Lianhe Zaobao: "Nanny Management" in Chinese Universities
Lianhe Zaobao 2024-04-30 21:20
Morning Mist / Repost
As the May Day holiday approached, Chinese university students were reminded by their schools not to travel in groups. The picture shows passengers taking a bus at Guangzhou South Railway Station on Tuesday (April 30). (China News Service)
As the May Day holiday approaches, many people are ready to embark on a journey, but Chinese university students are reminded by their schools not to travel in groups.
Chinese media reported that a number of Chinese universities issued notices before the May Day holiday, strictly prohibiting the organization of trips in the name of classes and colleges, and also opposing students organizing car rentals and group trips on their own.
The starting point for the notification is mostly security considerations. Many members of the public expressed their confusion, believing that college students are adults and should be responsible for their own safety, and that the school is too lenient in restricting students from traveling in groups by themselves.
Some schools advised students to "travel with family and friends" in the notice, which caused netizens to comment that this is treating college students as primary school students, and that they need to "call their parents" when they go out to play, and they also put the responsibility on the family.
Chu Zhaohui, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Education Sciences, said in an interview with Xinhuanet that college students, as adults, are different from primary and secondary school students, and that they should distinguish between vacation and semester management for students.
But there are growing signs that colleges and universities are managing adults as primary and secondary school students.
No travel, no curtains
Last month, one of the more talked about was that college students were not allowed to draw "bed curtains" in their dormitories.
First, the website of Xinjiang Medical University announced on March 27 that student apartments are crowded places, and hanging bed curtains in dormitories has certain fire safety hazards", so the unified requirements do not allow the installation of bed curtains in student dormitories.
The dormitories of most universities in China are "on the bed and under the table", and many students will choose to hang bed curtains on their beds to form their own private space. The picture shows a student dormitory with curtains on the beds. (Internet)
This provision is not unique to one family. According to The Paper, Communication University of China, China University of Petroleum, Northwest University for Nationalities, Jilin Agricultural University, Department of Foreign Languages of Gansu Normal University for Nationalities, Hebei Zhangjiakou University, Henan Nanyang Normal University, etc., are not allowed to install bed curtains in student dormitories.
Among them, Hebei Zhangjiakou University also carried out the "special rectification of bed curtains in student dormitories" action, and the staff entered each dormitory to investigate the potential safety hazards of bed curtains one by one, and would "help" to remove or remove the bed curtains by students.
The main reasons listed by colleges and universities include that bed curtains are flammable, causing fire hazards, not conducive to interpersonal communication among roommates, and not conducive to air circulation.
This is the exact opposite of the opinion of college students. Guo Sihang, a university student named Guo Sihang, said in a commentary on The Paper that the bed curtain is precisely the "just need" of collective life in the dormitory - when the curtain is closed, everyone has space to do their own thing and not disturb each other, and after opening, they can communicate again.
At the same time, netizens also questioned the potential safety hazards, and asked rhetorically whether bed sheets are not flammable?
Nandu Commentary pointed out that not allowing college students to hang bed curtains in the dormitory reflects one aspect of university management, that is, the tendency of "university management to be a secondary school".
Send transcripts and build parent groups
This management tendency is not only manifested in the school regulations, but also in the communication between home and school. At the beginning of this month, a student from Zhejiang University posted a report card sent by the school to his parents, which became a hot spot on the Internet, and Zhejiang University also confirmed that this was indeed the case.
Someone sighed, "I'm already a college student, why do I have to be dominated by test scores like in middle school?"
In this regard, a teacher from the Academic Affairs Office of Zhejiang University said that some colleges do mail transcripts to students' parents, which is to protect parents' right to know. Some supporters believe that this is because in recent years, Chinese university students have not paid attention to their studies, and more and more students have failed their courses, which needs supervision.
If sending transcripts is a routine operation, then the counselor establishes a WeChat group for parents to communicate with college students on their performance in school and urge parents to let their children complete learning tasks, which is more like a primary and secondary school. But such groups are already a common situation among college students.
A screenshot of the parent group sent by a Xiaohongshu netizen shows that parents need to ask for leave slips when they go home on weekends, and parents are also required to "confirm" in the group. (Internet)
Xu Ran, a college student, told China News Weekly that she always receives messages from her parents telling her to revise well before the exam, because the counselor will send her parents the exam arrangement. Xu Ran said that she had been disciplined for three years in high school, so her biggest motivation for the college entrance examination was to escape from her parents and enter a university far away from home. However, "the parent group knocked me back to square one".
On Xiaohongshu, there are also college student netizens who post complaints that even if the dormitory is not lit on time and the cleaning is not done properly, the counselor will send it to her parents, and her parents will sometimes directly forward the information in the group, and sometimes they will call her directly to question her. She said, "It's really suffocating," and "I'm an adult, but I don't seem to be able to make it."
Because of this suffocation, many students came up with a set of coping methods, that is, classmates helped each other to pretend to be each other's parents to join the group. Netizens shared that in order to pretend to be more like, they will also change their WeChat names to "On the Road", "Falling Flowers Silently", "Evergreen Pines and Cypresses", etc., and change their avatars to flowers and landscapes, so as to be closer to the style of middle-aged people and not let counselors suspect them.
Is it because the school is too busy, or is it because parents are unwilling to let go?
"China Youth Daily" quoted Tu Lili, a counselor at a university in Hunan, as saying that the university's management model is becoming more and more "high school", "There will be special rules and regulations for things as small as lights out and hygiene, and parents must be notified to report safety every holiday, of course, these are for safety, but it also shows that universities are becoming more and more worried about students."
Jia Hongwu, director of the Hubei Provincial Mental Health Association, said that the "high school" of universities is a kind of self-dwarfing of universities. "Students can't have any problems, everything has to be nip in the bud, this is actually a kind of "professional nanny" thinking, afraid of taking responsibility for themselves.
Jia Hongwu said that although the management of everything will make students make fewer mistakes, it will also inhibit their growth.
However, it is not only the school that is worried about students, but also the parents.
Tu Lili believes that the key to the increasingly detailed management of some universities lies in parents. For example, when a classmate slept and didn't call back in time, the parent sent seven or eight thirty or forty second voice messages in the group, in an eager tone, asking the teacher to go to the dormitory to see the situation. "If parents can't let go, the intervention of the school and even society will not help. ”
The "New Weekly" report also pointed out that many parent groups were set up at the request of parents, and parents will also spontaneously form groups, just like "fan support groups", so that parents can grasp the dynamics of their children at the first time.
Some parents also join the "takeaway fruit group" near the university to help their children place orders to buy fruit remotely, and some parents also ask the fruit shop owner to deliver it directly to the door of the apartment unit because "the child said that he did not have the strength to go to the express cabinet to get it".
The report commented that Chinese children were "fast-growing children" when they were young, quickly learning all etiquette and knowledge for entering society, but when they really reached adulthood and were about to declare independence, they were strongly controlled by parents in the name of "care".
Therefore, under the influence of such a mentality that parents are difficult to let go and schools are afraid to take responsibility, more and more Chinese college students are in the "nanny management" of home-school co-construction. But no one can hide under this net forever, and will they have to wait until they are completely detached before they can really start to grow?
Source: 2024-04-30 Lianhe Zaobao
https://www.zaobao.com/realtime/china/story20240430-3539535
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