Campus deaths spark call for better morals
- By Wan Lixin
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E-mail Shanghai Daily, April 25, 2013
Moral correctness
There are good reasons why more emphasis should be on moral correctness than expertise in our education, but in many spheres of our life, "red before expert" has long been understood as a hallmark of an ossified view of socialism incompatible with the market credo.
No truely conscientious educator today can pretend not to be alarmed by how our education system tends to be judged and justified by its usefulness.
Anything that leads to higher scores, better employment, or studies overseas is believed to be an asset, and everything else is fast being marginalized or becoming obsolete.
Student competition used to be cutthroat in the years immediately before the college admission test. But now the spectre of examinations loom at each step in our education system, from kindergarten onwards.
From very early on, teachers have learned to divide their students on the basis of their scores: a select few good students, the middling multitudes, and the bad, with the latter legitimate objects for humiliating remarks.
Pride of place
When a student learns that his or her whole worth and dignity is pegged to his exam scores, they cannot but do their utmost to achieve that pride of place, viewing the rest of the class as competitors, or enemies to be eliminated.
A top student enrolled at a top university has a long list of triumphs and trophies, but fresh fights await him or her in that arena.
We should probably be more prepared that the fights can be bloody sometimes. We have come too far from the Confucian view that "What the great learning teaches is to illustrate illustrious virtue; to renovate the people; and to rest in the highest excellence."
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