Chinese university's effort to teach value of labor backfires in filth

Nanchang University's president Zhou implemented a policy to require students to clean their own residence halls, bathrooms, trash, and all. The strategy, designed to cultivate willingness to labor among young people who are largely pampered as only children, backfired in mounds of garbage and filth, not to speak of the students who personally hired back the workers who used to do the cleaning in the halls.

Student development 101 tells us that any challenging new learning opportunity requires scaffolding or bridging from a former stage to the next. This example pushes the envelop in terms of how a student affairs educator might work to foster student willingness to work while not collapsing into unpleasant, and likely unhealthy, living conditions.