A hindrance

Hang Lin (www.newssc.net): The class council system has been existing in China for decades. In the past, the student council were composed of students who were good at academic work and obedient to their teachers, and once they were selected, they stayed in the position until the graduation day. Since the 1980s, class council member selection has undergone some reforms, but the traditional practice remained.

In 1991, Wu Kangning, a professor at Nanjing Normal University, made a survey on 1,470 Grade 6, final year primary school, students, which shows that only 17 percent of these students have experience of being a class council member, and 55.2 percent of them stay at the position for five or six years; those who remain in the position for more than three years account for 87.2 percent. This survey shows that since Grade 3 of primary school, class council structure has basically taken a fixed shape. The result reveals that 83 percent of the surveyed students never had the experience of being a class council member during six years' primary school life.

Because of many realistic factors, Chinese schools always have big classes, so teachers cannot manage to deal with all the affairs, big or small. While dealing with class affairs, class council members sometimes play the role of teachers, so they surely will divert part of the teachers' power.

Generally speaking, class council members enjoy relatively "higher or superior" status than ordinary students and they have much stronger sense of authority. Because it will endow them with certain power, students all rush to become a council member. This situation is not the fault of students, because the overall social environment favors "officials," and "officials" generally enjoy better treatment and more convenience in daily or social life.

Zeng Xi (Chengdu Business Daily): Modern society needs ordinary people to develop the sense of modern citizenship, and this is the development trend of a democratic society based on the rule of law. Against this backdrop, you might better understand why there are calls for cancelation of the class council system. The call is to protect children from the sense of "power and privilege." They need to be encouraged to control themselves and try to manage their own affairs.

Why is the current class council system a hindrance to the development of modern citizenship sense? Because this system stems from China's traditional feudalist concept. Even by now, Chinese students can only passively obey teachers' orders, lacking the ability of dealing with their own issues. In a society where everyone is running after power and privilege, children will easily get affected by such an atmosphere. Such a system is going against the self-administrative modern citizenship.

What we are opposed to is the outdated class council system, but not students' organizations. Students should manage their own affairs, with little interference from teachers. Every student, whether he or she is good at studying or not and whether his or her family is rich or not, has the opportunity of participation in class affairs management.

The final goal of education is to realize people's overall development, and education must fulfill the obligation of providing qualified citizens of modern democratic concepts to societies. Thus, we should start the selfadministrative education from the very start in primary and middle schools.

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