By Our Commentator

Giving correct guidance and help to the healthy growth of young students, so that they can achieve an all-round development in the moral, intellectual, physical and aesthetic aspects, is a major question concerning the orientation for China's educational development.

Adopting practical and effective measures to strengthen and improve educational work is an important task that calls for the high attention and joint efforts of the whole Party and whole society to get it well done.

Since the founding of New China in 1949, the Party and government have paid high attention to the development of people's education, have extended great energy to it, and have thus brought about enormous development of China's educational undertaking and have trained large numbers of outstanding personnel for socialist construction. The Party Central Committee with Comrade Jiang Zemin at the core has shown great concern for and paid high attention to the educational undertaking and the ideological work among youngsters, it has made a series of major decisions and important instructions, thus laying a foundation and clearly showing the orientation for the development of the educational undertaking in the New Period. Currently, China has 240 million people receiving education at school, accounting for about one-fifth of the country's total population. They constitute a strong reserve force for the socialist modernization drive and need particular concern, support and care.

Education is a lofty cause of the public good as well as a system project. It is necessary to constantly improve the quality and level of education. We should not only strengthen students' cultural knowledge education, but also intensify students' ideological-political, moral, disciplinary and legal education. Strengthening and improving educational work is a matter not only for schools and educational departments, families and various social sectors should all show concern for and extend support to it.

Schools are an important base for training personnel. Our schools, educational departments as well as other departments should pay attention to doing their work well, they should guide the parents' urgent desire of hoping their children to become talents, teachers' mood of bringing up people through teaching and students' enthusiasm for study onto the correct path and comprehensively improve the qualities of youngsters. We must never allow the mishandling of these problems to cause negative and even opposite consequences. Now the excessively heavy burden of schoolwork and great psychological pressure on some students are disadvantageous to the healthy growth of young students and will likely give rise to other problems. There are some schools and regions which pay close attention to students' knowledge education and the schools' infrastructure construction, but only have a loose grip of students' ideological, moral, disciplinary and legal education and out-of-school activities, some students have accepted adverse social influence and some have even embarked on the illegal and criminal road. These problems call for the high attention of the Party committees, governments and educational departments at various levels, they must have a firm grip of, and must not slacken off, students' educational work, particularly ideological, moral, disciplinary and legal education and inside and outside school activities.

Schools and families must have a correct guiding thought and educational method when they require and encourage youngsters to study hard. They must not keep youngsters reading all day at home, instead, they should allow children to take part in social practice, broaden their field of vision and enhance their social experience. Various types of schools at all levels should conscientiously implement the educational principle of making education serve the cause of socialism and education integrated with practice. In the new, complex environment resulted from the introduction of reform and opening and the development of a socialist market economy, adhering to such an educational principle is extremely important. At the same time, we should bring home to people that in China it is unrealistic for everybody to study in university. Society needs talents in various fields. The growth of talents needs to be realized through great social practice and one's own continuous efforts.

The whole society should be concerned for and support the educational undertaking, it is especially necessary to strengthen ideological education among young students in patriotism, collectivism and socialism, help them establish a correct world outlook and a concept of life and value. This item of work should be done not only by educational departments, but also by publicity and ideological departments, political-legal departments as well as other departments, the whole Party and the whole society should all come to do this work.

With regard to the undesirable actions occurred among students, schools and relevant departments must take a clear-cut stand against them, they should purposefully do ideological education well and strengthen work with students' parents. They should carry out frequent disciplinary and legal education among students to enhance their concept in this respect. They should make up their minds to improve social security within the school and in the surrounding areas, so as to guarantee that the students have a quiet, harmonious and healthy studying environment.

Success in the educational undertaking and in young students' ideological work directly concerns whether or not our implementation of the strategy of rejuvenating the country through science and education and China's socialist modernization drive can be successful. Party committees and governments at all levels should understand this problem from such a high plane and make earnest efforts to try by every possible means to tackle this work firmly, properly and effectively.