The new school term has started. This term, a couple of texts as part of the literature textbooks for senior high school students in Beijing will be replaced. New texts include extracts from contemporary novels, while the old ones to be taken out are ancient and modern classics. This change has brought about some discussion. Let's now take a look at some of what's being saying said.

Reporter:
The Beijing News Daily carries a few opinions. One teacher from Nanjing welcomes Jin Yong's works, saying the literature program serves two purposes: one is to teach students how to express ideas in spoken and in written form, the other is to cultivate cultural knowledge regarding classics, to carry on the traditions. Correspondingly, the course should focus on these two areas. However, the old way of teaching focuses on analyzing ideas and themes. As a result, these literature textbooks have come to be treated excessively seriously. This teacher says the change will introduce a new concept of teaching. Jin Yong's works reflect cultural background through character, and are attractive, which makes it more effective for students to grasp the skills of diction.

Another welcoming view on the Beijing Youth Daily points out that one criterion in the selection of the texts should be that recent students have come to love to read them. Therefore it is not a bad idea to use more up-to-date content to replace old texts that are often hard to understand.

However, another writer thinks the change reflects only one principle, which is innovation for its own sake. As a teacher of high school literature course from Shandong, he finds it disappointing. The composition of the textbooks should follow a clear focus, be it on carrying forward traditional culture, learning basic classics, or knowledge about the Chinese language. However, these changes are predicated on innovation alone, the article contends, and have gone to an extreme. The article says The Real Story of Ah Q is a first-class example of Chinese literature, and should not be excluded from the textbook without strong justification.