundred negative words which come from their teachers at
school. Elbla (2012) claimed that many school-age children suffer from rude words as a
punishment because of their misbehaviours. Teachers often speak bad words such as:
donkey, stupid, goat to their students at classes (Elbla, 2012). Students who suffer from
verbal bullying are often lack of concentration at classes; hence, they had poor academic
results. Besides, these rude words have impacts on children feelings such as upset and
aggressive.

School’s environment and stress from school lead to myriad of students’ misbehavior such
as cheating and violent actions. Firstly, students are under pressure of gaining high score in
the exams to prove their worth with their teachers, parents and society. In order to
accomplish the purpose, school-age children need to learn and remember a lot of abstract
theories. However, because of numerous tests in a short period time, students do not have
enough time for preparing. Moreover, in the competitive environment in school where top
students will have more chances than the lower, students choose to cheat for achieve
better score than their friends. As a results, cheating become a common phenomenon at
school, which might impact on children’s personalities formation. Secondly, some children
are often bullied at school by their peers which lead to some misbehaviors especially
stealing and bringing weapons. A survey conducted in 1997, Rigby reported that students
are bullied at least once a week. The victims are likely to obey the people who bully them to
avoid troubles and injury. As a result, they often steal money from their relatives to give it
to the bullies. In addition, it is reported that the victims are likely to brings weapons such as
knife in order to protect themselves from the bullies (Brockkenbrough et al., 2002).

Based on the evidences which I mentioned above, it seems that the drawbacks of school
outweigh the advantages which schools bring. I believed that school cannot offer the
environment for students to develop