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October 22, 2014

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Scandals show urgency to save teachers

THESE days, with the beefed up fight against corruption, we are exposed to cases of official corruption almost daily. Occasionally a particularly outrageous amount of money or the number of mistresses involved may make us indignant.

Last Friday, Zhang Shuguang, ex-director of the former Ministry of Railway’s transportation bureau, was sentenced to a suspended death penalty for taking 47.55 million yuan (US$7.8 million) in bribes. Also on trial last week was Zhang’s mistress, Luo Fei, a soprano of the art troupe affiliated with the ministry. She was accused of hiding nearly 2 million yuan of illicit money.

Zhang’s boss, Liu Zhijun, the former railways minister, got a suspended death penalty in July 2013 for taking 65 million yuan in bribes. Caixin Weekly reported in 2011 that dozens of women had been involved in Liu’s case.

Absolute power corrupts. But a spate of recent cases also draw our attention to a segment of the population we do not usually associate with corruption.

I mean the academics, teachers, professors, or even academicians, the highest honor an academic can dream of. As a matter of fact, in better times the mere mention of these titles should inspire our reverence.

In this sense, the aforementioned Zhang is probably not a typical case, although the ex-transport chief was also a professor at several universities and spent nearly 20 million yuan trying to get himself elected into the Chinese Academy of Sciences, without success.

It is important for relevant departments to take the trouble to investigate where that sum of money had ended up. Hopefully, a thorough probe might help restore our faith in a sector rocked by corruption and sex scandals.

More suggestive of the decay of the profession is Li Ning, an agriculture professor and an academician of the Academy of Engineering, recently arrested on charges of embezzling tens of millions yuan of fund allotted for research purposes. He was arrested with six other professors from four universities.

Should we condemn the likes of Li for sinking so low as to virtually steal from state coffers?

It would be unfair to judge some individuals morally when moral deliberation is increasingly a side issue, a ceremonial irrelevance, at best an afterthought in our market credo.

It is worthwhile to review the trust we traditionally placed with teachers. In former days the teachers occupied a special place in our estimation, so special that in some Asian states still under the influence of Confucianism, teaching remains the most respected profession.

I heard that in South Korea students still bow to their teachers and in the bus passengers will automatically give up their seat to a teacher.

Enslaved by the market

I have been reading lately memoirs by renowned philosopher Feng Youlan (1895-1990), whose father once served as a magistrate in Chongyang county in Hubei Province towards the end of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). At that time, a newly appointed magistrate had to move into the yamen (government office) with a team of aides and staff of his own choice.

Of these aides, the highest paid was invariably the one who specialized in giving counsel on taxation and legal matters, but the most respected was always the teacher of the children.

Of all the aides, only the teacher enjoyed the privilege of eating at the same table as the magistrate. That was a time when the respect one received did not depend on the amount of money he made. Teachers at that time were respected for their moral stature, as a spiritual influence distinctly superior to the money-makers. We began to witness a paradigmatic shift when our respect for a profession become solely dictated by its money-making potency.

Today our respect for a teacher is no longer spontaneous, but is conditioned by the practitioner’s dexterity in adapting to the dictates of the market.

Li Ning and six of his accomplices are certainly not the only members of the profession eager to raise the tone of the profession by shedding its genteel poverty image.

At a recent conference, President Xi Jinping observed that literature and art should not be enslaved by the market and corrupted by the lure of the lucre.

If we like, we can easily draw up a long list of professions that are in dire need of being redeemed from enslavement: journalists, lawyers, medical practitioners, and especially teachers, for they play a big role in shaping our future.

Rather than abetting them to further embrace the market principles, we might as well create conditions that enable them to keep a distance from the lucre.

Only then can we hope to give them the assurance and peace of mind to preach and, most important of all, exemplify the virtues and values deemed central to our national identity and vigor.




 

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