SOME PRIMARY SCHOOLS IN HANGZHOU, Zhejiang province, invited pupils' parents to clean the classrooms before the beginning of the new semester instead of the students, and some parents, who are too busy to do the cleaning, hired people to do it for them. Yanzhao Metropolis Daily comments:

Students are often required to arrive in school one day before the start of a new semester in order to obtain new textbooks and new timetables, get to know their new teachers, and clean the classrooms.

The classrooms are dustier than usual after being left unused for nearly one month during the winter vacation, so cleaning the classrooms is necessary to protect the health of the students. And usually, taking part in the cleaning work is regarded as a good opportunity for the children to enhance their sense of responsibility as well as do their meeting and greeting outside lesson time after not seeing each other for nearly a month.

No wonder, the teachers' "invitation" was met with a cold shoulder by most parents. But still some parents felt compelled to do the job or hire someone to do it, as they simply do not want to let the teachers feel embarrassed if no one responded to the call.

In fact, the parents have every reason to turn down the teachers' request. The yes-man relations between teachers and parents are not unique to Hangzhou schools, which is more worrying than the students' absence from the traditional cleaning, as this puts the schools and parents on unequal footings, and family education, which is more important than school education to some extent, automatically gives its way to school education.

Also, an alarming phenomenon behind the scenes is the almost universal inability of juveniles to take care of themselves independently.