Lu Xun's works are excellent, but textbooks are not supposed to be the collection of a certain writer's masterpieces. So when some of Lu's passages are replaced by new contents, it's an updating of teaching concepts, not a case of Jin Yong is to replace Lu Xun.

Lei Hongpei (Yangzi Evening News): Yu Wen textbooks are authoritative carriers of the Chinese language. In order to keep the authority and vitality of this language, Lu Xun's masterpieces alone are not enough. To enrich the Yu Wen textbooks, it's necessary to have an extensive selection. All the interesting stories of high literary taste and value that can reflect the pulse of the times can be brought into textbooks. This will make them as interesting as any cartoon, romance or marital arts novel. When this is the case, the aim of Yu Wen teaching--to maintain the structure of the Chinese language and to develop Chinese in a creative way--will become realistic.

It's unwise to see the entrance of Jin Yong's martial arts novels into textbooks as a danger. While upholding the chivalrous spirit, Jin's novels are also filled with classic points of traditional culture, such as integrity, heroism, idealism, patriotism, as well as the natural laws of Taoism and mercy of Buddhism.

When classic love poems were added to Yu Wen in some provinces, the action was strongly opposed for fear of raising issues of "puppy love" among the students. Two years have passed but facts prove that those worries were unfounded.

Education is serious business

Zhao Zhijiang (www.xinhuanet.com): Yu Wen textbooks have two basic tasks: One is to impart basic Chinese knowledge and techniques and the other is to cultivate students' high morality and values of life. Apart from very beautiful passages, the old textbooks also show us people's special attitudes toward life and their social values during a certain period in history. When literary classics, which have inspired generations of students, are removed, can the new works chosen still manage to help the children to build up correct values?

It's a pity that so many classic works have been squeezed out. Chinese society is at a transitional period, when even adults feel confused about all the change, let alone school students. The latter need appropriate guidance, which was provided by the old Yu Wen textbooks. The substitutes for the classics are romantic love stories. High school students are adolescents who need guidance in terms of love and sentiment. So I doubt that the new textbooks can play the role they should be playing.

Classic works can be removed, but the high moral standards and correct guidelines should never fade away. Compared with the beauty of words, these things are more important.

Li Xianzi (The Beijing News): As part of the arts academic discipline, Yu Wen must have a basic target for its existence--either to spread traditional culture, or to improve students' arts and literary understanding or to impart Chinese knowledge. But it seems that experts in charge of compiling the new Yu Wen textbooks for Beijing's high schools only concentrated on the "new." It is not that to search for new and modern contents is wrong, but it's improper to take the searching for unconventional and unorthodox contents as the only objective in updating the Yu Wen textbooks.

A large-scale updating of the Yu Wen textbooks is commendable, but it's unacceptable to squeeze out classic traditional literary works to make way for the new and modern. It's no exaggeration to say that this change to the Yu Wen textbooks and the Chinese language teaching is a disaster. Currently, what the textbooks need are more good passages in greater quantity. With so many classic literary works removed, who can ensure the quality of the new contents?

Han Cong (Yangzi Evening News): Some students feel that Lu Xun's works are too difficult to understand. But the value of Lu's pieces lies in the fact that it's hard to understand. Language teaching is not equal to entertainment. It is supposed to inherit and spread culture and tradition. It's true that the dull teaching method needs to be more interesting, but never the content. It's improper to sacrifice the value of culture to cater for some people's demand for new and modern contents.

The beauty of some language does not lie in whether it is complex or simple but in the richness of its cultural and historical content.

Mu Ji (The Beijing News): The guideline of high school Chinese language teaching is that, model essays in the textbooks must be typical classic Chinese essays, which are of deep insight and significance. They must have some cultural codes for the readers to figure out.

In most cases, the Chinese language teaching tries to extract some so-called "significant ideas" from the passages and demands that the students do the same. As a result, high school Yu Wen education becomes a "coding-decoding" process, unable to cultivate students' aesthetic capability.

Why do the students feel Lu Xun's works are dull? This is the essential problem to be solved in this latest round of textbook change. If this problem remains unsolved, Yu Wen textbooks will remain dull for years to come and I feel these changes will not achieve anything tangible, as it has not removed the root of the problem.

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Editor: Yao Bin