Violent pornography "Weird" children's extracurricular books are worrying

□ Sun Tianjiao, reporter of this newspaper

At a party, the boy fell in love with the girl at first sight, and after being rejected many times of love, he began to stalk the girl, harass the people around him, and even have violent acts... The girl was disturbed and took her to court, and the boy was given a suspended sentence. The boy shouted in court: "What I lost is freedom, but what I will not lose is love for you!" Hearing this, the girl's heart was touched, and she was finally willing to accept the boy's love. The two hugged each other deeply in court and lived happily ever since.

The above stories come from a collection of stories recommended for children under the age of 12. At the end of the story, there is a question "What does this story teach us", and the answer given in the book is - as long as you persevere, you will achieve the desired result.

Mr. Zou, a resident of Chaoyang District, Beijing, accidentally found the book when he was flipping through his children's extracurricular books, and his first reaction after seeing this story was "strange": "Packaging harassment as insistence on pursuing love, let children under the age of 12 see how it affects their values?" ”

A recent investigation by a reporter from "Rule of Law Daily" found that this kind of children's book that makes parents and children feel "strange" appears in the market from time to time. Some books contain violence, thrillers, and pornography, while some children's picture books have exposed illustrations and strange character proportions. What's more, there are contents that distort history and are oriented to bad values.

Experts interviewed by reporters believe that children's extracurricular books are the basis for children's enlightenment reading, and high-quality books will make children fall in love with reading. However, at present, many good and bad reading materials on the market are full of them, and the bad content of some children's extracurricular books may even seriously harm children's physical and mental health, which must be paid attention to.

Contains violent pornographic plots

Violation of children's physical and mental health

Recently, Ms. Lai, a resident of Tianjin, bought a children's picture book called "Don't ×× casually" for her 4-year-old daughter online. However, after receiving the book, Ms. Lai flipped through a few pages at random and found that the whole book was full of unsatisfactory dialogue.

Not only that, but the illustrations in the book also stunned Ms. Lai: there was a man holding the little girl, the little girl showed her bottoms, and the man's hand was still on the girl's private part.

Ms. Lai told reporters that the picture book sold considerably on the Internet, and the propaganda page said that it was a sex education book for children, and even a recommended book in many stores. "Under the banner of sex education, but in fact, only talk about 'sex', there is no positive educational significance at all, it is difficult to imagine how the child will affect her values after reading it."

This is not the first "pit" that Ms. Lai has stepped on in children's extracurricular books. She had previously bought a children's book called "××'s Birthday", the background story is that the bear celebrates his birthday, and invites animal friends such as chickens, rabbits, and tigers. The story looks normal at first glance, but when you see that in the back, when everyone is eating cake, the book prompts "one less child", but there is an extra plate of roast chicken on the table, and the chicken that appeared before has disappeared.

Ms. Lai recalled that she was reading the book with her daughter, and when she turned to this page, her daughter did not react, and kept chasing her and asking, "Which child is missing", but Ms. Lai did not know how to answer. "The author takes vulgarity as funny and does not respect the innocence and kindness of children in the slightest."

During the reporter's recent investigation and interview, it was also found that some children's extracurricular books contained bad content.

According to the "Jiangxi Province Children's Extracurricular Reading Material Consumption Survey Report" released by the Jiangxi Provincial Consumer Rights Protection Commission in May 2022, some children's extracurricular books have problems such as bad behavior induction, vulgar language, violence, and tampering with classics. For example, the book "Brain Teasers - Intelligence Competition" presents the content that is not conducive to children's psychological growth that "the reason why no one was injured when the plane fell from the sky is that they all died".

What's more, some children's extracurricular books have made serious historical mistakes. In May this year, a series of historical books "A History of China Written for Children" was exposed to factual errors: when describing the Sino-Japanese naval battle, the book used a "map of Ding Ruchang's surrender". The actual situation is that Ding Ruchang, as the commander of the Beiyang Naval Division, led the people to stubbornly resist the Japanese army, refused to surrender and died heroically. After the incident was exposed, the publisher of the book issued a fact sheet saying that the book did have improper illustration problems. The relevant units have been contacted as soon as possible to stop sales and fully recover and destroy.

