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

中国学生长于应试，但他们并不仅仅只需要学科教育。与生活息息相关的审美教育、性教育和生死教育在中国越来越受关注。教育改革要如何推进，打破禁锢？如何构建全民审美，认识亲密关系，看待生死问题？