China's Ministry of Education has ordered all students in primary and
secondary schools around the country to learn to dance and to perform a dance
every day at school starting from the new term beginning on September 1.
Students dance during a break in a high school in Beijing.
[china.org.cn]
|
Boys and girls in senior high
schools will be required to learn and to dance the Waltz.
The ministry will promote the adoption of seven sets of student group dances
nationwide in the coming semester, Beijing Morning Post reported today.
The ministry said that the time for dancing will be during class breaks or in
extra-curricular physical exercise time.
The dances won't take the place of physical exercises during the break but
will be an addition to existing exercise forms. Each set of dances will last
four to five minutes and schools can map out the time for students to dance one
or several sets, the report said.
The seven designated dances are "Good Friends," "Sunny Campus", "Little White
Boat" for primary schools; "Youth Melody" and "The Yangge Dance" for junior high
schools and "The Young" and "The Waltz" for senior high schools, the report
said.
The ministry began training dancing instructors this month. The first set of
sample performances had been put on video discs and will be sent out to
provincial education departments. Each province will call up teachers to
learn the dances.
The ministry said that it took two years for experts to create the group
dances and to make them appropriate to the physical and mental characteristics
of the different age groups of the students.
The ministry plans to bring out a new set of group dances every two years,
the report said.
The ministry has ordered students in primary and secondary schools to work
out in physical exercises for an hour every day.