[Epoch Times, August 23, 2022]A few days ago, the People’s Education Publishing House of the Communist Party of China (referred to as the People’s Education Press) has made new progress in the incident of vulgar illustrations in elementary school mathematics textbooks. 27 people, including Party Secretary and President Huang Qiang of the People’s Education Society, and Guo Ge, the editor-in-chief, were punished. But netizens thought the official punishment was too light.
On August 22, the official Weibo account of the Ministry of Education of the Communist Party of China announced that in May this year, the issue of illustrations of the eleventh set of elementary school mathematics textbooks by the People’s Education Society aroused attention. After investigation, the illustrations are not beautiful and upward; they are not serious and standardized, and some illustrations even have errors; Relevant units and 27 negligent personnel were held accountable.
Among them, Huang Qiang, Secretary of the Party Committee and President of the People’s Education Society, and Guo Ge, the editor-in-chief and then Secretary of the Party Committee, were severely warned and recorded major demerits. Tian Huisheng, director of the Ministry of Education’s Teaching Materials Bureau, was warned and recorded a demerit. The person in charge and the main person in charge of the primary school mathematics editing room were dismissed, warned, and recorded major demerits.
The report also stated that there is no problem of economic benefit transmission between relevant personnel of the People’s Education Society, Wu Yong, the illustrator, and Lv Jingren, the general consultant of the overall design and art of teaching materials, and they will no longer be hired to engage in related work.
Netizens expressed dissatisfaction with the official result, believing that the punishment was too light.
“It’s hard to be convincing if you check yourself for such a big thing!” “Wu Yong is a leader, and he should be dealt with severely to set an example, but now he is punished for scratching the itch. What I am most worried about is the power behind him, hiding too deep Now, the textbook has been hidden for more than ten years before it was exposed, and it is even more impossible for us to make it public to the group of people behind.” “Raise it high and put it down gently!”
Another netizen believed that the official attitude was perfunctory and insincere, and that these teaching materials “poisoned thousands of young people for more than ten years”.
The pictures of the teaching materials exposed in May this year show that the children in the illustrations have too wide eye distance, too high hairline, crooked mouth, squint, tongue sticking out, etc., and even some pictures are suspected of showing pornographic content. Netizens believe that these illustrations will affect the children’s aesthetic development, the style of the paintings is gloomy and weird, and it will have a negative impact on the physical and mental health of the children.
Guo Ge, the editor-in-chief who was punished this time, said in an interview with China Education Television in 2020 that a selection, a picture, a paragraph, a word, or even a punctuation mark in the textbook may affect students for a lifetime.
Netizens questioned: “How did the textbooks get approved at the beginning? This is a very serious problem. Let’s investigate thoroughly.” “How did these people get into the editorial department? Relationship?” Why? Why haven’t they been discovered for so many years?”
Responsible editor: Xiao Lusheng