China bans overseas textbooks in primary and junior high schools
DHARAMSALA, 7 Jan: China’s Ministry of Education has banned its primary and junior high schools from using overseas textbooks in its latest move to expunge unapproved, foreign content from school textbooks.
The regulation issued by China’s Ministry of Education on the management of school teaching materials earlier today that declared all Chinese primary and junior high schools are prohibited to use overseas textbooks, the Chinese state-run media, Global Times reported.
“If domestic textbooks can’t meet their needs, high schools, vocational schools and Chinese-foreign-run schools are encouraged to use foreign textbooks that have been translated and published by Chinese publishing houses,” the ministry’s directive read.
Apart from the primary and junior high schools, high schools, vocational colleges and universities can only use overseas textbooks in accordance with relevant state policies, the regulation added.
The Chinese communist regime’s Ministry of Education has also ordered the education authorities to carry out checks on the political correctness of textbooks and focus on reviewing the books’ political direction and values.
“The political standpoint, orientation and standards should be organically integrated into the content of the textbook. Textbook writers and editors, whose political positions, values and morality are negative or controversial, must be replaced,” it concluded.
Earlier in Sept 2018, China’s education ministry launched a similar campaign to “correct and dispose of” illegal foreign or self-written courses used instead of state-approved materials in China’s nine-year compulsory education period.
Yong Zhao, the author of “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon?” a book critical on Beijing’s education system and its major flaws has previously said that “like the Chinese government itself, it does not produce a citizenry of diverse, creative, and innovative talent.”
Besides censoring information at every front, at the core of China’s education system lies the party’s demand of its citizens to love the motherland and the regime’s history and ideology.
