Chinese lawmakers’ proposal for learning local culture instead of English in schools leads to outcry

Following a wave of complaints from concerned parents, the Chinese education ministry shot down a proposal by the lawmakers that seeks to undermine learning English at schools in favour of promoting Chinese culture.

The proposal was made last month by members of the National People’s Congress to further reduce the amount of time spent studying English.

The draft is part of a decade-long call to minimise Western influence by reducing the amount of time spent on studying foreign languages.

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The proposal was in response to the suggestions sought by the ministry of education about “increasing cultural confidence” and “reducing the proportion of English teaching”.

As per a South China Morning Post report, one of the suggestions made by lawmakers said, “Studying English is necessary, but it should take less time.”

While another asserted, “Reform English teaching methods and switch to grading-based teaching to emphasise oral communication and real-life applications.”

Even though the ministry has rejected these suggestions, it has also vowed to work toward promoting traditional Chinese culture.

The government reasoned that English only takes up eight per cent of the whole curriculum, which is less than one-third of the time spent studying Chinese languages.

The move by the ministry came in response to a wave of concerns raised on social media platforms where netizens expressed apprehension that English language teaching might be further marginalised and that this could hurt future career prospects of students.

“It is very important to let students learn English from an early age, most of the prominent academic journals in the world are in English, can you simply rely on a translation tool to read them?” one post on Weibo read.

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