4. Traditional Schools Face Challenge Every Tuesday and Friday, 6-year-old Huang Kan goes to an evening class to learn how to play the piano. He shows little interest in this extra class, but his mother is willing to pay 18 yuan a month for his tuition. He is one of the many only children who in recent years have started attending classes to learn to play musical instruments, or to paint or sing, either on holidays or in the evenings during week-days.
　　Such classes are usually run by individuals. Between ABCs and music, the government can only afford the former. Music and painting are seen as luxury items for Chinese children. But parents are eager to have the talents of their only children developed. They want their children to learn far more than the Chinese and arithmetic offered by the public schools. The people in education and artistic¹ circles are filling this gap between the parents, wishes and public schools, supply.
　　In the past,after-school activity centres were encouraged to provide free classes in dancing, playing the violin and Chinese boxing. But as more and more people become interested and seek to take part, teachers are more difficult to find. So up grew the practice for parents to show their gratitude² to the volunteer teachers by offering them gifts, such as cigarettes, meat and fish, clothing and coupons³ for commodities in short supply.
　　But the gifts never quite matched up to the work involved and so teachers began to charge for their services. A very quick expansion of the charged service followed with classes being started for adults. These classes included hairdressing and cooking for women, calligraphy⁴ and qigong for the elderly and child care for parents. Many young people also went to English classes to prepare for tests to qualify them to go abroad.
　　There are now classes of various kinds in the big cities. In Guangzhou, for example, the third traffic peak hour is from 9 to 10 in the evening when people are leaving night schools. The charge for service was started by individuals, but now many cultural institutes have also entered the market. Over the past two years, they have set up correspondence courses, invited  scholars to give lectures and even compiled text-books.
　　It all means that what was once a purely⁵ social service has turned into a business. Competition has grown with organizers offering such attractions as the showing of new films and the issuing of diplomas approved by the State's Education Commission. For the institutes, these activities are collective moonlighting. They offer the usually low-paid teachers and science and technology workers the chance of a second pay packet.
　　Students on this market benefit more. Women from Anhui Province applying for baby-sitting jobs can ask for 5 yuan more if they can speak putonghua because parents are concerned that their children would otherwise be affected⁶ by local dialects. The skill of typing too can bring extra income. The benefits that both teachers and students gain from this market show just how highly knowledge is evaluated. At a time when the State cannot invest more in education, such a spontaneous market is no doubt a necessary supplement.
　　5. Education Standards Are Higher Than in the Past Well, there are a lot of different views on this, but I must say I don't think there's very much hard evidence that educational standards are any worse today than in the past. It all depends, of course, on what you measure and how you measure it, but I think it is probably wrong to imagine that there was some golden age in the past when everything was perfect. Of course it may surprise some people that there has not been an obvious and dramatic increase in the standard of education, given the vast amounts of money spent in this area by successive governments in recent years. But unfortunately, most improvements in education are intangible.
　　6. Give Students Time to Grow With examinations drawing near, the burden on middle school students is becoming heavier and heavier. They have more homework than ever before, and less time for leisure, rest and sleep. Because of the over-load,most students' health suffers and many become nearsighted. An investigation⁷ made in a Honghu middle school shows that： compared with 1985, the number of nearsighted students has increased by 25-30 per cent and a larger proportion of students complain of poor health. It is not necessary to keep the students in class all the time. They need to go outside for sports, singing, dancing and other activities. We should create a good environment to let young students grow healthily.
　　7. Children Must Learn How to Live The realization⁸ of China' s modernization⁹ relies on the children of today. Childhood is a time of physical and mental development, so efforts must be made to provide an ideal environment for their development. encouraging intellectual, physical and moral training. How should our children be trained to cope wisely in the future？ We should provide them with a good material life, but more importantly, a good spiritual life. Patriotism¹⁰ and communism must be spread among children to stimulate¹¹ lofty ideals and hard work to enliven the Chinese narion.
　　China needs talent that has developed morally, intellectually and physically¹². The practice of only enabling people who receive an education to develop intellectually could result in a deficiency on the part of a generation of children. We have to put right the tendency of stressing only intelligence and ignoring moral and physical education and necessary physical work. Instead of children only receiving a classroom book-learning education, we should encourage them to mingle¹³ with society and nature so that they can be more adaptable¹⁴ in society.
　　8. People Should Be Made to Love Knowledge and Reading Recently, there has been a lot of discussion about education in the Chinese press. From these reports, and letters from my friends, I know that many students in schools and universities think studying is useless. Some graduate students and even teachers quit study or teaching to become clerks in big hotels, for a clerk in such hotels can get higher pay than a university professor.
　　Government leaders and many scholars have already noticed this and are making great efforts to solve the problem. In the People's Daily I see numerous articles on how to improve education and many reports about government leaders at all levels making various plans. These plans all centre on raising the salaries of teachers and professors. Of course, this is very important to education. However, education has two sides, not just those who teach, but also those who learn. Increasing the salary of teachers is just one way to improve education. It will not work without the co-operation of the other determinants, such as students' love of knowledge and reading. Even if the teachers are devoted¹⁵, it will make no sense if the students are not willing to learn.
　　How can we make more people love knowledge and reading？ First, we all have to realize that knowledge is useful everywhere in society, not just in the classroom. Sec'ond, people will love knowledge and reading when they have free access to books and information. Building more libraries and developing fine library services are important to improving education. I worked for six years in a big public library in China. I saw many people reading book after book. They dreamed of entering universities,not just because higher salaries attract them, but because of their need and love of knowledge. As a dedicated¹⁶ librarian, I wish policy makers¹⁷ of our government could spend more on libraries when they plan to improve education.
　　9. The Modern Methods Have Gone Wrong Well, if you asked me, it's all these modern methods that's the problem. In the old days you sat in rows at desks and you did as you were told. You knew what you had to do and you did it-and you kept quiet. Nowadays, my god, the noise in most scbools is deafening¹⁸ especially primary schools. The children wander around-do more or less what they want to as far as I can see. The teacher just sits there or wanders around with them, talking to them. Informal teaching they call it.
　　Discovery methods. Sounds more like a recipe for discovering disaster to me. When do'they have time to learn anything？ Too busy wandering about to do any work. And when you look at the youngsters coming to work for me, you soon find out they haven't learnt very much at all.

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