China’s students to learn how to cook, clean and raise small animals to combat helpless maths nerd stereotype
- Chinese students have long held a reputation of lacking independence and the ability to cope with life, long after they have reached adulthood
- Students will learn a range of skills from cooking, cleaning, organising, repairing appliances, growing vegetables and raising small animals
Primary and secondary school students in China will be expected to cook simple dishes like scrambled eggs and learn how to clean under a shake-up of the country’s education system from September.
Chinese students have long had a reputation for lacking independence and the ability to cope with life, even after they have reached adulthood.
Xiong Bingqi, director of the 21st Century Education Research Institute, said it’s a common phenomenon that Chinese parents value knowledge-focused education while overlooking basic life and living skills.
“Many parents help their kids do all the non-study stuff. They don’t allow their children to do any household chores or any manual labour,” Xiong told the South China Morning Post.
“Cooking is a basic skill that students should learn while growing up. Highlighting the learning of cooking in the curriculum corrects this weakness in family education.”
From this autumn, students in primary and the younger years of secondary schools across the country will attend at least one domestic labour class every week, according to the ministry’s proposal.
