China schools: 'Xi Jinping Thought' introduced into curriculum | Hacker News Reader

China schools: 'Xi Jinping Thought' introduced into curriculum

bbc.com

50 pointsDarkContinent43 comments

I'm sure it's koans like "Don’t underestimate the value of doing nothing, of just going along, listening to all the thing you can’t hear, and not bothering", or "Well, what I like best," and then he had to stop and think. Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn’t know what it was called. (Excerpted from https://medium.com/swlh/12-winnie-the-pooh-philosophies-to-h...)

I appreciate the surprising subtlety of your analysis.

A.A. Milne played cricket on the same team as J. M. Barrie, Arthur Conan Doyle and P. G. Wodehouse.

I'm not sure what this corresponds to, but it sounds like it means something.

Also, the real Christopher Robin is said to have had a less than happy relationship to the Winnie the Pooh phenomenon.

Still less creepy than the pledge of allegiance

How do you make a scale of comparison between the two?

One has at leadt theoretical space for the transfer of knowledge. The other is pure propaganda.

Interesting take, I don't want to assume which you mean, but it seems like the pledge is pure propaganda, that said I find it more troubling when knowledge is intermixed with propaganda. At least pure propaganda is not trying to convince you it is anything else, like a space to transfer knowledge :)

One includes the Dear Leader's name, one does not.

What are the units of that scale?

Great point!

Someone was downvoted to hell for a comment, but it did make me think; can I refuse, as a kid in the US, to do the pledge? I cannot imagine having something like that where I was born; I think everyone + parents would've knocked it out of existence pretty much immediately, but can you, in the US, refuse to do it?

Yes. The child may face penalties and disciplinary action, but if the school does that, the parents can sue and will win. It's happened many times now. It's a church/state and compelled speech issue. The ACLU loves picking up these kinds of cases because it's such a softball. IANAL

At least when I was a kid and the whole "pledge" thing started happening, yeah you could skip it and no one did anything. However, I attended highschool in a very liberal town and the principal only ever played the anthem instead of the pledge anyway.

you can, but a lot of teachers and other adults in charge of watching and disciplining children are not aware that you can. So for a kid to successfully refuse, they or their parents need to be well-informed of their rights and willing to threaten the school with legal action

I never did. Altho I was a Muslim kid growing up post 9/11 so I think that played into it

10 years ago people were telling me that such things could never ever happen in modern China again.

Prosperity didn't work at all as a safeguard against this.

The more powerful the state becomes, the more it attracts a certain type of person to rule it.

What thing? Adding the current leadership 'works' to curriculum? From my education since the 90s it's always the case. No students ever take these 'social political conscience' courses seriously. Most regard them as a joke and a scoring tool to join the party (that is if that's advantageous to their undergraduate degree). At least what I know.

> Politics has been a compulsory subject since forever.

It wasn't for most of nineties, and, 200x.

Second, this time it's very different from a side note in the history class, but a in manner of straigh hello from seventies.

> Adding the current leadership 'works' to curriculum? From my education since the 90s it's always the case.

I mean, when you put it that way education in the US was pretty much the same when I was in school. There was a lot of time spent showing how the checks and balances of the US government keep everything good and fair and totally not corrupt as fuck at all.

Checks and balances is how a guy like Trump can't stay in the White House regardless of how much he whines about fraudulent elections.

I'd say the US system works for the most part and isn't nearly as corrupt as Americans like to think.

This time, and it feels like it only just barely worked. We'll see if we get as lucky in round 2.

And the immediate passing of numerous voting laws are certainly uh... checks and balances

For a start, do you have a better method? Let us know which country is "not totally corrupt" and why is it so? Checks and balances in any system reduces efficiency and places a lower limit on how bad things can get. On the topic of adding these to the curriculum, I'd say its a good thing, although most of these 12 Xi thoughts are pure platitudes.

There has always be such subjects in school. Firstly it was Mao Thoughts, then added Deng Thoughts, added Jiang Thoughts afterwards, now added Xi. Politics has been a compulsory subject since forever.

Yes totally agreed. Same experience. However I think it's more specialised, not quite like the general 'Politics' courses found in US/UK. More of a 'social conscience / collectivism education' type of empty content.

