Chinese President Xi Jinping's Thought to be Taught in Schools

(Baonghean.vn)-Chinese schoolchildren will soon learn about President Xi Jinping's political ideology after it was expected to be included in the Communist Party of China's Constitution at the closing session of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) on October 24.

President Xi Jinping's political ideology will be included in the curriculum once it is included in the Communist Party of China's Constitution. Photo: AP

Chinese Education Minister Chen Baosheng said the new ideology, introduced at the opening session of the 19th National Congress last week, will be included in the curriculum in schools across the country.

Mr. Tran Bao Sinh stated: “(This idea will) be included in textbooks, in classrooms and in the minds (of students). We will design specific teaching methods that combine topics… of different levels and subjects.”

The official title of President Xi Jinping’s ideology will be revealed when the 19th National Congress revises the Party Constitution on October 24. Education Minister Chen Baosheng added that the ministry will start revising textbooks and training teachers after the congress ends, as part of the education sector’s “historic mission.”

While primary school students learn to identify the national flag, secondary school students learn about the “guiding principles” of China’s previous leaders, including Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao. Students are also required to remember China’s “main constraint” over the past decades – identified as “the contradiction between lagging social productivity and the people’s growing material and cultural needs.”

Textbooks will now need to be revised to redefine the contradiction as “between unbalanced and disproportionate development and the people’s growing needs for a better life,” a definition outlined by President Xi last week.

Xi Jinping's new ideology is the brightest spot of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. Photo: AP

Beijing is in the process of standardizing the country's political and ideological textbooks from grades 1 to 9, gradually replacing textbooks issued by provincial governments with a new set of textbooks issued by the Ministry of Education.

A source familiar with the matter said the Chinese president's ideology could be taught in fifth or sixth grade. Cheng Chen, a political scientist at the University at Albany, said that teaching the new ideology in schools would strengthen the image of both President Xi and the Chinese Communist Party.

“This teaching will reinforce President Xi’s image as a dynamic leader in the history of the People’s Republic of China, who ushered in a new era. It may also contribute to further promoting the growing nationalism among Chinese youth,” the expert stressed./.

Lan Ha

(According to SCMP)