Keep it honest, keep it real

Schools that engage in questionable acts of behavior or policy may serve as role models for the seamier side of society

Education is about imparting knowledge, but more effectively it is about influencing the younger generation through the behavior and actions of the educator.

By this standard, some of China's educational institutes have contradicted what they teach in words with what they present in deeds.

A vocational school in Guizhou province has just opened a new campus. To celebrate, it displayed columns of red banners from international peers that sent them congratulations.

Nine of the banners were from Harvard, Stanford, Oxford, Cambridge and other world-renowned schools.

According to students and teachers interviewed by the media, however, few took them seriously. Some just laughed them off as a joke or exaggeration, or simply not true.

Some of the teachers interviewed said the non-existent congratulations from overseas were designed as a demonstration of the school's endeavor and progress in the international arena.

For me, they were a sign of deep insecurity and lack of confidence.

We all have our own little vain ways. Kept in check, they don't make us look ridiculous.

Words of congratulation are like cosmetics in that they can make us look slightly better than we actually are. If they do manage to turn a Quasimodo into a prince charming, then it's often down to the plastic surgeon or cosmetics vendor, rather than the person who underwent the physical transformation.

A city-college-type of school may be able to benefit from the glamour of their often slightly elevated peers - but that may still look like an amateur attempt, compared with some of the biggest names in the world.

That's what wax museums are for - to give common folk the opportunities to rub shoulders with celebrities and not feel dwarfed by them.

The banners in Guizhou had the same role as the wax figures - but nobody would mistake the latter for the flesh-and-blood version.

A bigger controversy, though, recently involved a small school in Anhui province.

On September 19, Xinhua Academy gathered its 6,000 new recruits on its sports ground in strict military formation.

The school president rode in a convertible Audi and waved to the students who were dressed in military-training uniforms - it was a military-style review, complete with the formal exchange of greetings, made famous by the broadcasts of state events in Tian'anmen Square, Beijing.

The mock review, or more accurately the imitation review, was criticized as "frivolous" by PLA Daily, a newspaper representing the Central Military Commission of China.

It said that only the country's highest-level leaders, and military officers of a certain rank and above, had the authority to conduct such reviews.

It called the school's action "attention grabbing" and "promotional".

I doubt the school had expected photos of its annual ritual would go viral, after all it had been doing this for years.

What the school authority wanted was pomp and pageantry that made it feel, even for a few short hours, that its importance had reached the height of state leaders.

Like vanity, a little bit of delusion seizes every one of us once in a while. The only difference is, the authority of that Anhui school had the means to act on it.

It was probably not even aware that it was not supposed to do this, given their negligible official titles.

In a sense, it was just like the teenage protagonist in a Hollywood action movie who dreams of morphing into a superhero.

But someone at an impressionable age, exposed to such a show, might naturally conclude that they need to put on such airs and graces to impress others.

I guess the teachers at these two schools would never suggest for a moment that students deviate from the principles of honesty and integrity - but any words of ethics they emphasize in the classroom will surely sound feeble in contrast to such vivid displays of pomposity or deception.

In a county in Zhejiang province, local authorities raised eyebrows by stipulating a policy of blood donation for extra credits..

Specifically, if a parent donated a certain amount of blood, his or her child can receive more points when applying for a senior high school.

It was designed to encourage blood donations, but it had the perverse effect of encouraging cheating, but in this case, not by the students.

I often think many of the current generation of teenagers can act like little emperors, who still tend to pass many of the responsibilities they should be taking on themselves, onto their parents or grandparents.

Donating blood should be an act of volunteerism that should never be coerced - but in this instance, it was parents being pressured into doing something to benefit their children, but certainly not in a way that would cultivate any filial responsibility.

This only served to exacerbate what is a growing sense of entitlement shared by many Chinese youngsters.

It would be completely unfair, however, to deduce from these examples that all small and locally based schools in China are unscrupulous in their marketing practices or pedagogy.

I happen to know a few first-hand, and none would have resorted to such schemes.

The show-runners at these institutions are fully aware of their own strengths and weaknesses, and they do not harbor the dream of turning themselves into world-class schools overnight. They are not ashamed of their limited size or the recognition they receive.

They grow their reputations built on producing fine competent graduates who are able to fill the roles most needed by society.

They do not need to delude themselves, or their students, with associations so far-fetched that they elicit mocking chuckles or sneers.

Chinese tend to have the quaint notion that a school campus is like an ivory tower isolated from the hustle and bustle of the outside world. Nothing is further from the truth.

But we should certainly refrain from swinging to the other extreme and deliberately introducing the shady side of society when youngsters are not yet fully prepared to digest such information.

The irony is that in the above three stories none was intended as an example of hypocrisy or braggadocio. Rather, they were meant as gestures of aspiration. Some might even argue that idealism is at the core of the decisions that made them happen in the first place.

Strangely, idealism stretched too far seems to touch cynicism protruding from the other end. The sad result is, students may laugh at them, yet they may subconsciously imitate them.

It may be futile to insulate youngsters from harsh realities that take place every day. Education should be a gradual process to ease them into the real world and let them know that the world has its bright side and its dark side.

They should be prepared for the bumps of darkness but they should never give up the brightness of their intrinsic nature.

The writer is editor-at-large of China Daily. Contact him at raymondzhou@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily Africa Weekly 10/03/2014 page30)