Minister calls for ‘re-packaging’ of ideology classes

Universities must make ideology classes “trendy” and appealing to young people, Education Minister Chen Baosheng said recently in the latest move to tighten the Communist Party’s grip on the next generation, writes Zhuang Pinghui for the South China Morning Post.

Chen’s call on the sidelines of key annual political meetings in Beijing for a range of extracurricular activities to be organised to immerse students in ideological education, follows a meeting in December in which President Xi Jinping ordered tighter ideological control in tertiary institutions. “We must fight a tough war on improving the quality and standard of political and ideological education,” Chen said.

“When we investigate at colleges and universities, we find that attention levels at thought and political theory classes are not high. People are there in body but not in spirit,” Chen said. “Why is this? The content does not suit their needs. Perhaps the approach is outdated, the tools are rather crude and the packaging is not that fashionable.”
Full report on the South China Morning Post site