OpinionWhat is Hong Kong doing for its cold, hungry, stressed and depressed primary school kids? Not nearly enough

Alice Wu says Hong Kong must recognise that it needs to do more for children suffering from depression, kids on welfare, and even gifted children. But how much of the educational system is the city ready to change?

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Students stand in line on the first day of school. According to a new survey, about one in five primary school children in Hong Kong suffer from depression. Photo: Sam Tsang

Published: 7:00am, 24 Dec 2018Updated: 7:37am, 24 Dec 2018

If the way Hong Kong treats women is any guide, then we can be sure it is pretty cruel to its children, too.

Once again, we have news about primary school children suffering from depression: about one in five this year, according to the latest survey conducted by the Baptist Oi Kwan Social Service. Last year’s figure was 13.2 per cent, or one in seven – remember our outrage then? Survey after survey finds that our kids are not all right. They’re stressed, overworked, sleep-deprived and bullied; we do not need to dive into a discussion of why, do we? We have known why for years. Yet, here we are, with even more depressed children in our midst.

And we should know that kids from low-income families are under a lot more stress. Reports on Hong Kong’s underprivileged are just downright depressing. According to a survey released by the Society for Community Organisation late last month, nine out of 10 primary school children from families on welfare live in a state of deprivation. That’s more than 200,000 kids who can’t afford tutorial classes where they can get help with schoolwork, much less extracurricular activities. That’s thousands of kids who are hungry and cold, who do not have enough food and warm clothing.

And more crushing than stress is the hopelessness of intergenerational poverty. When education is no longer a ticket out of poverty, but a daily remember of how much they lack – kids who have two meals a day, for whom toys and dance classes are unaffordable luxuries – we must recognise that all the poverty alleviation policies, and the work of countless NGOs, are still not enough.

Stress must be contagious in Hong Kong. A survey by the Hong Kong Academy for Gifted Education found that even gifted youngsters suffer from it, too. Well, of course. The pressure we put on our kids, be they underachieving or overachieving, is overwhelming.