Don't let Chinese characters become a world heritage

A lot of high school students do not know the common Chinese characters such as "toothpaste", "sauce", "mushroom", "package", "saprodontia", and "acupuncture". The reporter had chosen 10 groups of common words to make a simple test with 36 high school students of a class and found that one-third of them cannot write "sauce" in Chinese, about a half have a wrong way of writing "acupuncture" and few can write "saprodontia" in Chinese.

With the advent of the E age, traditional hand writing habit has been quietly changed. "Chinese characters crisis" including character amnesia and poor hand writing style has become a universal phenomenon. Many experts and scholars, as well as primary and secondary school teachers in China, have all set out elaborations on this phenomenon and its cause. Compared with the adult's "character amnesia", the minor's decreasing writing ability is more worrisome. If efforts were not put to resolve "Chinese characters crisis" starting from primary and secondary education, Chinese characters could also be one of objects we need to apply for world cultural heritage in the near future.

To prevent this from happening, we need to find the real crux of declining ability to write Chinese characters, to strengthen Chinese characters writing education in primary and secondary schools so as to improve their writing abilities. First of all, Chinese characters writing classes should be fully restored and upgraded to calligraphy classes in primary and secondary schools, and further develop standards for calligraphy curriculum and compile calligraphy teaching materials so that the students can learn to understand, appreciate and respect Chinese characters and the traditional habit of writing Chinese characters in daily learning of primary and secondary school students can be restored and enhanced.

Second, more importance should be attached to the special function provided by blackboard during education and teaching process. For many years, blackboard functioned less and less in primary and secondary schools in many areas with developed economy and culture as many teachers, even Chinese language teachers just click the mouse to display their teaching contents in a "simultaneous broadcasting" manner without writing a single word on the blackboard throughout a class. In light of this, relative state departments have expressly stipulated that teachers of primary and secondary schools must carry out a certain amount of blackboard writing during class.

Third, rigid indicators should be set forth to require schools and students to pay more attention to Chinese characters writing. For example, characters writing can be included in various types of examinations, under the influence of which schools and students have to take it seriously. In addition, activities like seminar, competition, calligraphic work exhibition and interest group can be carried out to improve students' interests in writing and inspire students to raise their handwriting ability.

A great deal of attention must be paid to the key function served by Chinese characters writing education in inheriting traditional culture, otherwise, it would be a huge irony for the whole nation when it comes to apply Chinese characters for "world cultural heritage".