When you ask students from two different schools in two different countries if they are satisfied with their educational experience and happy in day-to-day life at school, the answers are startlingly different. In an American school, where the educational system requires less hours of study, there is more of an emphasis on sports and the schools try to create a sense of community, students say they are largely unhappy with it. In Switzerland, where students are expected to spend more time in class and studying, and the focus is on just that, the students seem more satisfied with their education. What is going on?
I myself have been a part of both these systems, namely an American school in Ankara and a Swiss school in Zürich, and in order to get a better look at both of these systems and be able to compare the different effects they had on their students’ mental health I decided to create two identical surveys and ask the students themselves what they thought about their school and how they felt being a part of it.
When I looked at the results a couple of weeks later, I was amazed. I had always thought that the American school had provided somewhat of a “family community” and yet, looking at the results I had gotten from the American students I could see that 77.5% of them experienced depression, 36.7% of them were either often or occasional bullied, and 16.3% thought about self-harm. Looking at how the Swiss students had done, I was even more surprised. In a school where a “family community” was not a priority, the focus being on grades and the curriculum, 58.3% of students – almost 20% less than in the American school – experienced depression. Slightly fewer underwent (32.4%) bullying – although 21.4% had thoughts about self-harm.
I decided to get an expert’s opinion. Dr. Carmen Lahusen is a certified therapist and psychiatrist living in Zürich and working with teens around the age of 15. One of the first questions I discussed with her was whether the time spent in school or working for school plays an important role in students’ mental health. “In my opinion,” she told me, “it is the quality and not the quantity that matters; social well-being within the class and the school is relevant.”
Taking that into account I turned to the answers I had gotten from students and focused on “quantity”. I found that students in the American school – as well as most schools using an American-style educational system – generally spent quite a bit less time in school. Students from the Swiss school had school days lasting up to 3 hours longer.
Having looked at the quantity, I decided to compare it with the quality – their happiness. The majority of students from the Swiss school stated that on a scale from 1–10 (10 being very happy), they were mostly between 6 or 8. The majority of students in the American school felt much unhappier, giving answers between 4 and 5.
It would seem that although Swiss students spend more time in school and have, on average, more work, which might generally be seen as negative, their mental well-being is markedly better.
This finding left me with a new question. Why were the American students at this school unsatisfied with their system and why were the Swiss students happier? To answer that I went to the students themselves with the question: “What don’t you like about your school’s system and environment?”
The American students’ answers were very diverse. Most students complained about the very large amount of homework – which is probably linked to the shorter school days –, the rules being too strict, or things such as the cost of being a school student – expenses such as food and school buses, which they consider too high.
The answers I received from the Swiss school were rather different. Quite a lot of the students said explicitly that there was “nothing” they did not like about their school system and environment, some going as far as complimenting the system for “offering a good, traditional education”. Of course, even here there were still complaints, most of which involved the early starts, the many exams, and the overall stress. Surprisingly, then, it looks as though in the case of education, instead of “less is more”, more might just be more!
My research shows that an educational system which tries to reduce the “stress” of grades and avoids having a large number of subjects, actually has more students who are either unhappy or experience depression. On the other hand, an educational system where students generally spend more time in school and participate in more “intellectual studies”, has students who might be generally happier and more excited to go to school – and yet more than a fifth of them think about self-harm.
There is, however, another question we must ask. Are the levels of students’ well-being – including depression, happiness, thoughts of self-harm, etc. – solely due to the educational system?
A 12th grade student from Realgymnasium Rämibühl does not seem to think so. “I do have severe depression, but it does not really have anything to do with school. I do not blame school for it and in my experience the school has been very proactive and understanding towards my mental illness.”
In response to the same question Dr. Lahusen says: “Of course, teenagers’ happiness or unhappiness does not depend entirely on school, but acceptance within the peer group is of immense importance. For the vast majority of teenagers, this contact only takes place at school, where they spend most of the day.”
On the question of whether a school system can compensate for problems at home or elsewhere, she says: “A positive, benevolent class climate, where young pupils not only know each other superficially but also feel connected to each other, can certainly compensate for problems at home, even if it cannot replace the parental home.”
Ultimately, then, my research led me to a quite unexpected conclusion. As stated by Dr. Lahusen, the integration of a student – which takes place mainly within a school – is one of the most important contributory factors affecting a student’s mental health. Swiss students spend much more time in school, which means that the vast majority of their day is spent in the presence of their classmates. Thus, although an American system tries to create a “family community”, what a family truly consists of is the company of people whom you spend the better part of your time with. In other words, perhaps the reason why Swiss students are happier is simply that, just like a family, they spend the majority of their time together.
