Party emphasizes teacher loyalty over teaching ability

The Party wants to cultivate the world's best teachers – but has no idea how to do it.

On Wednesday, the Central Party Committee and State Council dropped high-level guidance on developing a world-class teaching workforce to drive innovation. 

Some context: The Third Plenum highlighted education reforms as a cornerstone of China's sci-tech ambitions. 

So, how to cultivate world-leading teachers?

• By emphasizing Party loyalty, of course!

The very first task listed in the guidelines aims to:

• “Establish and improve a regular theoretical learning system for teachers and use Xi Jinping Thought…to consolidate their beliefs and values” 

There’s more:

• “[We should] regularly conduct political and ideological training for teachers and enhance their political, ideological, theoretical, and emotional identification with the Party.”
• “[We should] incorporate the study and implementation of General Secretary Xi Jinping's theories on education as a mandatory course for teacher development.”

Get smart: A teaching training system emphasizing Party loyalty over teaching ability is not conducive to supporting innovation.

• Such a system rewards teachers who toe the Party line rather than those who excel at training students to innovate and generate creative solutions.