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Moral education cast aside when we are consumed by results and online fantasy
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ON March 27, Lu Haiqing, a student at Sichuan Normal University, was hacked to death in his dormitory, allegedly by one of his roommates, a man surnamed Teng.
According to a report by www.thepaper.cn, the day before the tragedy, Lu annoyed Teng by singing aloud. This led to a row and a scuffle.
The next day, Teng allegedly decapitated Lu with a knife.
One of Lu’s relatives was quoted as saying that over 18,000 yuan (US$2,800) had to be spent just to have pieces of Lu sutured back into a whole.
And do not dismiss this as an isolated case.
A 22-year-old student named Wu Xieyu, who once studied at the prestigious Beijing University (Beida), is now wanted by the police, and remains at large. He is accused of having killed his widowed mother last July, and then raised 1,400,000 yuan (US$218,000) from his relatives and his mother’s colleagues by forging his mother’s identity.
A recent China Newsweek (sponsored by China News Service) tries to dispel the halo that still surrounds Xie — how he impressed everyone who knew him as “perfect.”
From an early age, he is said to have demonstrated a strong sense of discipline. A teacher named Yang Lei was quoted as saying that even excellent students might suffer from foibles like carelessness or bashfulness as teenagers. But Wu was free from even these. “He was consistently perfect,” she recalled.
He was enrolled as a top student by the best senior high school in Fuzhou, Fujian Province, and was then enrolled in Beida, where he had been recipient of many rewards.
Commenting on crimes committed by similarly “excellent” students, psychologist Long Zhou said that “Some parents only want to quicken the development of their children as social beings, but fail to help them in reaching self-actualization [as individuals].”
In other words, their children succeed in being viewed as “successful,” yet sooner or later they are confronted with the tough job of working out the meaning of their life on their own terms.
Their view of life only in terms of “success” or “failure” distorts their personality and leads to moral degeneracy.
The two cases mentioned above suggest the failure of education at an age when it is most important. In the Internet age, it is no longer safe to view schools as a haven where values can be imparted and students can be empowered.
In the past, books, nature, caring teachers and de facto sheltering from society at large allowed school children to live in a world of their own, like budding plants in the shelter of a greenhouse.
But easy Internet access has much blurred the line between kids and adults, with the adult world at its worst just clicks away. Children today are prematurely tortured by self-doubt, disbelief and disenchantment as a cacophony of sensational media constantly compete for their attention.
Beyond ‘financial potential’
Many factors that used to facilitate the inculcation of values at a tender age are gone.
Over the weekend, I overheard an intermittent exchange between two persons.
“Killing people is my hobby. I am only keen on killing ... killing spree ... cool ... he has to die if I am so inclined ... spray him with heavy machine gun! ... Do not go into striptease club again!”
Make no mistake — these were spontaneous utterances from two boys, 12 and 13 respectively, engaged in a computer game. When not reveling in virtual carnage and destruction, these two lads are seen by their parents as lacking in self-confidence and spontaneity.
Like most of their peers, they spend much of their time at home.
As a matter of fact, they were allowed to play video games in exchange for spending time outside in nature later that afternoon. Flowers and birds are now proclaiming the advent of spring with a riot of colors and music. But to many modern kids, such stimuli are too tame and dreary compared with what’s possible on a tablet computer.
Educators are now being admonished to adapt to a changing world. But any indoctrination will entail a relative stable environment, just as a sapling will need time to take root in the soil.
Technology will not allow this to happen. The cyber world easily neutralizes what traditional values and principles try to effect.
It’s interesting to see to what extent our children’s outlooks on the world are being shaped by rapid-fire machines guns in their computer games.
And soon today’s adolescents will be old enough to ogle sexy hosts broadcasting themselves over the country’s live-streaming platforms.
According to a recent AP report, the success of live-streaming in China testifies to the “financial potential of social media in the country” (“China’s burgeoning live-streaming industry,” April 15, Shanghai Daily).
So far “financial potential” seems to be the result that justifies any means. If our policy makers fail to see beyond “financial potential,” they would probably have to prepare themselves for more symptoms of social malaise.
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