A survey was conducted covering 2,000 elementary school students in Nanjing, and 40.1 percent of the interviewees said they would rather die. To answer a question whether your teachers like you, some 40 percent of the interviewees answered no, while more than 90 percent of the teachers said they liked their students when interviewed.

The survey indicated that the teachers and students lacked emotional communications between each other, and also barriers existed between children and their parents, said Song Ning, vice chief of the Educational Science Academy of Nanjing. In additional, some bad influence such as the negative things on TV will affect children.

At noon of June 13, an 8-year-old girl didn't return home, and her parents and neighbors looked for her anxiously, finally, they found her in a garbage house. To their surprise, the girl hid a knife in her bag and a suicide letter saying "Mom and Dad, I don't want to go home everyday, mother didn't play with me and father only beat me, and sometimes I really want to jump to my death from the window, you don't look for me any longer!"

The girl's mother worked in other places, and her father was busy in his business, so the girl was raised by her grandmother. Her grandmother never cared about her study until one day the school asked the girl to leave school. The girl hadn't been to school for more than one month, but picking up garbage with an old man. Last year, the girl was transferred to another elementary school, but she was still very naughty, always disturbing other students at class. The teacher warned her to leave school if she didn't change her bad habits. The girls' father beat her, which aroused her suicide idea.

“I don’t know what to do now,” said the father sadly.

The society, schools and parents should pay more attention to children's psychological health, Song said.

(Eastday.com. 06/17/2001)