A REFORM ON EDUCATION

New Roman">A REFORM ON EDUCATION

Recently a reform is conducted throughout Shandong province on education.

The vice head of the teaching committee, Zhao, zhiyong, has announced a series of reforms on education, such as the restriction on the time for students at school: for five days, regardless of the ranks of schools; the restriction on the homework for students, with a time limit to only one and half hours for Junior School students; and the treatment of the marks that the students get at school as their privacy; the rearrangement of the subjects that the students are supposed to learn at school, with more emphasis on the cultivation of the students’ ability to think, create innovatively, put what they have learned to actual practice, and build their bodies, etc. and etc.

All teachers have hailed the reform as a blessing from heaven. Having been under so much burden and pressure for such a long time, we have been too exhausted. As what has been put by Zhang, Zhiyong, a lot of teachers have been on the brink of breakout, and some of them have only made that weak, pathetic and even deplorable sound: “We can’t put up with it any more, namely the present situation of teachers.”

If the reform is to be complimented in a real sense, we can expect to work five days a week, in fact there will be still six days, since there are students who get accommodation from our school and we have to go to school on Saturday in the morning and on Sunday nights. But we are still satisfied with such a reform. Even those who are teaching the last-year-students can expect to have the same privilege. Otherwise they would have to work from Monday to Sunday. Sometimes they even give classes continuously from seven in the morning to nine at night without a single rest. They benefit the most from the reform.

Although it is by law that we work five days a week, we have been working for such a long time without any mercy from any sources. We have been used wrongly. This is the most unscrupulous abuse of human brains. We are only too submissive to it. We are obedient, since we don’t want to make trouble and waiting so patiently for such a change. However, even today, we still have no assurance whether this is only a showcase lasting for only a short period of time.

Some teachers proclaimed that the reform is like the dawn of a morning or the final arrival of the spring, which are only metaphors to show their inexpressible gratitude to it.

We were afraid of being accused of dodging responsibility or a negligence of our divine duty, so we only accept what is thrown to us. We are not fools. However, every teacher in Shandong province bears a great gratitude for Mr. Zhang, who takes a risk at conducting such a reform. Some teachers even call him the “Qing Tian Da Lao Ye”, which is a term used when we were in feudal society years ago to address a government official who was well aware of and took care of the living conditions of common human beings.