Education authorities in the northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region recently issued a stipulation that female teachers be no shorter than 150 cm and male teachers no less than 160 cm. They say short teachers cannot be seen by students who sit in the back of the classroom.

An article in Yangtze Evening News argues that such a rigid regulation on the height of teachers should be discarded.

The article says that difference of one or two centimeters in height is not substantial enough to stop candidates from becoming qualified teachers. It cites examples of the well known British theoretical physicist, Stephen William Hawking, who is a professor at Cambridge University despite his stunted height.

The article concluds with an interesting quip. Had such a rigid and simplistic stipulation on height been implemented decades ago, then Lu Xun, a revolutionary writer and thinker, would have been deprived of his teaching position. The 158-cm-tall Lu was once a well-known teacher at Peking University, Xiamen University and Sun Yat-sen University, among other prestigious institutes.

(CRI January 9, 2009)