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Fran Lu

Doctors in China have united behind a primary schoolboy who was penalised for answering a mathematics question with a medical diagnosis.
The boy’s mother, who uses the name @Xiaojun on Douyin, posted his test paper on the social media platform.
The question referred to a graphic showing a person’s temperature dropping from 39.5 to 36.7 degrees Celsius over a three-day period.
“What information can you get from the graphic?” it asked.
The boy, whose name was not revealed, answered: “The patient is about to recover.”
The teacher judged the answer to be wrong and deducted four points from his paper.
After his mother posted the paper online, doctors nationwide flocked to comment and asked the teacher to “return the four points to him”.
A range of medical professionals who supported the boy posted photos of themselves wearing white coats or holding their medical credentials to prove their authority.
“It might be the case that the patient’s temperature was controlled due to the use of antibiotic medicine, but it mostly shows that the disease is under control, and the patient is recovering. Please give the points back to the kid,” one paediatrician wrote.

Some judged the boy’s answer as a sign of his potential, and encouraged the mother to support her son to become a doctor.
The mother’s post went viral and has been viewed 110 million times on Weibo.
The boy’s mother later revealed the standard answer, which is “the patient’s temperature remains stable in a certain period of time.”
“How can such a question expect a ‘standard answer’?” one online observer asked.
“The ‘standard answer’ is killing children’s creativity,” another person said.
A number of netizens criticised the type of rote learning in education that gives teachers unparalleled authority and does not encourage students to think creatively, or allow for an alternative answer.
In China, being a good student can often mean memorising standard answers, an approach that was introduced from the Soviet Union in the 1950s.
From the 1990s, China began the transition to a “well-rounded education” that includes intellectual, physical and moral qualities.
In 2021, China issued a new Double Reduction Policy, which aimed to reduce homework and after-school tutoring for primary and secondary school students to ease the pressure which results from an exam-oriented education.


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