Headline Sep 02, 2014/

''' THE TERRIBLE BURDEN ON 

STUDENTS '''

The eyes first,  red and smirking. The heart next, bleeding and heavy. So,  I turn and look,  - in the cold raw silence, and  find 

Nobel Laureate, Irish Poet Seamus Heaney-. 

Its heft and hush became a bright nowhere,

A soul ramifying and forever.

Silent,  beyond silence listen for.

Bookish from boyhood, with a compendium for literature in his head:

Heaney won a scholarship to Queen's Belfast,  -did a lectureship at Berkeley, and held professorships at Harvard and Oxford :

 And he made exquisite tender verses/

Not just the developing world, but in other parts too,   -scores and scores of students  -request, help. assistance, and even hand-holding. to leverage for an internship  or a job:

Corporations the world over, ought to heed this urgent need and devise solutions.

And Professor Seamus Heaney would have felt, such :

The heavy spade, slicing and nicking the turf with its clean plate-edge; the rightness and lightness  of pitchfork and rake; the sledgehammer's gathered force-

'' So unanswerably landed  /  The staked earth quailed and shivered in the 

   handle. ''

In most of the developing world, -and even in some parts of  the developed world, I daily noticed small children,  bending and arching bow-like, while carrying their school backpack. 

Purges maybe what political junkies are talking about, but even for Chinese families:

The big issue is the Homework.

Only recently, -Children across the country have returned to their classrooms, just as the education ministry put forward plans  to  decrease the amount  of homework pupils must do each day.

The ministry's proposed guide lines, issued last August, banned written homework for any child up to the age of 12:

And ban exams for children up to the age of nine.

It also said that  primary schools should organize  more extra-curricular activities, such as visits to museums and places of cultural interest and  ''cultivate pupils'' hands on capabilities through handicrafts and farm work.''

Amid intense competition for university places and jobs, Chinese schoolchildren spend hours on homework each night.

Pressure from an early age is the cause of constantly hand wringing in the press. Yet the very notion of lightening the burden has met opposition from the people who complain most : parents.

Last spring, Beijing attempted its own home work restrictions , but workloads crept back up as insistent parents worried about their children falling behind.

The new proposals have drawn tens of thousands of comments on Weibo, China's version of Twitter,  with older children saying they heard similar ideas of reform when they were at school ten years ago:

But nothing has changed.

On his microblog Wang Xiaodong, co-author of a book called :  ''Unhappy China'', suggest that the ministry stop -managing  every element of basic education and leave the work to teachers and students.

But that idea might lead to more homework, if current pattern holds.

The biggest contribution education officials could make. wrote Mr Wang, was to ''give them six months holiday,''

The real problem is the underlying system. As one microblogger wrote : ''If the gaobao {entrance exam} is not cancelled, if the top universities still enroll only the students with the highest score:

It is impossible to reduce  ''pupils' burdens''. 

And then, also,  in the most other parts of the world,  these worries get compounded by corruption, inequity and disparity in teacher training and compensation.

Few believe such deep structural problems can be countered simply by a call for less homework.

Despite all the pros and cons,  -everything, !WOW!  would still debate the need to ban homework.

Were Professor Seamus Heaney to write this post, he would, in every possibility have availed this honour, to sum up as follows:

''A wood-kerne/ Escaped from the massacre,/

 Taking protective colouring./

  From hole and bark.''

''May you rest in peace, Sir! And Thank You, Professor, for everything!!

Thank you all for reading.¬!  Please share this important post forward.

With respectful dedication to the Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. See Ya ll on !WOW!   -the World Students Society Computers-Internet-Wireless:

''' The Reward Of Welfare And Work '''

Good Night and God Bless!

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless