Guangming Network commentator: The problem of "sub-health" of college teachers should not be underestimated

【Reading tips】Peking University research focuses on the physical status of college teachers: the number of graduate students is also an influencing factor

Guangming Network commentator: "The overall physiological health status of college teachers is not optimistic, and it shows an increasing trend year by year; multiple occupational loads also have different degrees of significant impact on the detection rate of their physiological diseases." Recently, at the 2021 Annual Meeting of the Higher Education Professional Committee of the China Society for Education Development Strategy and the Symposium on the Construction of a Strong Country in Higher Education during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, the person in charge of a research project on the academic occupational load and health status of teachers shared their findings.

College teachers, in people's traditional impressions, work stability, time freedom, and high social recognition seem to be an "ideal job". However, if you have close friends and family who are college teachers, then this perception is likely to be subverted. Although the work of teachers in colleges and universities is stable, but the pressure of scientific research and teaching is huge, especially for young teachers, undertaking a large number of teaching tasks for undergraduates and graduate students often only means completing the basic workload, in addition to which scientific research, articles, applications, monographs have almost become the "standard" of college teacher evaluation. In those colleges and universities that implement the "either promotion or go" system, if the work performance during the employment period does not meet the standards, let alone that "promotion" is hopeless, and it is a fluke not to "go".

Under all kinds of tangible and invisible pressures, college teachers can only follow the baton of assessment and constantly compress their "free time". From the workday to the weekend, to the winter and summer vacations, many college teachers, especially young teachers, are tired of running for their lives to avoid job transfers, and many of them are sacrificing their health in the work of exhaustion. A survey of the health status of college teachers in a southern province showed that only about 10% of the teachers in colleges and universities in the province were in a basic state of health, about 20% were in various disease states, and about one-third to one-half of the remaining 70% of the people who were sub-healthy were severely sub-healthy, that is, on the edge of the disease.

Unlike some practitioners of pure physical labor, college teachers both consume mental energy and physical strength, and many also bear the heavy work pressure of "not rising or leaving", which brings many health risks. A survey shows that due to long-term standing teaching, staying up late to engage in scientific research, etc., many teachers suffer from different degrees of occupational diseases, of which chronic laryngitis, varicose veins, hemorrhoids, cervical spondylosis, respiratory diseases, and sub-health have become the six occupational diseases that plague teachers.

In addition to these common occupational diseases of teachers, the mental health of college teachers is not optimistic. On the one hand, the harsh conditions of the employment period assessment have constituted one of the root causes of anxiety for many college teachers, especially young teachers; on the other hand, in recent years, the high incidence of psychological problems such as depression among college students, the survey at the beginning of this article pointed out that there is a positive proportional correlation between graduate school training and the sub-health of college teachers. Under the background of the continuous expansion of the scale of postgraduate training and the uneven quality of postgraduate students, college teachers bear the pressure and joint responsibility for the guidance of postgraduate papers, which aggravates the anxiety, sensitivity and melancholy of these college teachers.

Man is the purpose of development, and health is the premise of everything. It is true that this systemic pressure on teachers in colleges and universities is caused by the entire academic ecological environment of colleges and universities, and to put it more broadly, it is also a need for social progress and maintaining vitality, but this pressure should be maintained at a reasonable limit, just like a leather band, long length is the purpose, and judgment is a tragedy, which is the purpose of development and means, principles and methods, processes and results are necessary to unify, and it is also the place where the top-level design of higher education and the arrangement of the university evaluation system need to be carefully considered. For individual college teachers, it is more important to occasionally look up at the stars while burying their heads in the car, so that they will not easily lose their way.

(Please indicate the source of the reprint "Guangming Network", the author "Guangming Network Commentator")

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Source: Guangming Network