First duty is to educate

Cheng Lu (Workers' Daily): In the name of "special needs," the expensive programs are popular in our educational system, ranging from preschool to elementary and high school. The prevalence of these programs may allow more temptation of overspending. Actually, education is a public service, which should not be used as a tool to make mammoth profits.

Also, unique programs will easily mislead the public. Will the most costly programs offer all the solutions? It sounds like the rich will regret not having sent their children to expensive kindergartens since they may ruin the kids' chances of being internationalized. But does internationalization mean high pricing? Education resources should be essentially equitable and reachable to most of society. As reported recently in the media, some wealthy children bath in distilled water and universities are planning luxury golf courses, both abnormal phenomena in a developing country like China. Worshipping money is in essence disrespectful to education. For a country that is sparing no effort to popularize compulsory education, such overpriced projects should not be promoted.

The costly projects may cause an imbalance of resource distribution, or even a monopoly of good education resources. The injustice of education also affects social fairness.

I think the main goal of teachers is to educate the common people. China is the most populous country in the world with 1.3 billion people, among which 900 million are living in rural areas. Thus the compulsory education and vocational training programs must take top priority.

Wan Quan (xinhuanet.com): The opening of high-end kindergartens provides parents with more selections to educate their children. In fact, more than half of the first registered 90 children in Henghai are Chinese instead of foreigners, indicating a ready customer pool at home. However, some negative aftermaths also deserve attention.

First of all, a privileged living and learning environment will heighten the gap between children and can lead to them ignoring the extremely poor in rural China.

Additionally, these children are living in a manmade Utopia far away from social reality. As they grow up, their lack of survival skills will frustrate them.

Children from rich families are familiar with luxuries. What they really need are life skills, eagerness to learn, a healthy body and the most important, a good mindset. All of these qualities can be achieved in ordinary schools.

Wang Xudong (Chinese Business View): Under the guise of satisfying a specific group, the Henghai Kindergarten is more aimed at making immense profit. The foreign language environment is designed to charge parents as much as possible.

In a competitive world, parents expect their children to gain a strong language foundation from the word go.

Since parents voluntarily pay the tuition fees, and without regulations to discipline the kindergartens, it is expected to see more of its kind in the future.