Xi Peizhi, deputy secretary-general of the Juvenile Law Research Association of the Shanghai Law Society, believes that the market for children's extracurricular books is large and diverse, and there are problems of uneven quality. These problems may involve shallow content, incomplete storylines, inappropriate language expressions, distorted values, etc., and the uneven quality of reading materials needs attention. To a large extent, these problems can adversely affect a child's reading experience, learning ability, and moral development.

Sun Hongyan, a researcher at the China Youth Research Center, told reporters that bad content may convey wrong values, such as encouraging violence, discrimination, comparison, etc., leading children to form wrong moral concepts and value orientations. At the same time, there may be inappropriate behaviors in some bad content, such as violence, bullying, etc., and children are easy to imitate these behaviors, resulting in their tendency to have bad behaviors. After children have more contact with such children's extracurricular books, they may get used to such a kind of spiritual food, and they are unwilling to appreciate some elegant literature, which is very detrimental to their personality development.

"Inaccurate or misinformation can negatively affect a child's cognitive and intellectual development, misleading their understanding and judgment of things. Adverse content can trigger fear, anxiety, and emotional instability in children, negatively impacting their mental health. Poor quality children's extracurricular reading materials may make children lose interest in reading, affecting their reading habits and reading ability development. Xi Peizhi said.

Inferior pirated books are rampant

Affect the normal publishing order

It is worth noting that a children's book from a regular publishing house that can come out often undergoes a strict gatekeeping mechanism.

Xin Xin (pseudonym), a senior children's book editor of a publishing house, told reporters that his publishing house has done both domestic originals and foreign imported copyrights. After a children's book is confirmed for publication, as an editor, they will first review the text, check the text and diagram, and then give the review and final review, and after revising according to the review and final review opinions, apply for the book number, do the cover design, measure the cost, negotiate channels... The final draft is sent to the printing house for printing, and the printing plant is supervised by the printing quality.

Xin Xin said that under strict control and review procedures, basically the content found to be problematic will be dealt with immediately. For example, she said, "After considering a set of sex education picture books imported from Japan for children around the age of 13, we decided to delete one of the illustrations of naked adult women. First, this illustration is more realistic; Second, considering that girls at this age have not completed their development, it may bring them problems such as 'body anxiety'. ”

So, under the strict editing process, why are many children's extracurricular books still criticized?

"Some children's book authors and publishers do not start from the concept of serving and protecting minors when making content, resulting in some unhealthy, vulgar and violent content in children's books. At the same time, financial interests are also an important driver, in order to make the book sell better, with some content that considers itself 'fashionable' to attract young readers. Sun Hongyan said.

Sanshi, a well-known writer and publisher, told reporters that children's extracurricular books are an important part of the publishing market, and it is easy to achieve quick results, especially non-original works, there are patchwork, copying phenomena, and some are heavy text and light pictures, the quality of illustrations is not high, these are prone to content quality problems, and even the production of bad content.

"What urgently needs to be strictly controlled now is the large online sales platform and small private sales channels. The former is more serious, which is the most troublesome problem for our publishing house, piracy and poor quality children's extracurricular books seriously affect the normal publishing order. Sanshi said.

In Xi's view, in some cases, there may be omissions or imperfections in the review and supervision of children's extracurricular books by relevant regulatory agencies. This can allow content that is not suitable for children to escape censorship and regulation and enter the market. At the same time, there may be cultural differences. In a cross-cultural context, the poor content of some books may be due to cultural differences, misunderstandings, or inaccurate understanding of children's literature by creators. Some content that is considered appropriate in one culture may be considered inappropriate for children in another.

"These problems show that the children's extracurricular book market and creative environment need to be regulated and guided. In order to ensure that children have access to appropriate and useful book content, it is necessary to strengthen the review mechanism, industry self-discipline and educational guidance of children's extracurricular books. At the same time, parents and educators should also actively participate in cultivating children's reading awareness and selection ability, and helping them select and understand books and works suitable for their age and developmental stage. Xi Peizhi said.

