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Extra points for altruism won’t fix problem that education fails to teach about ethics
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ACCORDING to reviewed college enrollment policy, test-takers who have distinguished themselves in “ideology and morality” might have an extra 10 to 20 points added to their raw scores.
These are not new rules, but restating the old rules has created quite some murmurs.
In an adjustment described as “sweeping,” students who have obtained awards in sports, math, physics or chemistry competition no longer get as many extra points as before. But in Beijing, Zhejiang and some other provinces, students who have distinguished themselves morally and those who jianyi yongwei, or have “taken up cudgels for a just cause,” can earn themselves 10 to 20 extra points on the crucial matriculation test.
Can such incentives help raise the general moral standards of the students?
Many doubt it, saying that this policy will only encourage opportunists, for resourceful students (or parents) will find an easy way to get extra points outside the classroom.
It would be unfair for students who have done something salutary in their private lives that is not easily documented. A set of well-known family instructions compiled by Zhu Bolu (1617-1688) is still quite influential today. It includes this warning:
“To do good for others to see is not true goodness; To do evil in fear of others knowing is indeed grievous evil.”
Awarding extra test points to “good samaritan” test takers makes seemingly altruistic good deeds highly utilitarian, and creates room for corruption for those with the power to dole out the incentives.
Just as such substantial rewards can easily corrupt the motivations for those embracing charitable deeds, simple punishment, too, might not be effective deterrents for crimes from a moral perspective.
Crime and punishment
Last week was posted online a sensational nine-minute video clip showing how three young men brutally assaulted a teenager in suburban Beijing.
Following public outrage, Beijing police acted quickly and nabbed three young assailants, aged 15 to 17.
Is justice done when the young culprits are expected to be dealt with to the letter of the law? That makes for instant gratification in the online age, but these are teenagers just on the threshold of their adult lives.
As Oriental Morning Post reported last Wednesday, these are children of migrants, which account for about 80 percent of the population in that Beijing community.
Many of them were born and brought up in Beijing, but technically they do not belong there, for they do not have a Beijing hukou (residence), which is essentially an inherited status.
Their parents left their hometowns in Henan and Gansu many years ago, and these uprooted parents are often too busy making a living to take much interest in the growing up of their children.
As the video clip victim’s father said, “We are certainly going to return to our hometown one day,” citing the prohibitive home prices in Beijing and the need to take care of the elderly back at home.
This reminds me of a tragedy in Nanjing 14 years ago. Jurgen Hermann Pfrang, a German businessman, his wife, son and daughter were found murdered at their home by four burglars, aged 18-21. The parents of the slain Mrs Pfrang pleaded for leniency of the four young murderers, in vain.
Following the tragedy, a few friends of the family founded the Pfrang Association, a charitable organization aimed at assisting with the education of children in the poor and rural regions of Jiangsu Province.
Its purpose is to help overcome social inequality and as a result break the cycle of lack of education, poverty and crime.
But in our hindsight today, we began to have doubt if our schools still have that transmuting potency. It has been joked that in New York, Wall Street — not Harlem — has the highest concentration of criminals in the city, most of them highly educated.
Last April, a graduate student at Fudan University killed his roommate by putting poison into the water dispenser in their shared dorm. In Taiwan on May 21, a college student killed four people in a stabbing spree on the Taipei subway.
Decay of education
There are plenty of signs suggesting our education has gone awry. Moral rectitude, rather than inculcation of expertise, should be a central principle throughout all phases of education.
It is deeply unsettling that some of our educational establishment has become an entity that simply churns out specialists. Given the nature of our education, it should not surprise us that some of the most educated easily become the most corrupted or contemptible. Some of the most famous professors thrive on falsified academic credentials, or forged diplomas.
In a recent interview with Beijing Youth Daily, Meng Xuenong, ex-Beijing mayor, talked about the enthusiasm among officials about “studying for Ph.D.”
“I really would like to suggest to the Ministry of Organization to conduct a test on these official Ph.D. holders. Many corrupt officials have doctorate degrees,” Meng said.
That’s a depressing, yet very revealing, comment on the state of our education.
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