(Ecns.cn)--Liao Zenghu, who publishes under the pen name Ye Kai, has been working as a writer and editor for over 17 years. He is known for being well-read, and has even been called the Chinese Francois Rabelais, but his recent attempts to criticize the methods used by his daughter's teachers received a chilly response.
"Chinese courses are in a dangerous time now," said Liao, "and if the situation is not improved, parents need to find their own way to educate their children."
Liao's suspicions were raised following an assignment in which parents were asked to write articles on a specific topic for their kids.
The first time, his daughter's teacher asked all the parents to write articles with the title of "the Chinese exam in my eyes." The teacher said that she would publish the best articles in the school newspaper.
In order to make his daughter happy, 42-year-old Liao spent a long time writing the article, which focused on his disappointment with the Chinese exam system. After finishing it, he polished the story twice to make sure the language and ideas were clear.
A few days later his daughter came home with the school newspaper. Liao read the articles published in it and was shocked to find that all of them were the same – they all praised the exam system instead of criticizing it – while his work was marginalized for wandering off onto other topics.
The experience was unforgettable and embarrassing. As a famous writer and editor, Liao has polished the works of other famous authors for years and often received positive comments. But when critiquing aspects of Chinese education in a school newspaper, he was made to appear clumsy.
When Zeng's daughter was in third grade, Liao's focus became drawn to the content of Chinese textbooks. In the historical novel "Romance of the Three Kingdoms," or "San Guo Yan Yi," the cleverest men are commonly known to be Kong Ming and Pang Tong. But a teacher instructed Liao's daughter that the man should be Zhuge Liang instead.
"It is ridiculous, and this misleading action will ultimately bring harm to children," he said.
After that, Liao began to pay close attention to textbooks and the ways teachers use them. "Milk with melamine causes physical damage to our children, but mistakes in the textbooks are worse than melamine," he said.
Generally, articles used in the textbooks are compiled according to different themes, such as integrity, morality and so on, but "the compilers focus too much on moral education," said Liao. Moreover, in order to make an article fit the theme, an editor will often rewrite the original or delete detailed parts of it, he added.
For example, in the article "Birds' Paradise" written by famous Chinese writer Ba Jin, Liao found that the editor had omitted many details describing the environment, and changed some of the words used by the original author. "The changes don't make any sense. The original words used by Ba Jin are beautiful, but the changed version is too vague," said Liao.
Liao spent a lot of time comparing the original works with the altered versions used in the textbooks. Since many articles did not print the writers' names, the editors apparently became bold in making changes. "Ba Jin's example is not a rare one. The editors must think children are naive and stupid, because the changed versions have been made to look stupid," added Liao.
In an Italian article named "The University on the Dinner Table," Liao found that the editor had changed the locality of the story from Italy to China, but that the story still looked Italian. One scene mentioned that the father often likes to drink a cup of wine after meals, but the editor changed it to the father often likes to drink a cup of liquor after meals, for example.
"I have to say that the editor does not have much life experience. Generally, Chinese people drink liquor during a meal instead of after, and if he or she really wanted to change the locality to China, he or she could have changed the scene to the father liking a cup of tea after dinner," said Liao.
Liao's actions have been appreciated by some, while others think he is wasting his time by worrying about such differences. Liao once found an article which had been changed a lot, so he contacted the original writer to ask for his support. The writer did not respond, however.
"I read the writer's blog and found that he had mentioned nothing about the changes, but only expressed that he was proud that his article had been selected for the textbook," recalled Liao.
Though some people do not understand, Liao said that he will continue to do the job until more people realize the harm of changing the content of textbooks.
