Hunan's education bureau has made some meaningful changes to the central province's guidelines for safety and health education in primary and high schools.

The bureau has decided to delete that part of the document that encourages young students to brave dangers to help others. Instead, the new guidelines say students should be educated to use clever tactics without risking their own lives to save those in danger.

For decades, students in China's primary and middle schools have been taught to act as heroes to help others without considering the consequences. This kind of idealism in moral education is now being replaced by a more pragmatic attitude.

The change should be praised. But there is still much that needs to be done to improve safety and health education for our children.

A particularly weak area is education in practical skills of the children protecting themselves in emergencies and disasters and helping those in danger when they can.

The weakness in this area was clearly reflected in the tragedy last week in Tongjiang of Southwest China's Sichuan Province. A cry of "ghost is coming!" in a primary school's dark corridor triggered a stampede that killed 10 pupils.

In fact, many schools have never told students how to deal with a situation like this as well as other terrifying ones such as fire, earthquake and floods.

Nor have they been taught how to avoid suspect characters and dangers on the road.

In big cities like Beijing and Shanghai, students in some schools have been provided with a brochure or a textbook with such information and told to read them after school. But it is not known how well the children have gone through the information.

In smaller places like Tongjiang, students have a much slimmer chance of obtaining even a brochure on personal safety. The occurrence of the stampede should not be surprising.

The lack of, or perfunctory approach to, safety and health education can in fact lead to the old question of what China's primary and high school education is really for.

Despite constant, sharp criticism, the overwhelming purpose of the education remains making students academically qualified for higher-level schools. Other purposes are ignored.

On the issue of safety education, some may argue that it can be done by parents. But most of the parents themselves are ignorant in this respect. Primary and middle school teachers remain the best bet.

In health education, sex education remains controversial and difficult to conduct.

Many provinces have decided to improve sex education for young children to save them from sexually-transmitted diseases, particularly AIDS, and other injuries from sexual behaviours.

Hunan has also decided to put contraception into their education guidelines for high schools.

This will almost certainly lead to debate about the need for it and the way of going about it. Such debate can happen anywhere in the world.

But educators must face up to the debate or even have the courage to start one themselves. An open, wide debate will help generate a solution acceptable to the majority of the people.

(China Daily November 1, 2005)