Nearly 500 students in Nanchang University in Jiangxi province submitted a petition to the university president recently demanding a change in a new regulation that requires students to clean the bathrooms in their dormitory buildings. Among the reasons cited by the students to show that such an arrangement is not feasible is the poor infrastructure in the buildings. For instance, water sometimes cannot be pumped up to the higher floors and students have to fetch water from lower floors to take a bath. As a result, many a time they run late for classes that begin at 8 am.

Zhou Chuangbing, the president of the university, has said the regulation is aimed at making students appreciate the value of manual labor and instill in them the collective spirit.

But going by the poor conditions, the new regulation looks more like a product of Zhou's wishful thinking that manual labor can work wonders in transforming spoiled students into ideal citizens. The conflict between Zhou's good intentions and the students' opposition betrays the fact that educators often try to impose a one-size-fit-all policy on students without caring to take stock of reality.

The value of manual work in cultivating morality among students has been overstated. Hard work helps a person grow only when it contributes to furthering his or her goal. Many people work extremely hard at things they are told to do without a clear idea of what they are supposed to get out of it and how to lead a fulfilling life. For instance, young workers in Foxconn, the world's largest electronics contractor manufacturer based in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, work so hard and for such long hours that some of them fall asleep even while standing. But despite that, many of them suffer from depression, with a few even committing suicide, because they don't see a future.

In the case of Nanchang University, the "hard work" of cleaning the bathrooms, which is hardly a part of students' pursuit, contributes even less to their growth. Zhou has tried to justify the regulation by saying: "I did more difficult things than cleaning toilets when I was young." What he seems to have forgotten is that life is not a competition of who does more difficult work or who goes through more difficult times. A good thing may quickly turn meaningless once the conditions change.

In times of scarcity, people had to do a lot of things just to survive. Today, however, the division of labor has become so specific that people can have more time to attend to other commitments. The trade of skills and services has greatly boosted the economy. The skill of cleaning houses and offices, including bathrooms, is part of the service sector. Therefore, there's no point asking students, who have their own priorities, to clean bathrooms.

Manual chores do little to boost the collective spirit. A team is a group of people with shared vision, not necessarily a group of people who sit in the same classroom or share the same dormitory for a certain period. Team members are motivated by a common goal to work hard, communicate and share resources because they have a stake in the final result.

But a clean communal bathroom, for students, is not a shared vision. They don't feel much sense of achievement nor camaraderie after attending to such chores.

Educators' primary responsibility is to help students find a worthy goal that will give full play to their talents. If they want students to learn skills, the challenges they devise should be closely related to the students' actual needs, not something that had once done some good to people in the past.

The author is a writer with China Daily.

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