感恩教育 (gǎnēn jiàoyù): Filial education

A short video showing hundreds of children crying in a school playground after listening to a "filial education" speech went viral on the internet recently. The children in the video are students at the Experimental Primary School, Shuozhou, North China's Shanxi province, who listened to a speaker's sensational speech about how to be grateful to their parents.

The video sparked a heated online debate on whether it was appropriate for the primary school to make its pupils listen to the speech. Some netizens criticized the school for trying to brainwash the children and accused it of "cultural pyramid selling".

The media also reported that the speaker charges a performance fee of 50,000 yuan ($7,330) to deliver this speech, and he also runs training classes in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.

The principal of the primary school responded that the speech aims to help students realize the significance of expressing gratitude to their parents, and that such kinds of filial education is not uncommon in primary schools nowadays. There have been media reports of some local primary schools requiring their students to wash the feet of their parents as a way of thanking their parents.

It is of great significance to teach the students how to be grateful to their parents and other people, but the educators should choose a proper method to achieve that goal.