From the Readers

Importance of quality education

(China Daily)
Updated: 2010-08-12 07:52

As the father of a son who is a junior middle school student I would like to state my views on quality education. I have noticed that the current system of education at the middle school level lacks quality, when it should be given the same priority that curricula at other levels get.

But the fact is that almost every school now wants to achieve just one goal: get as many of their students as possible admitted to high schools. The obvious result is that teachers only care about contents required for the entrance exams and simply forget issues that have little or no relation with the exams, such as hand-writing, extensive reading of classics, group presentation skills, inter-personal skills and physical exercises.

From my personal experience, the other issues sometimes play a more important role in building a successful life. Teenagers have endless energy and curiosity, and they are eager to learn new things. But homework is always so heavy that they have no time to enjoy the other aspects of life. They may get excellent grades and enter good high schools, but isn't the price they pay for that too high?

Nowadays more and more teenagers perform badly in handwriting, know little about writers such as Lu Xun, and can hardly deliver an extempore.

I am happy to learn the central government is now giving importance to quality education. Anyway, scoring good marks in an xam and entering a prestigious high school should not be the only goal of a student. When the entire society regards success as a multiple-choice question with more than one correct answer, the quality of education blooms.

Winston Xia, via e-mail

Readers' comments are welcome. Please send your e-mail to opinion@chinadaily.com.cn or letters@chinadaily.com.cn or to the individual columnists. China Daily reserves the right to edit all letters. Thank you.

(China Daily 08/12/2010 page9)