Candle throws light on education reform

In a grade 3 class of a school in Hangzhou, East China's Zhejiang province, a teacher showed the students a white candle. But 95 percent of the children didn't know what it was. Yanzhou Metropolis Daily comments:

The white candle was not the only thing the pupils failed to recognize. When the teacher lit a match, the children were so scared that some girls ran out of the classroom.

The teacher posted a video clip of the incident online and asked a question: Are our textbooks out of date, or should the children acquire more knowledge about the not-so-distant past?

But contrary to her expectation, the video sparked a wave of pessimism on social media networks. Some netizens even said it showed the "total failure" of modern education, with some claiming "modern education" has made pupils "ignorant".

The commentators appear to believe that children should know everything about today's world and also learn what was taught in school, say, three or four decades ago.

That's unfair, as today's children have little chance of seeing a white candle, except on some special occasions as decoration items. Thus it is no surprise they fail to recognize a normal white candle, which in the past was used to light up a room. Kids have no idea about matches either because they have not seen people using one.

In contrast to the commentators' claim, primary and secondary education needs deeper reform to catch up with the changing times, as students should be taught something more relevant to their daily lives, instead of things they won't have any use for in the future.

Of course, that does not mean abandoning history. History lessons are still needed so that pupils learn what happened in their country and the rest of the world in the past. But they should not be called ignorant for not recognizing certain things that are used only sparingly today.