“Although families and schools should join forces in protecting teenagers, it remains a tough task to get rid of inappropriate practices which might harm them,” said Chen Zhili, minister of education.

Chen made the remarks at a ministry symposium in Beijing to commemorate the anniversary of a speech about teenage education made by President Jiang Zemin.

The speech, made on February 1 last year, called for more attention to be paid to teenagers’ education. It came after a 17-year-old senior student in Jinhua, a city in east China’s Zhejiang Province, killed his mother with an iron hammer.

When the killer, Xu Li, was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment, his classmates and his father’s colleagues spontaneously appealed to the court for a more lenient sentence.

Lu Qin, a senior expert on the education of teenagers, completed research into the case and concluded: Although Xu’s actions were unforgivable, his mother was not without being blamed.

According to Lu, Xu was never allowed to associate with his peers, read newspapers or watch television programs. His mother said he should devote all his spare time to study. The mother also set unreasonable goals for her son. If Xu’s academic results ranked him 11th or worse in his class, his mother would beat him, Lu said.

To make matters worse, Xu had no privacy at home - his mother scrutinized his diaries and telephone records regularly. Sometimes, she even went to Xu’s school to check if he stayed in class and studied during recess.

Lu said after being repressed for such a long time, Xu lost control on January 17 last year.

Xu’s case may be an extreme example, but his story is not a unique one. Lu said the story should ring alarm bells in the country’s 370 million households about the importance of a healthy home environment for teenagers.

(China Daily 02/02/2001)