From 'One-Size-Fits-All' to 'Age-Appropriate Teaching': A Critique of the Current State and Paradigm Construction of Mental Health Education Lesson Examples for Primary and Secondary School Students

A Case Study on 'Emotional Management'

Abstract

The current mental health education classes in primary and secondary schools are “one-size-fits-all,” ignoring the characteristics of different student age groups, resulting in three deep-rooted issues: a disconnect between goals and methods leading to the failure of cultivating higher-level abilities, the absence of emotional experience causing emotional education to become hollow preaching, and the reversed developmental sequence violating the basic laws of psychological growth. To address these issues, this study constructs a "three-dimensional sequential" age-appropriate education model, with the core features being the coordinated progression of cognitive complexity, socio-emotional depth, and teaching strategies. It establishes a differentiated evaluation system that aligns with the developmental tasks of each educational stage and provides a series of lesson examples on "emotional management." The goal is to solve the problem of insufficient specificity in mental health education, combining theory and practice to find a systematic solution to these issues.