The book of love, coming soon to a campus near you
- Source: Global Times
- [08:25 April 13 2011]
- Comments
Campus lovers kiss on graduation day in the summer of 2009 at a Beijing university. College students in the capital will be taught how to deal with relationships in an updated course that may become mandatory. Photo: CFP
By Wei Na
A course called "mental health for college students" that is currently elective may become mandatory at all Beijing universities. The final draft of the new course syllabus for college students was recently completed by the Beijing Municipal Commission of Education and offers expanded content about "relationship skills" and "confusion over homosexuality," compared to the first draft that was enforced in 2005.
"It's about time to change, because students have changed a lot," said Zhao Guowei, an official with the commission.
To get one course credit, students would need to attend 16 to 18 class hours and complete a textbook of nine chapters total.
Chapter four is all about communication skills, while chapter seven specifically deals with relationships and is called, "Happiness starts with learning how to love."
"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," said Lin Guirui, a professor at Capital Normal University who led the updating of the syllabus.
Yang Wei, a 20-year-old China Agriculture University student, found the idea of learning about love in class "refreshingly interesting," but doubted the course's effectiveness.
"I don't think theories in a textbook can walk us through maintaining a relationship," Yang said. "If it could, then there wouldn't be so many shengn and shengnan," she added, using the terms for people who have passed the average age of marriage but remain single.
Xiong Hanzhong, director of the Beijing Youth Stress Management Service Center, also teaches the mental health course at Beijing Normal University and worried about the methods of delivering the syllabus' "good wishes."
"How to maintain a relationship should be a big lesson in college, and many don't know how to confess their love and think little of themselves after being rejected, which might lead to extreme behavior like committing suicide," Xiong said, adding that the lessons should not be exclusively from the textbook. "They need to engage in more experimental practices, like role-playing."