I actually liked it. The lectures are boring as all other subjects. I mostly enjoy reading all text books when I start a new semester, after I read everything, the subject becomes boring to me. The text taught about objective of life, the personal value and society actually made me wanting to go to university. There are so much interesting things in text book, but if a teacher is boring (as most of them), they will just read the text and ask you to recite it.

Actually you reminded me. There was one very funny lecturer who's bit of a rogue figure whose lecture became popular among the univ students. He used a lot of analogies in the class and the many 'innocent' innuendos all in the name of 'bring socialist values to students'. It was so lighthearted almost like a free stand-up comedy. A little colourful brushes in the dull boring political courses.

I think that prosperity is attributed to have risen because of this school of thinking, so that’s why they’re reinforcing it.

It’s not much different than how ingrained corporatism is in American politics. But instead of worshipping a company, they’re idolizing a school of thought dating back to the Cultural Revolution. It’s funny how their own government has become the reactionary one.

Education with Xi Jinping characteristics

At my local school in the us social studies got replaced with social justice. This happens everywhere in the world

I'm sure this is nothing new and they're just adding the doctrines of the latest guy to the existing communist ideology education courses.

They never added those things as a standalone subject to primary school & middle school curriculum since 1978. Not even Maoism.

what do you mean, the courses with social political education? It was always there. From my education experience in the late 80s to 00s. But to be honest no one is ever taking it seriously and it's obviously a joke to students.

No, no. Single politics course, they do exists, but never single Maoism course, single Dengism course, etc. Even in colleges and universities they're combined into one single course. This time it's different, China is having single Xi-ism course.

Please do point me to the confirmed curriculum of any part of the education system. I am not aware of any. It currently is a guide AFAIK. https://edu.sina.com.cn/l/2021-08-24/doc-ikqcfncc4747529.sht...

There has always been. This is not additional subject. Politics has always been one subject, with different text for each grade, either it is Maxism, Materialism, Deng and so on. This is not a new subject, just new text added to Politics.

After Mao died, the social and physical devastation wrought by his Cultural Revolution still fresh in everyone's mind, the Communist Party leadership reorganized itself with the deliberate design to prevent another cult of personality from emerging. Power was decentralized and a system of checks and balances set in place; in particular, leaders would rotate into and out of the highest offices, and not hold more than one senior office at a time. This was a largely informal system but in reality taken far more seriously than any written law.

IIRC (I'm just an occasional observer), this system broke down with Hu Jintao, Jingping's predecessor. Both men held all three senior positions concurrently. Jintao didn't have the clout to hold onto the reigns, but it's unsurprising that Xi Jingping has done so.

In any event, my point is that until recently it was impossible for any singular political figure to have as much political or social influence as Xi Jingping. Xi Jingping's rise to power is the result of what is effectively a constitutional shift (regression?) in the structure of political power in China.

That's too harsh for Hu.

Hu didn't start holding all three senior offices together. His predecessor, Jiang, did. Not that it matters anyways - China's paramount leader before Jiang, Deng, was neither head of state (President), nor head of government (Premier), nor head of party (General Secretary).

Hu is generally considered not to be power hungry. He is well-known for collective leadership (by the Politburo Standing Committee where he is the top ranking member) and is praised for stepping down from all positions voluntarily at the end of his term (Jiang kept his position as the head of military well into Hu's term)

> in particular, leaders would rotate into and out of the highest offices, and not hold more than one senior office at a time.

The rule was only on the paper. Prior to Jiang, all intermediary period leaders were forcefully removed from the office. Jiang almost managed to stay in power indefinitely, just like Xi. Hu was purposefully undermined, and politically eunuchised from the start by much stronger parties who ran the CPC behind his backs: namely the gang to whom Xi is the heir to the throne, and Jiang Zemin's one who also wanted to put their own man there. Were Hu having even a sliver of political power on the level of Jiang, or Xi, he would've tried to stay the third term too.

Really, there were really no rules in Chinese political system besides the survival of the fittest (or the most ruthless.)

I wonder what the long term consequences of that will be. In most parts of the world dictatorships don't fair that well economically.

It will go down as with any unconstrained leader figure: at some point they'll have some stupid idea (see; the great leap forward, cultural revolution) and no one is there to stop them. And of course there will be purges. Never forget about the purges. In the end, all that's left in the leadership hierarchy will be survivalist spit-lickers with barely any expertise besides in clinging to power and in not being purged.

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