LESSONS FOR LIFE

Chinese students may have been bringing home stellar results in PISA, an international comparative survey measuring teenagers’ scholastic aptitude in mathematics, science, and reading; but many of them emerge out of the country’s education system ill-equipped to explore other important aspects of life: such as beauty, sex, and death.

Incidents of youth suicide and sexual harassment or abuse are concerning students and parents alike, making them reexamine the need to talk about these topics. Meanwhile, baffling stylistic choices in public infrastructures arouse debates on whether the country is suffering from a pandemic of aesthetic blindness.

Around the country, from NGOs to individual educators, efforts to offer these lessons of life are growing at the grassroots. But multiple challenges await for practitioners who try to incorporate these subjects, still largely viewed by society as either taboo or unproductive, into the education system.

ILLUSTRATION AND DESIGN BY CAI TAO AND FENGZHENG YISHENG, PHOTOGRAPHS FROM VCG

中國學生長于應試，但他們并不僅僅只需要學科教育。與生活息息相關的審美教育、性教育和生死教育在中國越來越受關注。教育改革要如何推進，打破禁錮？如何構建全民審美，認識親密關系，看待生死問題？