关于教育问题的谈话 --Jiang Zemin "Conversations on Education"

“Recently I read two articles. One was about a student in Jinhua city in Zhejiang province who is in his second year of high school. Because he was unable to withstand the pressure of his class ranking by examination results and the pressure exerted by his parents, he beat his mother to death with a hammer. The other article tells of two high school students in Wenzhou, Zhejiang who stabbed a classmate to death in order to get money to pay for their schooling. Today in the Guangming Daily there was a report about a parent in Anyang, Henan who was so angry that his son was not named as a “healthy, studious and helpful” student and was not given the rank of brigade leader in the Young Pioneers that he sent someone to beat up the teacher. Such material is so surprising, and has caused me to think most deeply. The correct guidance of young people and finding a way to help young people to grow healthily in an all round way morally, intellectually, physically and with a healthy appreciation of the arts is a major issue that has a direct relationship to our national educational development… Education is a systematic project. We must work unceasingly to raise the level of educational quality and the level of education. But we must not only continue to emphasize students literacy levels and cultural knowledge acquisition but must also really strengthen students ideological and political education, moral education, discipline, education in the law. Teachers as the engineers of the humanity’s soul must no only teach books but must also teach people.”(Jiang, 2000)