BEIJING (SCMP): An intern teacher at a Shanghai secondary school has come under fire for asking students to answer a questionnaire that ranks their family’s financial status.
A photo circulating online shows a question that suggests the students at Shanghai Longming Secondary School to assess their family’s social ranks.
The question, which is accompanied with a graphic of a ladder, asks them to choose from one, which stands for “the most indecent and lowest-paid jobs” that their parents have, to 10, which represents “higher-level education and better jobs”.
Social media was baffled by the question.
One online observer asked: “Why does the school need to investigate a student’s family status? To treat them accordingly?”
On Nov 6, the Minhang district Education Bureau in charge of the school issued a statement which said that the questionnaire was distributed by a university student intern without getting the school’s permission.
A teacher said online that some university students interning at schools, especially those majoring in social sciences, used to hand out questionnaires for their own research, but many schools had banned the behaviour to avoid controversy.
The bureau had requested the school’s leaders to reflect on their mistakes, dismiss the intern, and explain and apologise to the students and their parents.
However, many parents nationwide confessed online that such family background investigation was not uncommon among Chinese primary and secondary schools, although it was often carried out in a more obscure manner.
“My primary school kid was asked to write parents’ jobs and where we live,” one online observer said.
Another said such requests infringed on students’ privacy: “We never wrote down our real professions when the school asked.”
“School should be an untainted land where students can learn and experience equality and make the world a better place when they grow up,” a third person said.
However, some said such surveys were sometimes done out of good intentions.
“We were asked to provide a family background in secondary school. It helped the teachers to learn some students’ difficulties, offer them subsidies, and care for those with single parents,” one person said.
In 2021, several classes at a primary school in central China’s Shanxi province triggered backlash after they were exposed for investigating students’ parents and apply problematic classification on their jobs.
The 11 job categories included leaders, business owners, authorities, migrant workers and people with criminal records.
The school later announced it had punished the responsible teachers for their inappropriate behaviour. - South China Morning
