A STATUE was recently erected in a middle school campus in Laifeng County in Enshi, Hubei Province, in honor of Yang Yuan, a student who graduated last year. Prior to this, the honor was generally reserved for revolutionary pioneers.

Yang has not even done anything significant in terms of social contribution. He was honored for scoring 668 points - the best in Enshi for decades - in last year's National College Entrance Exam, and being admitted to prestigious Tsinghua University.

Among the tributes to Yuang, it was claimed that Yang's academic coup "marks a new milestone in local education,'' and that Yang will "go down in the history of China's proletarian education as a mythological figure."

Following a media uproar over the excess, the statute was removed to a less conspicuous location on May 2. That statute, far from being a tribute, was more properly a mockery of Chinese education in general, a sign of shame, indicative of how China's education willingly prostitutes itself in its reckless pursuit of ever higher scores.

Every day, we hear cases attesting to the failure of education in this country.

A senior official recently complained that while economic growth enables more Chinese to tour overseas, the presence of many of them - noisy, spitting, and spending ostentatiously on luxuries - is an eyesore compromising Chinese image abroad. It draws our attention again to the purpose of education.

In a recent lecture in Suzhou Middle School, Zhang Rulun, professor of philosophy at Fudan University, shared his insights into what should be expected of education ("Education is primarily about bringing up a person," Monday, Wenhui Daily). The primary aim of education, Zhang said, is to inculcate ideas and virtues deemed essential to the proper functioning of society.

The biggest problem with modern education, Zhang believed, is that it has been deprived of its primary function to inculcate and to inspire, as it becomes exclusively focused on imparting professional knowledge and skills.

In this transformation, education becomes an institution solely responsible for improving employment prospects, but not the moral or social equipment of the "educated."

Employment prospects

As a result, any schools or specialties capable of promoting "good" (read: high paying) employment is highly sought after and oversubscribed. In a system where everything is decided and judged by scores, an ideal student is a robot-like, self-centered thing endowed with the right kind of practical knowledge and skills but lacking empathy and conscience.

There's no lack of examples supporting professor Zhang's observations. The latest incident took place on May 18 in Wuhan, Hubei Province, where a college student riding a bike ran into a woman in her eighties. Appalled by the medical expenses and liability threatened by the victim's family, the student took a doctor hostage. The crisis was defused, but we can reflect on the incident in two ways.

First, the benefit of more than 10 years of education failed to equip the young man with principles and resources to deal properly with a traffic accident. Second, be wary of entering into any quarrels involving the elderly, for their family can use them as hostages to extort high ransom.

In deploring this new education philosophy based on employment, Zhang observed that typically a student no longer cares about the meaning of life, and they study like hell in hopes of attaining affluence and influence. In doing so, they have, in Zhang's words, "squandered the valuable time of youth."

Zhang explained in his lecture to middle school students that the philosophy informing the prevailing trend in global education is dictated by capitalist logic.

Capitalism, under the excuse of improving livelihood, has narrowed human values down to those that can add to capitalist growth and services, to the negation of everything else.

In embracing this capitalist credo, education's highest ideal is to turn out cogs and screws in the capitalist machine. In the name of benefiting students, parents, school, and society conspire to deprive them of the most significant component of their life: the desire to explore the meaning of life.

Human capital

Another aspect Zhang did not mention also contributes to the distorted education. In the capitalist way of production, all producers must work harder, inspired by rewards of wealth or threats of being left behind.

The right "human capital" - those with the right knowledge and skills - stand to reap the most benefits, while the laggards would suffer privation, neglect, and loneliness, trapped in a downward spiral.

A colleague of mine recently mentioned the son of an acquaintance who was so distinguished academically that instead of going to Tsinghua, he chose to study in Hong Kong, where he would receive the best credentials to become a promising architect.

Still, the young man's mother has her share of complaints.

"Why didn't he choose banking? He would make money sooner. You know, architecture is a sunset industry in the West," she is said to have complained.

Judgment

Thousands of years ago Confucius have expressed his objections to turning human beings into tools. In the second chapter of "The Analects," Confucius observed junzi buqi, which means, "A wise man will not make himself into a mere machine fit only to do one kind of work." The idea of turning out professional experts means seeing people just as tools.

Recently a 28-year-old chemist at Wuhan University drew considerable media attention by becoming the youngest professor in the University. He was reported to have been involved in three key research projects with the US Energy Department, and published two articles in a well-known Western academic journal, as the first author.

But there is no telling if he cares about the future of China, or if his chemistry studies will make the world a better place for our children to live in.

Zhang said that capitalism is the natural enemy of idealism, and the rising tide of pragmatism is extinguishing the embers of idealism and aspiration.

Zhang concludes by saying that of the three qualities - talent, learning, and judgment - the most valuable is judgment, and that can only be born of constant communion with ancient sages.