Ironically, these past 11 years, public opinion has simultaneously called for a reduction In workload.

These extracurricular schools have published their own science textbooks to further weigh down children's backpacks.

Children can't cope with the added workload. Xiao Chen says, "We juniors are finding a lot of white hairs, and seniors have even more. Half of one senior's head is white. We are all coping with nearsightedness."

In an article in the national "85" focal points of scientific research, the specialists of the Middle and Elementary School Student Psychological Health Investigative Team studied more than 10,000 students in all 76 schools of the Dongbei education system. Thirty-five percent of middle school students displayed psychological problems and approximately 30% of elementary school students did not pass a mental health examination. Only 8.2% of the study's subjects successfully passed the examination. These results are attributed to the enormous pressure "at work on their overloaded mentalities" and the "long-term anxiety accumulating in their minds."

Looking back at her 40 plus years in teaching, Miss Xie still believes that her first class was relaxed and happy. In the 60s, when Miss Xie was in her 20s, she and her students would often pick weeds, harvest rice, climb trees and bamboo poles, and make clay dolls. Xie said, "In those days, kids almost didn't even need book-bags."

"Climbing trees and bamboo poles, I often told the children to put a little friction into each step as they climbed," Xie remembered, "Watching two ships rowing toward their destination familiarized them with hydromechanics- their was a perfect integration [of academic and real life]."

When Miss Xie retired, she was upset to find that the principle halted the student's summertime social activities and that "all the students had to attend tutorial sessions." She regretted that there was no practical way of testifying to the old-fashioned method's advantages. "But I still firmly believe that's the happiest way to teach students. Teachers are also happy, because they don't have to sternly discipline their pupils."

Wang Baigen explained: "Now there's a lot of pressure on teachers, and there's even more on schools and principles. Student's are graded harder on tests and tests are becoming more important. We don't have the authority to stop that. We must meet the demands of the college entrance exams."

When the college entrance examinations began again in 1977, Wang Baigen tested into Hangzhou University (now Zhejiang University). In 2004, his son tested into the Department of Finance at Jilin University. "That year, our whole family felt liberated, we could finally put all his teaching materials, reference texts, review questions away on the shelf."