A 13-YEAR-OLD BOY, surnamed Zhou, returned to school after his successful treatment for cancer. However, the rumor spread among the other children that he suffered from an infectious disease, as a result he suffered from discrimination as the other children feared they would be infected. China Daily reporter Zhang Zhouxiang comments:

It is hard to imagine a boy as young as 12 years old suffering from cancer. Actually, both the cancer and its treatment were rather painful and Zhou, who had fought cancer for one year must be a brave boy.

And he is a hardworking boy, too. Having been absent for one year, he got 97.5 points in mathematics.

However, this brave and hardworking boy now has to sit in a separate seat at the back of the classroom and has to stay more than 1 meter away from his nearest classmate. The teacher of the Chinese language class even refused to let him participate in the exam. During the 45 minutes when his classmates worked on their answers, he had to sit there alone, watching his classmates answer the questions.

There used to be some cases in which pupils infected with HIV suffered from discrimination at school. Some of them even dropped out of school because of the discrimination they faced. Zhou's suffering is even more heart-rending than theirs because cancer, unlike HIV, is not a communicable disease.

Zhou's case is more than a tragedy for him alone, because it reflects that prejudice and ignorance still exist. Schools are places where the future generation is educated. It is a tragedy for the whole of society if prejudice and discrimination exist in schools, because that might distort the values of the future generation.

The latest news shows that the local education bureau in Hui'an county, East China's Fujian province, has begun an investigation. Let's hope the teachers who are involved in the discrimination get their deserved warnings and penalties, while pupils and parents are made aware of the truth of the matter.

That's not for the boy alone. That's for the country's future generation.