The new curriculum guidelines for high schoolers have been released, in response to the heated debate over the learning of classical Chinese.

Now, students will be exposed to a wider selection of topics, while the number of articles introduced will be reduced to alleviate their burden. This measure is expected to take effect in the year of 2012.

Debated by 3 Ministers of Education, the announcement new teaching guidelines for Chinese culture has finally been completed.

The most eagerly anticipated section has been classical Chinese which is currently 45% though it has been raised to between 45 to 65%!

Bringing more flexibility was an important part of this new guideline as it will allow districts and even schools to adjust teaching content and in order to reduce the burden on students studying Classical Chinese as the number of articles will be reduced from 40 down to 30. The final release of these guidelines disappointed the Rescue Chinese Language Alliance,

as no increase in the proportion of classical Chinese teaching materials,

or electives mean that the most important thing for teachers is how their students perform on tests.

The group to advise the teaching guideline said that the most important aspects were still how to teach and test, especially as the College Entrance Examination Center will comply with these principles and greatly reduce the burden on students!