Primary school students listen to stories of China's revolutionary history from a veteran in Bengbu, East China's Anhui Province. Photo: VCG

A withdrawal mechanism and severe punishment was proposed for political teachers at Chinese primary and secondary schools who are found to damage the Party's authority and violate professional ethics, a new guideline on strengthening the political education teacher team showed.       

The guideline issued by China's Ministry of Education (MoE) on Monday proposed to introduce a withdrawal mechanism for unqualified political teachers, and those who damage the authority of the Communist Party of China (CPC) or go against the Party's policy during teaching will be subject to punishment.   

Teachers who violate professional ethics or lack the teaching capabilities should be transferred to other posts or quit their positions as a political teacher, according to the guideline published on the ministry's website on Monday.  

The guideline also mentioned a mechanism to motivate teachers to improve their comprehensive abilities. 

Distinguished teachers will have the chance to teach model classes nationwide and further their studies abroad. They should be favored in promotion and commendation.

The guideline followed in March when Chinese top leader called for ideological and political teachers to uphold firm Marxist belief and boost creativity in teaching to cultivate talent to build socialism. 

Schools that lack political teachers should recruit enough personnel and assign enough class hours. Teachers are selected according to their ethics, morality and teaching capacity, the guideline said. 

Some schools did not recruit enough political educators or the teacher was not qualified to teach students who are at a critical time in forming their world view and value system, a ministry spokesperson was quoted as saying in an explanatory article on the ministry website. China's political education class focuses on the moral, social, political and legal aspects of citizenship. 

Teachers were asked to improve their understanding of Marxist theories, politics and policy and develop their teaching tactics. 

Ran Naiyan, a research fellow at the Beijing Academy of Educational Sciences, who is currently doing field study at a primary school in Beijing, noted schools haven't attached sufficient importance to political education for a long time compared to main subjects like math, Chinese and English. 

Some schools only have a part-time teacher for political education, and the classes are sometimes taken by main subject teachers. 

The revised political education textbook is more vivid and involves extracurricular activities, but some teachers didn't change their indoctrinating style, Ran said. 

Peng Peixia, a political teacher at a primary school in Foshan, South China's Guangdong Province, told the Global Times that from her experience, the teaching should be close to daily life and more classes should be given outside the classroom in places like the museum and patriotism education bases.  

Ran mentioned the National Day parade this year as a perfect political education lesson for students as the course is about cultivation of values and identity recognition.

"China's development and progress is seen from the happy faces of common people and commemoration of martyrs," he said.

China strengthened ideological and political education in universities earlier this year in an effort to foster a new generation of young people capable of shouldering the mission of national rejuvenation, and those who have all-round moral, intellectual, physical and aesthetic grounding with a sound work ethic. 

As many as 85.2 percent of China's higher education institutes had set up their own institutions to conduct research on ideological and political education as of the end of 2018, according to the Ministry of Education.