Promote graded reading standards

Improve the quality of extracurricular reading materials

In the investigation and interview, the reporter found that there is still controversy in the judgment of whether the content of some children's extracurricular books is "bad". Some people think it is "bad content", but others think it is "normal literary creation".

For example, in a series of comic books on Chinese history that claims to be "recommended by schools in many places, skyrocketing knowledge", there are descriptions such as Zhu Wen, the founding emperor of five generations and ten countries, "picking ashes", and some parents posted angrily and reprimanded: "Don't children's extracurricular books now censor?" It is also a children's extracurricular book recommended by the website. But in the comment area of the post, some parents think that "nothing" "can make children interested in history, willing to read history books are good."

Sun Hongyan believes that the reason for the controversy of "whether it is bad content" is precisely because there is currently a lack of content standards for children's extracurricular reading materials. "To judge whether the content of children's extracurricular reading materials is bad, the most important thing is to meet the physical and mental development and cognitive characteristics of minors of different ages. There are significant differences in the acceptance of words and pictures among different age groups, and the restrictions brought by age will also affect the judgment of whether the content of children's books is appropriate, but at present, we lack the classification standards for children's books according to different age groups. ”

Zhang Dandan, a professor at the School of Journalism and Communication of Hunan Normal University, is currently leading a team to study the field of children's picture books. In her view, the quality of children's extracurricular books is uneven because of a lack of standards.

Previously, China mentioned in the "Outline for the Development of Chinese Children (2011-2011)" released in 2020 that it was necessary to promote the grading system of books for children, but the outline did not clearly indicate the specific time and plan for implementation. In February 2023, the group standard of "Graded Reading Guidance for Children Aged 2-3" was released, which is the first graded reading standard for children officially released by an industry association in China, aiming to standardize the grading characteristics of children's extracurricular reading materials, clarify the goals of reading ability guidance, and fill the gap in graded reading guidance standards.

In Xi Peizhi's view, although there are some relevant regulations and guiding documents, there is still a lack of unified and authoritative standards for the publication, distribution and sale of children's literature for the entire industry.

To this end, he suggested the development of authoritative and scientific standards and guidelines for children's literature, clarifying the content, quality and appropriateness requirements for children's extracurricular reading. This provides publishers, editors, writers and other relevant practitioners with clear references and norms to ensure the quality and educational value of published children's extracurricular books.

What is really good reading for kids?

Zhang Dandan believes that comprehensive consideration is required to find good picture books suitable for children's age, and high-quality children's extracurricular books need to meet four requirements: the content should be interesting enough, the picture content should be beautiful enough, the proportion of pictures and texts should be appropriate, and the content should be close to life.

Xi Peizhi suggested that relevant departments and publishers should strictly review children's extracurricular reading materials, exclude content that is not suitable for children, and ensure that the content is healthy, positive and educational; Promote the grading and labelling system of children's extracurricular books to help parents, educators and children choose books that are appropriate for their age and reading ability; Promote industry self-discipline, encourage industry organizations and associations to formulate self-discipline norms, and strengthen self-discipline supervision of the children's literature market.

In Sun Hongyan's view, whether it is authors, publishers, schools, and parents, they must put the service of minors first, and strengthen the training of authors and editors. At the same time, strengthen the reading guidance of home and school, recommend good books, and let children really love reading.

As a practitioner in the children's book publishing industry, Xin Xin called on parents to try to buy genuine books from official channels, so that the probability of buying children's extracurricular books with bad content will be reduced. If you feel that the content is really inappropriate, you can contact after-sales customer service, generally as a children's book editor will give a more professional answer after receiving the question.

"If you see a children's book that you like but don't sell, please buy a genuine support publishing house, otherwise there may be fewer and fewer excellent children's extracurricular books on the market, replaced by cheap, patchwork, and short-lived children's books." Xin Xin said.

(Source: Rule of Law Daily)