On Aug 1, the Ministry of Education published the draft of an updated code of conduct for primary and secondary school pupils, which aroused concern because it deleted requirements like boldly fighting criminals, and added clauses about self-protection. However, the new draft is more practical, says an article on cnhubei.com. Excerpts:

Over 200 million pupils nationwide are expected to follow the code of conduct; so, in principle, those who draft the code have to consider the pupils' safety and make it practical for them to follow.

The old version failed to meet these requirements. It required the pupils, mostly aged between 6 and 16, to do dangerous deeds such as fighting criminals. It's hard to imagine pupils will follow these dogmatic requirements without even understanding what they mean.

Besides these requirements, the old code did not mention pupils' rights.

That's why the old code was generally criticized for being impractical and the new draft should be seen as progress. The new draft deletes the out-dated dogma and instead favors the pupils' lives and interests instead - about one-third of the draft is about pupils protecting themselves.

Compared with the old version that treated pupils like objects of discipline, the new draft pays more attention to them as people.

More importantly, the new draft is shorter but has listed details for most requirements. For example, in the part on environmental protection, it calls on pupils to do garbage sorting and to lead a low-carbon lifestyle; in the part on self-protection, it expects pupils to stay away from drugs to learn to call for help when in need. Both are easy to follow.

Hence it can be predicted that the new draft will be more effective and we expect pupils to grow up healthy following the new code of conduct.

(China Daily 08/04/2014 page9)